Feeding Frenzy

What I need is a larger grill. Seriously. If I had a larger grill I could cook for more people more easily. And I'm hampered by not having an oven in the warm months. To cook for eighteen is going to be a trial. I have a couple of weeks to work out the logistics. Borrow someone's kitchen. The convection oven will work for the root vegetables, Justin or Billy can do them in batches and they can be nuked before serving, maybe John Hogan can do the corn pudding at his house, I can use the warming oven at the museum if I have to. Be nice to have a warming oven, have everything ready at the same time. I need to increase the sauce by two quarts, which I'll take care of this weekend, I love working on the sauce; I'm going to cook in a great raspberry chipotle salsa and a verde enchilada sauce, adjust the heat (I'm currently holding a wide variety of ground peppers), and blenderize everything. I've got, some pork fat to seal the top, while it mellows in the fridge. The sauce, jeeze, I can't believe the sauce is still around. But preserving things by covering them with fat is a very old tradition, store them is a cool place, a cave or hole in the ground, and they'll keep for a long time. Crocks of cooked duck or lowly pork sausage, it doesn't matter, you can eat it later, when you're hungry and the squirrels have moved south. Toothsome though a hare might be. Rabbit on a biscuit. For the vegetables, five pounds of either Red or Yukon Gold potatoes, two pounds of young turnips, two pounds of parsnips, two pounds of beets, all quartered or halved to be about the same size, tossed in olive oil, lots of salt and pepper, finely minced rosemary. Six slabs of ribs might be enough. The corn pudding is easy. Cut the kernels from twelve ears of sweet corn, then scrape the cobs with the back of a butter knife to get the juice, a cup of stone-ground corn meal, a cup of ricotta, a cup of half-and-half, six eggs, salt and pepper, a dash of nutmeg, stir it all together, bake for an hour in a heavily buttered pan at 350 degrees (it's done when it doesn't shake in the middle) and this is always a crowd pleaser. I first ate something like this dish in Iowa. In the deep south, which I consider home, we just cut the kernels off the cob, scraped the juice off into a buttered cast-iron skillet, salt and pepper, Fried Corn, it was called. As sweet a treat as I ever required. Need maybe four loaves of garlic bread so everyone could sop up their mess. I assume John would open up the bar, I assume someone would walk me home. Interlude. Thinking about how to get this meal on the table, I actually smell and taste the various particulars. I know what I want the balance to be. Just short of a feeding frenzy. Keep it civilized. Read more...

Confusion

Just short of chaos. The elevator guy asked us if we had any freight to haul up or down because he was taking over control of the controls. We did, and moved a few things. The phone guys came in, and they're going to completely change out the phone system in two days, shouldn't, they say, interrupt service; new switch board, new phones with functions I don't understand. Calls can go to voice-mail to email and follow you around, why would you want that? The phones black and have little screens with information on them. I'll need a tutorial. I forgot Barb's birthday, John (himself) Hogan had just told me the story on Saturday, so I feel totally stupid. I'll get her flowers tomorrow, and I'd like to cook for them (their birthdays and anniversary fall within a three-day period) and the rest of the staff. I think they close early on Monday, we could do it after hours. Billy is their lead cook, and I'd need his help. We'll need to roast some vegetables and make a corn souffle for dessert. They've got a convection oven. I'd do ribs my way and Billy would bitch about how his way was at least as good. as mine And I grant him that, there are ten thousand solutions. Really, I'm just saying, power interrupts. Wanted to write more last night, but I would have just lost it in a strange sequence of brown-outs. Read about aquamaniles instead, ewers and basins in fantastical animal shapes. More of the same at the museum today, phone guys, elevators guys, and I was constantly being asked questions, tracking ancient electrical circuits, helping to carry out the last of the artwork. TR and I cleared the main gallery by putting the few remaining pieces in the library and board room, then I patched and repaired. What with the other things going on, that took the rest of the day. I can paint tomorrow, then get out the tables and chairs so the next wedding party can set up and decorate on Friday for some goddamned event on Saturday. These fucking events are so disruptive, but I do understand we need the revenue. I mentioned to Barb today that I'd like to cook for them, the owners and staff at the pub, she thought it was a great idea. They have a convection oven and I've never used one. Roasted root vegetables, I'm thinking, would do well in there; parsnips, turnips, onions, potatoes. I think I can do six slabs of ribs in an afternoon, on my little Weber, then come in before dark, roast vegetables and cook a corn pudding. Be a good meal, you know, with bread, to sop up whatever dripped. Maybe a Key Lime pie for dessert, the one dessert I like well enough to prepare. Never had a sweet tooth. Read more...

