Labels

Back on the museum show. Actually Linda was around until eleven and I spent time with her. After she left I spent four-and-a-half hours doing labels: spray-gluing them to matt board, running them through the vacuum machine, cutting them, then mounting them to the walls. Mounting them required more than a hundred little roll-ups of blue painter's tape, which I roll around the end of my left forefinger, sticky side out, then lightly stick them in orderly rows on top of the job-box so I can roll the tape and labels around. Very efficient system. So that we don't have to take everything off the wall again, to read the title off the back, we make a set of temporary paper labels that we tape up. We do use a lot of tape. Making the little tape loops is a Zen activity. I make the loops on my finger, a little loosely, so I can just tap my finger down, the loop sticks to the job-box lid, and I slide my finger out. There's a rhythm to it, and I often chant the conjugation of the Latin verb 'to love' while I do it. Spices up my afternoon. Sara comes down, for the placement of the Artist's Statement labels, and a couple of others, odd-balls, that fall outside my magic 57 inches. Every show is slightly different, ask anyone who works behind the curtain. I wanted to go for a beer and pretzel with TR, but the dark arrives early, on Standard Time, and I like to be home for the sunset. They're beautiful, this time of year, with the trees stripped bare, all those colors laying on the horizon. When it's really intense, I roll a smoke, get a drink, and go out on the back stoop. There's a fifteen minute interval, at least, after the sun sets, when the clouds are still lit directly; fall days like this could drive me crazy. An almost full moon (Thursday) is chasing across the sky. It's a small, hard, dense moon, with no warmth at all, which seems to be warning you to get in some extra hay, buy some extra firewood, get, maybe, twenty packs of those instant mashed potatoes and a couple of slabs of dried salted cod. At least then we'd be able to make cod-fish cakes and laugh at the world. Every poem of Emily's, I can't believe I'm still reading her poems as I go out the door. TR shoved the book in my face and said I should read 502 (the Johnson, 1954) and this poem is the very climax of hyphens. God knows what to make of it. What do they represent? No easy answer, I've prodded this from every direction. Poked and peered around, whatever is your nature. I think I just need to go and sleep. Simple pleasures. I'm fine, alone, at least I don't have to have a meaningless conversation. Misty's ankles are perfect, make a note.