Installing Art

My reputation precedes me. I actually stay sober most of the time, despite the urban tales. I'm a half-cured drunk and a hell of a sailor, when all is said and done: I can navigate low water with the best of them. It's a gift, I don't think about it, an inherent ability, like the way you understand what I'm saying. Meaning morphs. I watch what I say change like light through fall trees. It all comes down to perspective. The last two paintings came in this morning, and that caused a shuffle of several of the wall sections. Finally started hanging just before lunch, then TR arrived and we started hanging in earnest, 23 of the 53 hung before we stopped about 4:30. Late in the day you start making mistakes, brain- dead from such intense concentration. Some of these paintings are stunning. It's a real treat to be installing this show, it's so lovely. Words fail me, and I'm well and truly exhausted. Some of the work is large, some is very small, some isn't rigged for hanging. The numbers are crazy difficult because we're stacking the very small paintings and they require close tolerance in both directions and they looked very close to perfect. TR is a compulsive straightener. Which is good, I am too, but not so much, which means he can straighten the paintings. I have to measure off the last painting, to hang the next, so that painting has to be level or the number is wrong. Hanging a show like this, I allow myself 3/32's to an eighth of an inch. I don't mind mistakes, as long as I can't see them. Stage Manager mode. Focused attention. You bring a lot to bear, right then. I refuse a beer with TR because it's started to rain and I want to get up my driveway. I want a drink. I want to roll a smoke, and just sit, smoke and drink and listen to the rain. Get almost to the top and my four-wheel drive fails and I have to bail into D's by-pass, which may be only ten or eight feet below the top of the ridge, but all the rest of the way is red clay. I go and get B, we haul my truck out with logging chains, and I assume I can get to work tomorrow. I should have stayed in town, I need to be at the museum tomorrow, my appearance is more than requested. But now I have my truck on a slippery slope, and I'm anxious.It's a saga, right? Something versicle, we could dance with. maybe even a rock number.