Small Victories

I spent several hours squirrel-proofing the house, ladder work mostly, which I hate, now, this late-onset fear of heights. It's funny, the reversal, I had always been the go-to guy for high work. Sunday alone on the ridge. A hot but beautiful day, mostly clear with scudding clouds. Haul in the sheep-watering trough for my weekly bath. Heat water and mix it with the room temperature pickle water I'd brought from town. That slight sheen of vinegar actually keeps the ticks at bay. Picture me. Naked as a jay-bird in my galvanized tank. I have a solar shower bag hanging in the sun, on the deck, because I know I'll need a rinse after scrubbing off all the dead cells. Not exactly a ritual, but a habit. I read poetry this morning until noon. Emily, of course, I'm trying to get into her head, then Skip and Steven. Language. A wonderful brunch of vine-ripened tomatoes, with eggs and toast and potatoes and bacon; at one point I was holding up a piece of bacon, like a pointer, indicating some philosophical problem. I don't remember what it was. The bath itself was a luxury. Having brunch on a curly maple plank bridged across a sheep-watering trough while gesturing with a strip of bacon. Nothing if not kosher. Made a crock-pot of stone-ground grits which becomes polenta and several other things over the course of two days. Cheese grits, of course, first, with an over-easy egg on top; and for dinner some refried rounds (add a little mashed potato as binder) with a caramelized mix of fresh tomatoes, red peppers, and onion. I want to fry some balls of corn-meal mush, with some acorn meal mixed in. Appalachian Falafel. B came over with a couple of new poems, we talked about getting together for a Friday beer, he and Ronnie are playing at the pub next Thursday, I think I can listen to their first set and still get home before dark. The elevator guys start tomorrow, I'm not sure of their schedule, but it involves a crane, and trashing the back hallway and stairs. These guys all wear work-boots and there's sure to be lithium grease on everything. This is going to be a monumental pain in the ass. I can find a carpet scrap to use as a runner between the top of the back stairs and the doorway to the third floor, but the back stairs are toast. Working guys, with heavy things being lifted by cranes, don't pay a lot of attention to the shit on their shoes. Progress is a series of messes. Read more...

Early Fall

A litany of firsts. Trees giving it up for the year, the poplars already going a sickly yellow; immature acorns falling, leaves fluttering in windfall on Mackletree. My driveway puddles are completely dry for the first time in 11 years and the drying mud is a fossil record of tracks. There are springs, here and there, in the State Forest, mostly in the bottoms; all the wildlife will have to move down to them. I remember reading about Ishi, the last 'wild' Indian in North America. He knew all the trails the animals would use, moving, at a time like this. 1913, same year as the Armory Show, his adoptive family, UCLA?, wanted to go camping with him, see how he had lived in the wild. The foothills all along the west coast are an easy area to forage and the hundred-plus tribes that lived there had no reason to fight because life was easy. Ishi also ate meat, he trapped and snared, and occasional he'd get a deer, he had bow and arrow; but his method of hunting deer didn't involve them. He would sense the deer needed to move off the ridges and would be using those trails, and there were certain trees that overhung them. He'd de-scent himself, rolling in mud, then perch on a branch over the trail, sometimes stay there for 24 hours (a lot of protein, and worth the wait) simply drop on them and cut their throat. He used his bow and arrows mostly for ducks. Found that if they were feeding, he could get within twenty-five feet, which pretty much guaranteed dinner, so he'd spread something for them to feed on. Is that the Rolling Stones, "You can feed on me. Maybe it was 'bleed'. I find almost everyone else hard to understand. May just be a product of aging. Read more...

