Steamboat Pictures

Nothing I'd enjoy more, someone was saying, about plying the Ohio in a sternwheeler. Right, sure, I replied, quoting the statistics for deaths per hundred thousand. A dream in which I'm riding a unicycle from Portsmouth, Ohio, to Seattle. Something wakes me, a noise. I have to pee, my mouth is dry, I must have been snoring. I drink some orange/pineapple juice and it fairly explodes. Simple pleasures. A break, sometime this past week, getting off my feet, thumbing through a book on Caravaggio. Michelangelo Caravaggio. So many of his paintings exist only as copies that you wonder if there might not be a conspiracy. The Emily Project, listen, I swear, I've heard Skip Fox read, and Stephen Ellis, I know the power of the spoken word. All the accumulated strength comes to bear. There's a coon on the compost pile, nothing unusual, never mind. Channeling Harvey. The noise that broke me from the loop was just a racoon, cleaning bones. As is so often, nothing makes any sense. Hooters is suing Twin Peaks for copyright violation. I don't have to make this up, Clay thinks we should stay abreast of the situation. I'm often happy if I can just roll a cigaret, the various complexities. If I stay drunk I won't have a hangover. Grinding my teeth, something must be bothering me, but I can't think what it is. The last hour, on Friday, the boiler guy came by, and we talked about routine procedure, then the plumber came by, to check the sump pump, and, finally, Sharee and April arrived with the art work for the student installation. Trying to wrap my head around everything, I was standing in the common room staring at the calendar, wondering when what needed to be done, and I realized there were several days when I was the only staff person that was going to be at the museum. Anthony had mentioned an installation we had talked about, I don't remember the conversation, really, something about foam blocks and spray glue, and Bev calls from the reception desk, some wine had arrived, Fed-Ex, for the big fund-raiser next month. I go down and get it, to store in the vault, which is a perfect wine-cellar, and I always open the case, to see what Dr. White has deemed a good wine at a decent price, and this time I agree, a Shiraz from Australia with a deep enough color that the light barely shines through. My kind of girl, I'm humming, because I'll probably be pouring glasses of this at the event, and I slip into the future pluperfect, imagining what I'll be wearing, new black jeans and a sports coat over my best denim shirt, swirling a sample of the wine, examining the legs. Talking wine-speak. I can do this because I'm a bull-shit artist and I've been around the block. It doesn't take a genius to speak the speech. I was giving D a hard time about his 'terminal' degree, because he had been giving Justin a hard time about his hair. I enjoy irony as much as the next guy. Justin is a hair guy, a mop of sandy blond that cascades off his head. I like it, becomes him, but D is a graphic designer and wants to order things. There's a subtext. I'm officially not working, therefore I can have a beer at lunch, and I think D is jealous. When I grunt approval of the new Octoberfest on draft, he rolls his eyes. Short sentences have their place, you notice that? Justin is an innocent, not in most senses, but in the sense I mean, that he has yet to have experienced that larger world out there. He's cool, a good guitar player, and he has a great voice. D is a little hard on him, but D comes from a hard place, I tend to soften the blows. Barb, the owner, is laughing so hard she has to lean on a table. It's funny, isn't it? the way humor is extracted. Sometimes, in the throes of trying to roll a cigaret, I wonder what you expect of me. Something came up today, yesterday, whenever; and I was right back on that same piece of track. What does any of it mean? That I can drink a beer.