Falling Leaves

The last of. You get a wind, this time of year, and the leaves can sound like hail. Sara came in, yesterday afternoon, I was pretty sure she would. She knew I wanted to see the paintings, and knew that I knew she wanted to see them. It's already tomorrow. I think I sent a small paragraph, but I'm not sure, and I don't feel like checking. It's 3:10 in the morning and something woke me. Outside, to pee, and it feels about 40 degrees. Brisk, in skivvies, and the house, inside, isn't really all that warm; but I bundle up, so as to be comfortable, consider the word comfortable, go get my reading glasses and the OED. A very good way to spend an hour (spending time?) at this time of day. More leaves, against the north wall of the house. Not an omen, exactly, but something to make you take notice. A sign. No, not exactly 'a sign' but an indicator, more like a scat-and-print track, a trail you've learned to follow. And it doesn't lead anywhere. It's just a path. I wanted to talk to Glenn, I was very excited about a particular pun. And the thought extends itself. Which, when you live alone, is what happens. I might eat something, or go for a walk (I have that great headlamp from Howard), or I might just sit in a corner and consider punctuation. I allow myself great liberties, only because I live alone and there is no witness. It's either late or early and I can be honest. Hard stop, wait. Why am I even awake now? I don't get it. I read about that tank battle in the sunflower fields of Siberia. The Germans needed cooking oil. Finally doze back off for a couple of hours, until the sunrise wakes me. Enough of a fire in the cookstove to heat water for shaving and a very quick sponge-bath. Light fog even in my hollow (I'm too high for most fogs) and I know that'll mean pea soup down along the river, and it is, in fact, just about as dense as I've ever experienced, 20 MPH dense. Even two hours later the tube of fog on the river looks dense enough to walk on. I move the rest of the dolls to the middle of the gallery, until I find out what to do with them. Only two of the eight-foot puppet dolls are in the way, TR had said he'd come by in the afternoon and help get those down. Unwrap paintings the rest of the day, all are very good, some are spectacular. It's going to be a beautiful show. TR is beside himself, handling paintings, I agree it is a heady experience. Handling art is fucking cool. He does come by and we get the two puppets off the front walls. I can tell he doesn't like ladder work, neither do I, but I need to catch the doll, they're very awkward and I've had experience. Dealing with them is like dealing with a dead drunk date; we get it done; take down a third one, hanging in the entryway, then he helps me unwrap the last and largest of the paintings, which require two people to handle. We get everything out in the open, because Sara needs to see it all, to figure an order. An interesting process, an ordering of disparate elements. TR understands this is a complex algorithm, and he's never been there when we lit a show. It's magic, what you can do with light, much less smoke and mirrors. Roll an ash spoon, a quarter turn in the handle, build a bed, count the number of power poles between Selma and DC. Three, right? we decided three was enough to establish a list. In a vortex of images we actually see you. This next election is a joke. Smile. Bend over. Damn, I didn't get it, before I'd opened my mouth. I can tell from that grin that we're OK. No one in their right mind would mess with me, I wear Emily like a shield. Went for a beer after work, and one of those giant pretzels with jalapeno cheese dip, a fitting reward for a day hard spent. Unwrapping art is exhausting. Since we had worked on Monday, and I remembered working, remembered specific paintings, and since the normal work-week starts on Tuesday, I had assumed yesterday was Tuesday and today was Wednesday, tomorrow, therefore and so on. Of course I was wrong, as I so often am, when it comes to factoring time. I'm reading the history of sunflowers, it's propped open at the island; at my desk, I have the history of dust, and within an arm's reach, the history of the OED, a goat in clover. First thing I do is unplug the phone, then I kill the breaker to the fridge. We'll supply the extraneous sound. Right up your alley, what was that, Cole Porter. You have to pay attention.