Days Off

Kicked back, reading, listening to NPR. Library calls, holding some books for me. The call of the grail. I needed water for a bath, can't harvest rainwater this time of year and there is no rain. Need to haul some water from the museum. Need some drinking water from Kroger. Need food. Very tired when I got off work yesterday, after a hectic morning cleaning up flying squirrel mess, then getting the show finished and cleaning up the gallery. Didn't do my shopping. I'm going to start doing my weekend shopping on Thursday morning, before work, so that I make sure it gets done. Most of the day in town because the AC is free, stopped at the library, and went to the tobacco store, stopped back and dumped my stuff at the museum, then went over to the pub where John joined me for a late lunch and a pint. Back at the museum, I just needed to take off my shoes and read for a couple of hours, watching cooking shows in the background. Prime entertainment for me. I jotted down a few notes, got my list together, and went to Kroger. In the remaindered meat bin there was a beautiful beef shank, two cross-sections an inch-and-a-half thick; meaty, with a huge core of marrow. $3.28. I started a fire in the grill, to roast some parsnips and baby turnips, seared the shanks, then put them on the hot-plate to simmer in chicken stock. Tossed the vegetables in olive oil, salt and pepper, some fresh thyme, put them on the Weber but off the heat. I went out and turned the vegetables, but mostly I read for two hours; then I took the shanks out of the liquid, set them aside to rest, thickened the cooking liquid into gravy. Ambrosia. really. If you were raised in an area where gravy was considered a beverage. Which I was. Something so smooth and deliberate. God it was good. Read more...

What's Missing

Passion, simply. I wonder how most people put one foot in front of the other. It's so bloody difficult. I get up to pee and the bug world is making its presence known: a drone with variations. It strikes me that most people live in a world with no passion. It's hard for me to grasp. It's what's off the path that matters. Relevance is an issue. Taking the Columbus docents through the Carters, for instance, in so many ways it doesn't matter; car bombs in Iraq, the presidential election, all that current shit that masquerades as important. Fuck a bunch of sturgeon, I don't care about caviar, I'd rather make peace with a small part of the world. It was John Hogan's birthday and I went over to the pub to buy him a shot of Irish. And John, the barkeep, just brought the bottle over, not a big deal, but something, drinking on the owner's tab. Got back to sleep, and a great crash from downstairs, goddamn squirrel again, this time a big jar of Salsa Verde on some of my cast iron cookware. Had to clean up with soap and water so I'll have to spend the weekend re-seasoning my beloved skillets and pots. I was late for work and we still had plenty to do to get the show finished and opened. I was testy when I finally got to the museum, and started right in on the punch list. Touched up the pedestals, because they always get scraped in the process of final placement. D did the lighting, with some pointers from Sara (the three of us have way too much fun working, which makes it possible) and I start hanging the five wall pieces in a cluster on the main wall. These are a little heavy, maybe twenty pounds each (I need to get a scale for the museum), maybe more, and need some serious consideration. There is, in the world, an almost infinite variety of hardware, and I find, in our collection, five "J" hooks that attach to the wall with two plastic anchors each. This is as stout as you can get without bridging between studs. The pieces probably started out the same size, 12x15, but they vary in their glazing, and their size has changed in firing, so they're not the same size now. I decide to just take a common line through them and hang them at 63 inches, 18 inches apart and see what it looks like. It looks great. The "J's", in one fabrication, are open enough to allow connection (it's just a slot) if you rotate the piece through 90 degrees. The sound of ceramic on metal is awful. I had done the lay-out for all five pieces, on the wall, but I couldn't stand the sound of grinding, I told D I was going to do the labels, and he should finish them, the math was done; he just asked me what the referent point represented, I told him the center of the top of the bottom of the J, and he knew exactly what I meant. He finishes those, I made the labels, we cleaned out the gallery. Looks like a show. Read more...

