Titular Hero

This happens three or four nights a year. The frogs are mating. They're loud, a drone of lust and reproduction, but they're sensitive to predators, so they fall silent and dive for the bottom when anything moves in that large world above them. Maybe it's the vibration, maybe it's something occulting starlight, or maybe they hear a noise in the night; but if anything stirs, they fall silent. It's the occasion of them falling silent. You acclimate to a certain level of sound. I woke from a mildly pornographic dream, something about birds, because suddenly everything fell silent. Awakened by the absence of sound, which meant, probably, that a coon or opossum was lurking, attracted by the sound of all those frogs mating. In my own defense, it's only a random thing that my name is also Tom. Therefor there is an assumption. Our titular hero is not me, but rather someone with the same name who did a lot of the same things, and, easily confused, might be considered me. Peeping. Forget about it. I only observe in the interest of science. Fuck a bunch of prurient intrigue: I both am, and am not, who I seem to be. Leave it at that. I have to take a college group through the Carters tomorrow, which should be fun. Got up and wrote in the night, got back to sleep, and the sun woke me right at seven, so I could get to the museum, shave and wash my hair. Met the college group, the teacher knew a lot of people I knew; was a musician, plays with people I know. He was surprised to see the folk art show scattered around, was afraid he was going to miss it, so I gave them a preview showing. Then the photography show, then spent an hour with the Carters. Good tour, I was on my mettle. D, with TR as a gofer, built a dolly with sides and swivel casters that fits in the elevator (so we can store them in the basement) for the new folding tables. An ugly piece of work, because everything but the casters is recycled material: AND a testament to function. We might spray paint it red enamel, do some detailing. We have a huge supply of new vinyl signage, left-overs and mistakes, extra verbage, that we could use to mislabel all the component parts, a stile could became a rail, or the bottom could become the top, you can label anything. Great last light, a rare clear sky, lit from around the curve, and stick trees. Stark and beautiful. No two windows ever offer the same view. I favor a southwestern window for where I write, despite the problem of keeping the sun out of my eyes, because I like watching the sun set. I once built a bleacher just for watching the sun set over a terminal moraine. It's probably still there, buried in vines. It's hard, working behind the scenes. If you're perfect, no one gets mad at you. Believe me, I strive for perfection, I know I'll never get there, consider those red walls, but I make an effort: my goal is to make the impossible happen most of the time. A working class hero is so hard to be. Right, right, right. What actually happened? Of course you opened the show, then you took a day off and read Proust. Then you split firewood. Whatever you do.