White Noise

Thinking about 'family values' I wonder how many marriages there have been in the US congress. If someone could get me a number, I'd appreciate it, and whether or not it was different from the median. Just wondered. Got up to pee in the middle of the night and my phone was working. When my phone is dead for more than a few hours I tend to pick it up, whenever I walk by, to see if there's a dial tone (to hear, more accurately), and then I can rant about rural service, but there was one, so I SENT whatever was accumulated, the latest enjambment of words. Looked more like a page than a paragraph. I'd have to modify what I told people, when they asked what I wrote, my usual answer was 'paragraphs' and now I'd have to add 'sometimes pages'. The phone doesn't work for a couple of days, and suddenly the paradigm changes. Is that possible? If I had intermittent land-line usage, I could, theoretically, write a novel, because it would look like one, pages of text. It's gotten so that I live for these moments, at 3:42 in the morning, when I struggle for a word. But there's something there, a larger thing I'm trying to get at, about striving. I'm not a pilgrim, and I don't have a religious work ethic. If you generate text, it takes a certain form, for me it's Arial 10 in these blocks that seem to replicate experience. The very idea that I could do that. Actually mean something. The way text generates experience. Stayed in town and listened to live music, B on bass, brother Ronnie on banjo, Brad on mandolin, Kevin on guitar. I know them all, and they were good, enjoying themselves. I sat with John Hogan, himself, got a free Irish and appetizer. My bar bill for the evening was six dollars, I tipped well. Too late to write, then when I got home tonight the phone was out, so I might not be able to send this. Usual "Cream..." day, taking in art, chatting with artists. Pegi and Trish cleaned the kitchen (the only place I ever worked where they don't clean up immediately after an event, they seem to always wait until the day before the next event, drives me crazy). They set up for the wedding too, which was good, because there were several things going on and I needed to stay available, in my role as the person who does 'everything else'. Some nice stuff, Todd Reynolds (just one painting, because he works so large he can only transport one at a time, two of us, watching for a break in traffic, carry it across the street, the varnish is still tacky) and Jeremiah, both of whom I quite like, both them and their work. More elevator stuff and I asked D to walk them around, to bring him up to speed on the impending elevator upgrade. A good day, and I beat the last of the rain home, got up the driveway, with supplies, but the goddamned phone was dead. I need to work differently, Skype, cell-phone, satellite, flash-drive, lap-top with a back up battery, I could improve my efficiency. Maybe not lose pages. And it's good to think about self-improvement, taking the bull by the horns; busier than a cat scratching it's ass, and, still, learning from the situation. I punctuate as a matter of speaking, where the pauses are, that I breathe, which took me years to realize. Now, it's just a matter of course. The way you parse what you say. Tom But I don't have a phone and I can't send. Pegi was mopping in a harebrained chevron, I think she was delusional and I certainly wasn't going to say anything, because she was mopping and I wasn't, it's probably always better if someone else is doing whatever it is, and she was singing under her breathe, Mel Torme songs. I had to go outside. I'm a 'Grateful Dead' kind of guy, and insipid jazz drives me crazy. I know how Clapton's guitar can speak, the way Edgar Meyer's transcriptions do. Sometime, when you have a few hours, you should listen to this.