Flying Squirrel

Hell of a commotion, four in the morning, I'm thinking home invasion, slip out of bed and get my golf club (a wedge). Figure I know every inch of this house and it's dark, gives me an advantage, but something is wrong, it's too dark, a home invader would need to see. Has to be a critter, so I start turning on lights, then go sit at my desk and roll a cigaret. Eventually, I see it, a flying squirrel, licking a skillet on the cookstove; fucker, do they carry rabies? I can't shoot it, so I look around for a good book to throw at it, decide on John Le Carre, "The Looking Glass War", a nice compact hardbound. My first shot is a little off, and I knock over a basket of hard and soft balls (they're actually labeled (Found Balls), so I fall back to regroup and consider my situation. Discover I can herd it, sort of, with a broom stick; so I prop open the back door, and try to get it moving counter-clockwise around the downstairs. An hour later I get it to dart outside and slam the door shut. The problem, of course, is that it got in. I'll look later, but I think I know where, a soffit problem that I hadn't addressed. Comes back to bite you in the ass. Temporary fixes are the bane of existence; but out on the edge, temporary is sometimes enough. I can fix the problem later, I just need to get through to tomorrow. Wanted to go back to bed, but too awake to risk that at five thirty, so I clean up the broken jar of peach salsa and the broken bowl I'd bought at the yearly sale from the pottery studio at the University. They're really cute, these flying squirrels, they have an amazing face, but they're very destructive if they get inside. D needed my help, and we spent most of the morning working on one piece that was extremely difficult to figure out. Five pieces in the piece, but they weren't numbered, and the only picture we had was a thumbnail. They didn't fit together all that well, they weren't supposed to. It's a nice piece, wormy anthropomorphic thing, but we needed just a little more direction. I don't often say that. What she was saying is that part of the piece is the way in which you install it. I'm up for that, but I also have other things to do, and don't want to spend too much time working on someone else's piece. D and I can usually figure this out in a heartbeat, bearing and load, but this one had us scratching our heads. There are a plethora of solutions. Read more...

Creative Juices

Started the day in pure janitor mode, muttering under my breath about what slobs people were; wondering how shit could get on the side of the toilet, how chewing-gum could get in the urinal, why people would grind grapes into the grout joints. If you drop a grape in your house, you pick it up. Either your mother or the memory of your mother's voice tells you to. Did some light mopping. When Sara came in, she said she wanted to talk about the Carter Collection. I had seen this coming, because a great many Carter's are in the next main show, which is delayed because of the elevator work, but, point is, the entire Carter permanent collection will have to re-hung. After lunch, we brought Sara back a salad from the pub, so technically during her lunch, we stared talking about it. D was conducting this particular brain-storming session, wielding a ruler; he has this 'bubble' procedure he learned in grad school, what connects what to what, like a pattern of Venn Diagrams, and we were talking about the way things connected. We were all brain dead by four o'clock. A great afternoon. We were actually talking about art, and the museum, like it mattered. I'd missed Sara for this very reason. Everyone loses track of the fact that this is a museum. I want to bang them on their heads. D, Sara and I have a great afternoon; Pegi joins us, quickly grasps what's going on. There are four mini galleries in the Carter space and how they might be organized in a different thematic way. There's a clear sense we've only just started this conversation (you understand my capacity to be distracted), and I'm excited. Some things I'd wanted to mention might come into play. Close to my chest. Read more...

