Not Nothing

At first I thought it was nothing. An over-active imagination. But the noise persisted and I finally had to go see what it was. A feral cat facing off with a possum on the compost heap. Ugly critters, I wanted nothing to do with them. I threw a couple of rocks, from the pile I keep by the back door, and they scampered off to wherever they go. I spend thirty minutes bringing the tense into line, the present becoming the past. A nagging itch, someplace I can't see, indicates a tick, so I get out the hand-mirror I use to shave with, and sure enough, there's a bloated bastard in the middle of my lower back. There's a tendency for everything to become present. Remembering is like that. I had two encounters with women today that beg that question. The first was with Gina, the Architect/ Designer working on the alley project, and she had specifically dressed-down to jeans and a denim shirt, making a play for my attention. Let me say, first off, I have no idea why someone would play for my attention, I'm a loser and an easily sidelined anti-hero with issues. But Gina was clearly coming on to me, and I didn't want any part of it. I don't want to have a relationship. I'm comfortable, dirty and alone, maybe it's just a primitive phase, but it's quite real to me right now. Being alone is just easier. It doesn't involve all that compromise. The natural state, where we negotiate. The second was with Ursula, I think her name is, a lawyer, the daughter of a lawyer. I was out at the smoker's lounge, a concrete ledge on the loading dock, and she was walking through the alley. She has great ankles, and she noticed me noticing her feet and asked what I was looking at. Caught. I told her that her ankles were beautiful. What are you going to say? She just smiled, a lovely smile, and went on her way. I'd fix her dinner; no, really, I mean, I'd love to cook a meal for her and talk. Or Fatima, she's so lovely, I'd forget to breathe. I've written for several more hours and now it's dawn, time slips away, I'll continue this later. Drove into town early, so I could cleanup and shave with hot running water. Yesterday, during the long board meeting (elevator re-build) when I had to be upstairs staff person, I started reading Mary's letters from 1950. In April of that year, Portsmouth celebrated a Clarence Carter Week, big exhibition, gala banquet. I don't know where the exhibit was, but the work hung for several weeks after, and from that show, Carter sold 26 paintings. Discounted prices, but still hundreds of dollars each, in 1950 dollars, And he was at the top of his form, around then, as a graphic designer, making a thousand bucks a pop for magazine covers and such, doing at least one a month. Teaching in the summers at some Art Colony or another, for another thousand a month. Mary still bitches about their finances, in the letters to Mom, but it's pro forma parent manipulation by then. Mary was devious and a control freak, but that allowed CC to do his work; and the way she farms out the two boys (the third is in a home, and rarely mentioned), mostly to her mother and uncle, the more cultured family (CC came from humble roots) is shameless. If you don't want kids, don't have them. Got the theater ready for Ronnie and the band. Pegi called D and I together to relay that there were comments that we (he and I) clearly didn't have enough to do or we wouldn't be out back smoking all the time. I didn't know how to take this, as they're my breaks, and I'll take them as I will; that I was being watched at all is shocking; and that someone would imagine what I do or do not do, based on observation of my breaks. I usually go have a smoke before I hang a $250,000 painting, call it what you will. I go out and have a smoke with Sara, when she gives me the high sign, that we're going to have a cigaret break. AND we're often working, when we go out and have a cigaret, discussing a particular packing problem or some skewed logistics. I get more pissed the more I think about it. Is a dress code next? Pegi should have told them, whoever it was, that they should eat their socks, that they had no idea what they were talking about. Also, one or two of those smoke breaks occur before I'm supposed to be at work, and D and I often have a smoke after work, to discuss what we need to do the next day, who's counting here? I don't get it. Why would they want to get rid of D and me? It's not a museum without us, it's the Cirque, wagging a tail. A hard truth, and I'm hardly involved, I just mop floors after events.