Sour Note

I was doing fine, with a bunch of extremely mundane chores: washing dishes, scrubbing toilet bowls, re-mopping some heavily soiled areas of floor. Then, later, D and I were downstairs, looking at the gallery SPACE, trying to figure out how to hang the puppet dolls. The Fed Ex guy delivered a printer, which Bev signed for, at the reception desk. I ask D if he had ordered a printer, and I could see he was upset. He's our IT guy and he hadn't been consulted. Major whoops, it seems to me, I'd at least ask his opinion, even if I had known all about printers, 20 years ago, in Vero Beach. I want to be careful here, because I do love my job, and I care about the museum. What a sunset, saturated color, emptied of figurative content. Like Rothko, and even, strangely, like Turner. The way my mind works perplexes me. Anyway, I followed D upstairs, to hear what he would say to Pegi; there was a second witness to this, TR was printing-out some lovely loan forms for Sara's next show, completely redesigned, printed-in-color loan forms. That D had redesigned, along with 4-color envelopes; and membership forms, that he had redesigned. He's good at this, maybe very good, and they hadn't even ask him if this printer would interact with their system, which he maintains on a shoestring. And he asked her (Pegi), in a very casual voice, why they had bought that printer. Pegi exploded, TR and I were shocked, if I'd been a victim of that, I would have turned around and gone home. But hey, the show in the main gallery comes down next week, and I'll be busy, can fill my time displaying art and not thinking about office politics. I may mop floors for a living, but I have a certain dignity. At this point in my life I'd be hard-pressed to not say what I actually thought. It wasn't just me, TR took offense. I sprang for beers after work, so we could talk this though. D admitted he couldn't see a fast ball after Little League. I admitted that the curve ball, in college, defeated me completely. I was a great fielder but my hitting was lousy. Had to let the preceding sit over night, but find I still have to mention it. A lovely day today, stopped at the lake to watch the vapors rising. Cooler nights, and the water gives off heat. Last night read about Modigliani. One of the most crazed drives toward self-destruction ever. I love his nudes. Then about Rothko and his "trembling voids of pure, saturated color". Giacometti worked on the first set of "Waiting For Godot". I knew a student of Giacometti once, on Cape Cod, who was quite a good sculptor himself, and I published a book of his wife's sonnets. I'd forgotten about that. There are times when your past subsumes you. When you remember something not in a fictional way. The absolute sequence (as I remember it), a very specific place and time. Do I trust you or not? Do I trust myself? Memory is a wild card. Because of its removal. Right? A memory is not the thing itself, that should be obvious; if it were I'd be allowed living with a sexy woman who had a job with benefits. As it is, I'm living alone, making the best of the day. Allows me to say certain things.