Changeover

Fierce battle at the compost heap. Sounds like two dogs and ether a coon or a possum. I throw rocks into the darkness. A war against the unknown. Great scene when I drove up the driveway this afternoon. There was just a little water in the mud puddles at the top. Most of the animals move off the ridgetop in the summer because there is no water; but everyone drinks at my watering holes, another reason to fill the damned things. They're between where I park and the house. A flock of turkeys. They're awkward and nervous. I stopped as soon as I saw them because they're such a hoot to watch. TR and I were at the museum most of day, the electricians prepping for the new elevator, but there was left-over quiche from the music event yesterday, and I do love quiche. Patched and repaired the upstairs galleries. Tuesday, all three of us on this and it's quickly apparent we'll be fine for opening the show on Friday. TR and I set up three tables downstairs, took the bonnets off the 3 D pieces, and put the pieces on blankets on the tables, so the owners can reclaim them. We need the pedestals upstairs. D was unwrapping the next show. We brought the pedestals up, took the art work downstairs. Artists drifting through all day, some of them, you talk to; some of them, you don't. TR and D started putting pieces on pedestals and moving them around. I painted the walls, listening, not saying much.The ceramic work is larger and heavier than expected. It's wonderful. Leans in two directions: a kind of architectonic, industrial thing; and the other is a kind of sensual drift into rounded fossils. It's beautiful work, strange and intriguing. I love handling these things. Fact remains, though, that I'm in a funk, my body is failing me, I can't do the things I used to do. I hold on to the railings now. B and I were talking the other night about getting our papers in order. "The Janitor's Papers". TR and I at lunch, ESPN on the big screen, no sound, Celtic music in the background, and there's a commercial that offers 250 business cards for 10 bucks. TR says, just as I was thinking it, that I should get 250 cards and we were trying to figure out exactly what the card would say. "Janitor" for sure, some provenance for that, an email address, and at the bottom, "Mopping". This is a work in progress. It would actually be nice to have a card, because I get tired of explaining myself. One of our volunteers was touring a couple through the museum today, they were from Telluride and I said I'd built a couple of houses there, and they were dumbfounded. No telling what you might find in a backwater. I don't think they believed me. Getting my papers together is a tall order. Read more...

Running Scenarios

Running scenarios through my head, with a pile of books next to me on the sofa, big stack of bear information, a sun-shower in the late afternoon, the sure knowledge that a large predator is watching my flank, eating vine-ripened tomato sandwiches with bacon. Come on, I mean really. Any chance to make the house smell like bacon is a welcome opportunity and I was out of bacon grease, which hampers my cooking ability. Bacon perfume would be the greatest thing since sliced white bread. Read Emily for hours while imagining Linda on stage with TR's music, finally had to call her, to talk about movement and props; does she, for instance, engage the audience, or look through them? I needed to move, so I put some "Skin So Soft" on my cuffs, walked down the driveway and back, must have stopped a dozen times, looking at things. I carry a very good magnifying glass with me when I walk, in a very sexy leather pouch that I wear as an accessory in the woods. I designed and sewed it myself. It's unique, probably, in the tri-state area. Looking at things closely is always instructive. The bottle neck for me, right now, are the puddles at the top of the driveway. The plan for the fall is to get some serious fill and grade it out by hand, then bring in firewood right to the back of the woodshed. I can't believe what a slacker I've become. The local rental place say they have a sickle bar cutter that will handle most of my brush, get that for a weekend, rake it down wind, broadcast some rye seed and get the perimeter green. I know how to do all this, but the last couple of years I just want to read and write, so I've let the world grow up around me. Pure blues line. Look at the watercolors of John Steuart Curry and John Rogers Cox. One of our next subjects is going to be 'Iowa Painters And Their Landscape', there's a rolling sensuality we could talk about. Read more...

