Seedy Side

I've been around strippers most of my life; and guys who noodled large catfish from underneath logs, dug huge snapping turtles from mud banks: a living is where you find it. Myself, I negotiate a middle ground, somewhere short of illegal. Work early as the AC is out and the museum is way too hot, 84 degrees. I poke around for a while, Terry comes over and we figure it out. 78 degrees when I closed up, should be back in the range tomorrow. Then carried art work upstairs, pretty good stuff for early in the game, some world class abstract ceramic wall pieces. Wash a bunch of champagne flutes from the wedding reception. These don't like to go in the dishwasher, two more wedding receptions in the next two weeks, so we don't put the tables and chairs away, and I'll probably wash, by hand, 400 or 500 champagne flutes in that time. I bought a baby-bottle brush to clean them with, and it's the perfect four-dollar tool for the job. It's so good to see Sara, and now our offices are together; we could just shout, back and forth, like Pegi and Trish do, at the other end of the office space. But Sara hates it as much as TR and I do. It's so feed-store. TR taps on the wall (my alcove doesn't have a door) with his ring, and Sara just calls my name. So much more civilized, and that matters even to me, who uses an outhouse and collects rainwater, goes for weeks without a full-immersion bath, and no longer attends events that require any further attention. I'm only a complicated guy by extension, actually, I'm fairly simple. My left foot has been bothering me a lot, a broken digit, and the fact that the little toe on that foot wants to curl under the toe adjacent. I subscribe, mostly, to a scenario where these things play out. Broken toe, right, little toe ducking under the next toe, right, I don't care what my feet look like, I just want to be able to walk. Dead mouse in the house, I can tell by the smell. I have a lot of mouse traps, so I don't always find a dead mouse right away. Leads to the dead mouse in the corner problem. You know me, one thing leads to another. A sneezing fit, I think it's my subconscious telling me I don't agree with myself, but it just might be that my house is very dirty. Thank god I don't have any pets, a family of blue-tailed skinks, but they hardly count, they stay mostly hidden. Nothing with hair. Now I'm pissed, wrote the preceding last night, but then my phone was out and I couldn't send, and the damned thing is still out tonight. Frustrating, being at the edge of the various grids. Art coming in all day and I end up walking up and down stairs several dozen times. Some nice work, it's going to be a hell of a show. Several people I know pretty well, and there's the usual chat, when you've not seen someone yet this year. The opening is June 15th and I have about 10,000 things that I need to get done. And two more wedding receptions, did I mention that? Stripped the signage from the gallery wall, hoping I can just touch up the paint, but as it's red (the most difficult color to paint walls) it probably won't touch-up well and I'll need to paint that wall, and the other signage wall, in the entry. Add it to the list. Kim sounds like he might be up for doing a set of songs at the pub. We'll go over early, before many people are there, and use the front room, where people mostly read the paper, couldn't be more casual and I think he'll be more comfortable there. John Hogan, himself, wants to hear, and I'd like for Justin to hear him. I don't know anything about song writing. I think Hunter and Garcia probably represent the pinnacle. I had to stop at Kroger for something, butter, and The Grateful Dead were on the house speakers, "Ripple", which is a great fucking song. I actually dawdled in the baby-food aisle, so I could hear the whole thing through. It's a perfect song, I have maybe 12 versions of it, including one, from, what is that place? Red Rock? in Colorado? that goes on for a long time. Garcia could take a lyric apart, explore every element, then slowly reconstruct the original idea, better than anyone ever; his guitar playing talks. Like Bach in the Suites, and several saxophonists I've known. Just another way of speaking. Like we need one, as if language wasn't confusing enough. Clear-air turbulence, no wind to speak of, not a cloud in the sky, then, on the way home, I'm struck with these sharp winds from the side. Suddenly it's like driving across Kansas and I slow down. The traffic, such as it is, backs up behind me, and I pull-over several times, to let the impatient ass-holes around, I'm gesturing out the window, and docenting the drive home. I'm rarely in a hurry, it's normal I'd spend ten or fifteen minutes at the lake, and I needed to clean my windshield; I keep an old cup I found on the side of the road in the bed of the truck for this purpose. The motor in my power washer doesn't work anymore, so I have to turn the wipers on and splash water from a cup to clean the windshield. I need to do this because the sunlight is refracting oddly off dust in the corners, and I'm seeing things that aren't there. I struggle with this. As you might imagine, me and my demons. The nature of reality, what I had thought, what you thought you were hearing. Three things, right? make a list, any three things become a list, THEREFORE, but I'm just covering my ass here, if I'd mentioned three things recently, that'd be the record. Mostly I fall silent. What I think of as the middle path.