Used Up

Didn't get home until late, had to let the driveway dry out a bit, don't like driving after dark but I wanted to get home. A couple of quick drinks, wrote a couple of lines, and fell asleep in my chair, woke with a start, went to bed. Slept late, got up to pee, then fell back asleep on the sofa. That hasn't happened to me since my theater days and hundred-hour work weeks. Still groggy, so I went for a walk and found a few morels, came back home and fried them in butter, served them, with a perfect basted egg. on toast. Read a long essay on the functions of art. If you agree that art isn't useless, it actually is possible to discuss its functions, and this guy, Feldman is pretty good. In my case it keeps me out of trouble, and, for the most part, off the streets. I was thinking about architecture and design, and that got me thinking about indigenous architecture, the regionalized styles, the use of particular materials. I think about this fairly often, because I traveled so much, driven so many miles, so many times between here and Colorado. Tobacco barns in Ohio, chicken houses in Indiana, hog pens in Iowa, silos in Nebraska, wherever function is the entire point, what best serves for the lowest possible price. And I do design building in my head, you can't design and build as many houses as I have without having ideas. The shape, the space that is enclosed in a tobacco barn, leads to a thought-train about how otherwise that space might be used. I'll be driving somewhere, Kansas maybe, and see a slightly odd detail on a farm building (there are no codes in farm country, you can build any damn thing you want), like an exaggerated hip on a gable, and see clearly that it provides protection for that last wagon of hay, before it starts to rain, and what a cool idea it is. It could provide protection for a small balcony, maybe outside sliding doors from a master bedroom. Where you could sit outside and have a drink while the storm passed. Hip on a gable like an eyebrow. Consumes much of my time, a specific cantilever. I can see how to do it, that's not a problem, but I wonder what it will look like, a structure in space. Glenn mentions it is about a few things, the way I treat students as adults, the way no one is guilty, as no one holds the towel, what we thought was being said. You and your floating notebook might be caulked, strategically located, in the dark, actually, a mere shadow. Whatever you think. I just make a note, and move on. You and your markers, the droppings you left behind. I have to go.