Contructs

I'm staff tomorrow (later today, to be more accurate) so I can start uninstalling 'Cream Of The Crop'. A vague schedule for the next few weeks lodged in my calendar. TR and I aiming to get ahead. We need to strip the upstairs, patch and repair, paint, and install a ceramic show by next Friday. The electrician comes on Monday, to do his prep work for the elevator re-build. There's a concert in the main gallery Sunday, food and drink, and then that space gets stripped on Tuesday. Patch and repair that, the equivalent of ten living room walls. The elevator guys have six weeks to work their magic and they're based in Cincy, so they're going to be working four tens. I'll be spending a great many extra hours at the museum. Just realized that TR doesn't have to come in on Monday because I can handle what needs to be done, and he has to work Sunday. Excellent drive in today, all the way down Upper Twin which is beautiful any time of year, only marred by the three or four homesteads where everything the people ever owned is in their yard. Onto several generations. Set up for the musical event, then started uninstalling the upstairs. TR said he'd be there anyway, because of his first classes at the university. The museum is a great place to hole up; get your thoughts together. Stopped twice on the way home, once to watch a flock of turkeys, they were working the edge of a corn field and their order was complete disorder. Then, when I turned onto Axletree, across the lake, at the swimming beach, there was a string of geese, right at the edge of the water, looking very much like a line of riot guards. Geese can be intimidating. They now control the beach. "The Art Of War." The theme for the rest of the weekend, is breakfast. I had a world class tomato sandwich, with bacon, an egg, and several layers of condiments. Linda got it correctly, "going dream about a lemon-aid lady, gonna eat a little jellyroll pie". Miss Toast and Marmalade Lady. I have to laugh. Communication is a game of table-tennis. Read more...

Rain Delay

D had insisted that I take a day off, B came over last night and he was going to Athens today, I thought I'd string along, a road trip, but it was raining and I was running late when I awoke for the second time, having gotten up, to the sound of rain, and written for a couple of hours, then gone back to sleep. I had some things I'd wanted to research, and called everything off, decided to just stay at home. Pegi and I had a great conversation about sexual orientation yesterday, she deals with so many kids in the Cirque program. With over 200 kids, there's always a crisis. I needed a day off, haven't been reading enough and B had brought over a pile of London Reviews. On average, I read for 28 hours a week, and usually 8 of those are in one day. A full day of reading is my round of golf. That's what I did, read book reviews and essays. Grazed the food that had accumulated over the last few days, leftovers from a luncheon/discussion at the pub concerning art outreach and various programs. The pub serves good-sized portions, and I had a little bit of everything. There is, of course, a grazing procedure. Simply: you eat the stuff in the order in which it spoils. Someone had gotten my email address (I'm not discreet) and sent me a nice note about how I was a part of her 'routine'. It's kind of sexy. I know from where I speak, I'm a creature of habit myself, which involves getting distracted. She puts on a pot of coffee, feeds the cat (Horace); a piece of toast in the toaster oven, prints out my post. Peanut butter and a nice marmalade, and she reads me twice, some times three thrice, from her left hand. She had some questions about procedure. It was a beautifully written paragraph, I'd have to look twice to realize I hadn't written it. Attention to detail, syntax. Consider the way any specific event might be remembered. Which side you were on. The nature of things change. Look before you leap. Read more...

Bear Facts

I had forgotten. For a period of time; in Colorado, there was a bear in our canyon. Some couple (I forget their name) had bought the last 40 acre piece in Spring Creek before it became public land. There was an artesian well on the property. They, as did I, burned their garbage, they had old apple trees beyond where they had built. They installed the garbage burning station at our south boundary; wilderness area forever beyond them. In the fall, a bear started visiting, I stayed home and served as goatherd, with a .306 leaning in the corner. The south wall was a green- house, across the front were 55 gallon drums, filled with water that stored a lot of BTU's. You'd have to add thirty to the five, and then I'd have to say I'd had more wild bear sightings than most people. Unlike most other carnivorans, bears are plantigrade, they distribute their weight toward the hind feet, but they're still quite fast, 30 mpg. Their claws are not retractable. Overwhelmingly solitary. Liaisons are brief. A male will occasionally eat a sow's cub to bring her back into estrus. They are behaviorally unpredictable (thus wild). I've eaten bear several times and it's quite strong but to my taste, like antelope; the fat is very rich. I never hunted them, but I was once given enough bear fat to fry potatoes for a month. They were delicious, dipped in a garlic mayonnaise. The Irish family name, McMahon means Son of Bear. B's nephew is nick-named 'Bear' because he is as strong as one. They feature in heraldry. The name Beowulf seems to mean "bee-wolf", a kenning for 'bear". I drown myself in facts, even before Gore gave us the Internet,now I just get a cup of coffee and type in some key words. Becomes an ongoing narrative, answers become starting points for the next series of questions. I'd better go, there's a squall line moving though. Read more...

