This That

This has nothing to do with that. They're usually separated by a distance. Sara 'sets' the fabric show, quilts and framed embroidery all around on the floor, on packing blankets, in front of where they'll hang. This is modern stuff, not like your grandmother's work, and I like it. There are three chickens (chickens always sell), one of them a full length portrait with red cowboy boots. There's a great crow, a head and shoulders shot of a Dodo. 22 pieces in all, and it's a perfect show for the upstairs gallery. I have to repaint one wall, where the adhesive for the signage is still bleeding through. While I'm doing that Meagan (I think is the spelling) comes in and asks what I'm doing. Her pet snake is in the classroom, it's in the show the Cirque is doing, and she'd come in to feed it a mouse. She's extremely attractive and bright, and I enjoy flirting with her, but today she was flirting with me, dressed in patterned black tights, boots, and a knit LBD. After lunch, after repainting that wall where the ghosting of signage past had bled through, I started hanging the show. Fabric work is difficult because it's never straight. I get nine pieces hung, re-hanging three of those, because the pieces are crooked. Sara said my whole life had prepared me to work in a museum, and she's correct, it had. A particular tool-kit and mind-set. Glenn would get this, other things beside. This surely becomes whatever. Electricity was out last night, and now the phone is out. I had a piece of writing at work, but I deleted that, as it seemed out of date. Now at least I can write at home but I can't send. I can print this, I suppose, then retype it at the museum. Today I finished installing, labels and all, and I feel just a step or two ahead. Most of the work for "Wet Paint" arrived yesterday, by bonded art shippers, always a treat because the work is handled so carefully. D picks up the last of that show tomorrow in Canvas, WV; and there are two more performances of the Cirque Halloween show Friday and Saturday. Saturday we start breaking down the creepy doll show, and I'll be hanging "Wet Paint" by the middle of next week. It's a big show, 50 paintings, most of them large. I need to check the hanging hardware, I'm sure we'll need more of the large hangers. Linda's flying in, to work on the Emily Project, a week from Saturday, mid-afternoon; D and I will be hanging paintings, but then, that Sunday and Monday she and I can work with TR and see what the three of us are thinking. I'm a little more confident, now, on my footing for this, a false security, I'm sure, and I don't want to intrude myself because the words and the music need to speak for themselves. A little staging, a few props, nothing more. It would be nice if there was the smell of baking bread. Emily did all the baking, smell is an uncontrolled sense, what it reminds you of, thrown into the turmoil of what's going on. I don't so much disobey what I discover, as merely move on to the next thing. Shit conspires. One of the great lessons of life, next thing you know you're in a tree-tip pit pulling a tarp over your head. Keep the rain off and wait for things to dry out: actually, things are fairly square, I choose a book, on the history of dust.

Tom

It's the next morning, today, and I have both electricity and a phone. Send now.