Something Blue

The sky last night hurt. I was thinking about something. Escapes me now, what I'd been thinking about, but the blue was so intense, I nearly drove off the road. A perfect night on the ridge, I wrote well, made some notes, slept well. Knew today was going to be awful, the aftermath of an opening AND one of the largest parties of the year. Truly a mess. Thrown away food is always the first issue, and unless I stay until the end of an event and supervise, they overfill the trash cans with heavy wet food. You can't pull the bags out of the containers or they'll burst, so I tie them off and haul the containers over to the dumpster. Two today that weighed over 150 lbs.each. TR is there, so it's possible, I couldn't wrestle these things alone. The caterers can't take food back, will not, and will not take the stuff to the homeless shelter, and won't let me take it there. It has to be thrown away. A stupid mind-numbing rule. If I only had a pig. It takes until almost noon, wrangling garbage, but it does go off without a hitch, and there are, believe me, terrible things that can happen. The floors are all in awful shape, but I can't clean them until the hospital moving crew has come and picked up their tables and decorations, the left-over beer and wine. I clean the kitchen. The guys finally come, to get the tables, their boss takes the booze in a different truck. I expect some skimming. I run them out the door, a few minutes after five, by helping them carry the last few pieces and shutting the gates behind them. I wanted to leave early, but left late. For three or four days, right now, the setting (actually set) sun is aligned perfectly with the bare and bended river. By the time I get to the place where I park, it's almost dark. I don't have to use a flashlight yet, but I keep a small one in my pocket, just in case. For some reason I was looking at myself from some remove and I didn't like something I saw, wondered if I could change it, if I should; fairly furious there, but what you had, the gods bless whatever teetering pile, was a period of waiting for someone else to do something before I could do what I needed to get done. The nature of things. I get upset, slightly off-kilter, when someone else's logistics affect mine. While they're loading, chomping at the bit, I go to the museum library and look at pictures of Shaker artifacts. I mean, really, who makes their own brooms anymore? Finally, I have to let go, it's cool, I'll work tomorrow, another extra day, to get the floors decent for the event on Sunday. A brunch, I don't know, it's not even on the calendar. How the hell am I supposed to prepare for an event that's not even on the calendar? That's where the furious came in. I wanted a day off, everyone else is taking them in batches, and I can't get one to save my life. A mote on the screen looked just like a comma, but it was in the wrong place, and that upset me because I'm careful with my commas. When I'm upset this easily, it's time to make scrambled eggs with reconstituted morels; and toast, with horseradish jam. Fuck a bunch of convention. Whatever gets you through the night. Roll a smoke, get a drink, consider your own inadequacies: inescapable, indifference, inconsistency, inaccuracy, implantation, imminent, ignominious. I forget what word I was looking up. Had to do with what I couldn't face directly. That slant, like the light through winter trees, illuminates things differently. The dictionary has a calming effect on me: a dervish, at the edge of a tree-dip pit, but rational enough to see what needs to be done. I can't begin to tell you ---actually I could--- what goes on in the mind of a maniac. The same, except for the eye shadow, and a few dangling pieces of silver, that you see played out everyday. The dance. A double stopped cello piece with the strings reversed. Nothing that couldn't be played. Just harmonics. Alone in the distance.