Blues Night

"Broke Down Palace" rocks my soul. Concrete cures an aging church. I do love the blues. The birds making music being as gruff as a murder of crows. Blood as wine. Dicky Betts extends the argument. Greg Allman. Almost always in the key of G. TR said it wasn't unusual for someone to prefer a particular key. Jackson Brown. A pitch perfect. I had a couple of drinks with him, at a nice intimate venue in Colorado. He was taking a show into Denver with a new leading act. I had met the opening act at breakfast, the only act in town. Sisters, who really dug the fact that I just went on the road, with a satisfied mind, when we were on our mandated time together, the girls and me. You got to go behind the mule, in the morning, and plow. I think it was Rhea, when we were leaving the diner the next morning, spoke to them, and we set down, in a large red corner booth, had another cup of coffee, discussing families. When we were leaving they asked us to come to their opening in Denver, the following week-end. I wouldn't have my girls then, but I agreed to call them. It was great, ended up in a luxury suite with a hot-tub, in Denver, with two naked ladies, and Jackson Brown singing in the background It doesn't get much better than that. Some things aren't predictable. Rained hard yesterday afternoon and I couldn't go home straight away. With my visual aids (amount of standing water in certain specific locations) I knew, and D was delighted to stay in town for an extra hour, have a beer at the pub let the roads dry out; D decided he'd stay with me, and have a schooner. Walked back over to the museum, I'd left my stuff inside, D drove off. Still had time (don't like to drive after dark, and things were not really acceptable, in terms of getting back up the driveway) but still had a couple of hours I could burn, and it had come to me, ever slow, that in this new era, that I could look up bears online. Bear bibliography. Walked over to Kroger, got a bottle of whiskey and some sushi, settled into a alpha state. It's very difficult to be clear. I found out, today, the highest temperature ever created, that god particle thing in Switzerland, that generated 9.9 trillion degrees. How do you contain something as hot as that? Bears are solitary, they have maybe the greatest sense of smell of anything that stands on two legs, better, it seems, than even the best 'sniffer' dogs. They can detect things from miles away, like hawks and their vision, like the infer-red videos sold as a kind of modern pornography. And I'm firmly in the camp of not believing. Everything is a failed attempt. I'm not even upset by failed attempts to question what's going on. Fuck, shit, I can justify anything. The nature of things. Read more...

