Intarsia

Looking at some images of classic in-lay, and they blow me away. It is, actually, like brain surgery, a simple chess board of ebony and holly (the perfect black and white field) is an array of absolutely straight lines. Not an easy thing to achieve with organic components. Things rarely stay straight in nature. Stratified clay, at sea level, pressured into sandstone or limestone, might form a fairly straight line, the grain of a red oak, grown in a hollow, out of the wind, but even a line drawn between two objects in space, over time, becomes a curve. Fractured obsidian holds its form for a very long time, but eventually becomes dust, even diamonds fade away, whatever brilliance they might have had dulled by cosmic radiation. Just berries and cream for breakfast and I did two big tours today, an hour and twenty minutes each. A bright young woman in the first group, very interactive. I liked her, from the docent point-of-view, she asked good questions. I was in decent form. When I'm in good form I make them laugh and jab them with little facts. Because there's such a variety of work, in so many different mediums, there are a great many things that can be said. It's a fun tour. I got both groups into the Carter Gallery, where I'm honing my skills to better docent the docents next month. I have to read back over some things. I get the dates confused. Very hot and I have to run the AC for two hours to get the temp down to Black Dell's maximum operating temp. She is become fickle and slower than Methuselah. I didn't send last night because I fell asleep while writing, but woke up curiously refreshed, like I'd purged myself of something in the night. Probably a false positive, but I take solace where I can. Several of the young folk from yesterday came back today, wanting another hit of whatever it was. I told them it's just a matter of looking. That's all I do, when I'm not doing the other things that constitute 'being in the world'; maybe a third of my time, slightly less, is spent in that world, where I inter-face with people and talk about things that I seem to understand. The rest of the time I'm looking at aphid droppings through a magnifying glass. Wondering at the sound my tires make, driving through that sticky shit. It's not a manifesto, just some notes I jotted on a napkin. It is my tendency to remain demure, probably, that saves me from answering any serious questions.