Lost Track

Right at the edge, I can't remember, something. But I needed to pee, so I got up and went out to the end of the deck and pissed into space. A remarkable sense of release. It's overcast, but a few stars poke through. Incredibly ordinary. I stop to consider, right then, who and where I am, an essential existential question. I don't want probe too deeply, at three in the morning, or even consider my grammar. I'd rather just go back to sleep. But things are conditional. I know any sleep I get would be fitfull, and I avoid that, whenever possible, because it leaves me anxious. Something to think about. TR said today, how I engaged the reader, that he was aware of that. Right, I intend interaction, but there was an implication we were communicating a level above that. I don't know. At 3:57 almost anything seems possible. I think I'll get a short drink and roll one more smoke. A curious evening. Some times it strikes me, I'm strange, even by my own standards. Which opens an avenue, my own, a private path; and yet, I find, we agree on certain particulars. Blows me away, actually (really) that we can agree on anything. Considering the divergent paths and all that. The very idea that there could be something we could possibly agree on. Begs the question. What was the question? Finally go to work to get on with the repacking. D made the long slog to Cleveland today, so I was by myself. I enjoy working with D, and I enjoyed working with TR yesterday, but I also enjoy working by myself. Handling art. Someone came in this morning, a lawyer I recognized. I was moving something over to the table, to wrap and put away, talking casually with him. He gasped when I picked up the piece, caught himself and said that of course I handled the art, someone had to. Worked steady through the day and got almost all of it done. An hour's work for D and I tomorrow. Then the dolls come out. We figure to work all day Saturday, gotta get a jump on the rigging questions. Repair on one of the dolls, labels, bonnets, and of course it all has to be done a day early because one of the artists is giving a talk the day before opening. How these things get scheduled is a mystery to me. It's going to be a real push, I just have too much to do. Pegi will hire one of her Cirque kids to come over and mop (I like Leo's style, he has a nice over-swing), she and Trish will somehow sort out the kitchen. When K was here all this logistical crap was a thing of the pass, and D was confrontational about the way he felt she had been treated, for that matter everyone concerned knows how I felt. Office politics, I just can't be bothered, what I want to do is install this doll show, it's looking pretty cool. Even my jaded eye. Stopped at the pub for a pint, on the way home, and the waitresses I know are mostly leaving, so John, the head bar-keep, is vetting potential replacements. I wouldn't miss this for the world, and I move down to that end of the bar, so I can monitor the bullshit level. Who he's willing to bump-ass with, passing in those narrow kitchens, and behind the bar, a very real concern, and maybe, something. Phone went out and I couldn't send last night. Very tired. The degree of attention you exercise, handling art, is extreme, so it's exhausting. Slept late but still made it to town on time. Sara's new laptop arrived and D had to lock and load that, so I finished packing the show by myself. Then a quick lunch, D and I talked about installing the doll show and I have an idea about rigging the puppet-dolls. He agrees it would probably be the easiest way to do it. Solved the problem, as I often do, by sitting in a chair and staring into the middle distance. At those moments, and I've had a great many of them, I don't doodle or make sketches, I can't draw worth a damn, but I can visualize in intricate detail, and I imagine a way we can articulate these monster dolls with the least number of pulleys. We're not trying to hoist a mainsail here, just move a leg. No reason to be complex. We have two of the creepy dolls out, that D got yesterday, and they were not wrapped when he picked them up, so he just stood them up on one the pedestals from the ODC show. My companions this day, while I strip hardware, do the patch and repair, are a couple of creepy dolls. I love this job. I go over often, and touch them, I'm allowed to do this, it's my responsibility. I need to know what we're dealing with, more or less, I need to understand. Pegi understands the attraction I have for one of her girls, nothing I would act on, and she keeps throwing it in my face. She did it today, we were getting a cup of coffee, and she asked me if I was familiar with falconry, the way you kept a bird on leather thongs, perched on your leather glove; and I said that yes I was, I'd actually done that, I've lived a long life and almost everything was possible. She thought Megan should be tethered to me by a leather strap for a bird show later this year. She was joking, I think, and I told her it was a bad idea, because everyone would misconstrue everything. Especially me. I get things wrong most of the time, it's my bent.