Diagnostic Criteria

The Task Force On Nomenclature And Statistics. Ankles don't seem to be that bad a fetish, maybe an atypical affective disorder, but nothing to medicate about. Sucking toes might be considered a more serious infringement, but if both parties agree I don't see that there's any damage done; no harm, no foul. That most people don't do a particular thing doesn't mean it's evil. For instance I've composted my shit for decades, saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of potable water, and water is in short supply. Had to make the extra trip to town: library, laundromat, liquor I wanted sushi for dinner, and I wanted a steak (and a baked potato) for tomorrow night. Also my tee-shirts were getting ratty and the elastic failing in my boxer briefs. I remembered that I had a Wal-Mart gift card in my wallet, it's been there for 18 months, from when I spent most of a day with college students, taking them thru the Carter collection. It was a marathon. A couple of days later, the professor left an envelope at the desk. It was a large card, signed by all the students, with little notes, two marriage proposals, and the prepaid card. No amount on the card, and I never go to Wal-Mart; I'd never been in the new Super Store and it's been open for four years, but I needed underwear and I had a card, and it could only be spent there. Structure. The laundromat is in the same direction, so I did my laundry, and headed out that way. I also had a Visa Debit Card, that the docents from Columbus had given me. I got my sushi, steak and potato, almost $60 worth of stuff, for free, and still had some credit, which was almost the cost of ordering a book on bears from Ebay. On a roll, I stopped at the Bridge Street take-out and bought a two dollar lottery ticket and won $50. Ending up with $48 dollars after spending more money than I rarely do in a single day. Got home and the power was out, but had a complete set of two library books, and enough lamp-oil to get through the night. With the extra $48 I aim to bud . A quart of lamp-oil, a dozen utility candles (great 1 inch diameter candles that burn for a very long time with no waste), and a a backup bottle of whiskey. You should always be able to see and have a back-up bottle of booze; either that, or; live above a liquor store with a family owned grocery around the block. We vary, as to our constitution, toward one thing or another. I assume nothing makes any sense. My sense of things. Read more...

Thunder Storms

The nature of things. What actually happened. Two people, standing just a few feet apart, might see any given event differently. Point of view. People in Portsmouth, for instance, consider a red light to be green, at least for a few seconds, which leads to a lot of accidents, especially if you're in the lane where the light turned green and you're thinking about something else, your personal failures or the way that might affect your daughters, or why you behaved the way you did. Distraction, merely, simply assuming that signals govern the flow of traffic. In Portsmouth you wait the extra beat or you chance getting T-boned because everyone runs red lights. Hard rain, but the thunder is north by a good margin. Some lightning, but it's separated from the thunder by several miles, disembodied. The rain, the sound of the rain, is a soothing background noise, played on an insulated steel roof. What I meant was that your reality was not exactly the same as mine. I judge thunder according to how badly it shakes the house. Anything in the key of G. I can't lie, exactly, but I can extend the truth. Arrogant bastard, thinking that I could. I have to reconsider who I think I am. Half a day going over the logistics for the next couple of months, I have an enormous amount of painting to do, but the main gallery is going to be shut down, dark, as we say, for six weeks while they (American Elevator) install the new system. I'm looking forward to this, I've never watched an elevator being installed. Modern Marvels. Which is a great TV show that D turned me on to, where the impossible just takes a little longer. Logging in Louisiana swamps, or casting the largest propeller in the history of the universe, or grinding the lens for a very large telescope. Creative Non-Fiction. Another squall line. I'd better go. Read more...

Resident Bear

I can't imagine not composting, for thirty years I've turned even my personal waste into soil. Becomes a habit. In the fall I recycle bags of leaves I pick up from the curbs in town. Force of habit. I don't turn these piles, I just build them and let them ferment. Human excrement, stove ash, and vegetable matter, let it cook for a couple of years, and the nitrogen, especially, builds to very high levels. The first year you plant in it, you just plant tomatoes, they love hot soil. But the very idea of having a resident bear is intimidating. I've been avoiding relationships for the last ten or twelve years, a brief fling with a fox, but mostly I cling to solitude. I don't want to feel that I have to explain myself, but here's a bear, a young male, looking to establish a territory. I don't want to have him as a regular at my compost pile. TR, D and I played with doll heads most of the day, carefully packing them in foam-lined archival boxes. I might have to buy some kind of tennis shoe or cross-trainer, something cushioned and wide, my feet were killing me at the end of the day. I haven't had a pair of them for forty years, but I have several broken toes now, that I let heal in whatever configuration they found themselves. I understand it's kosher, to end sentences with prepositions. I try not to, but sometimes the circumlocutions are so awkward they embarrass me. If you can think something you should be able to write it. I occasionally play with the concept, pick a mundane chore and describe it in great detail. Mopping, for instance, or returning books to a shelf. Keep it simple: that last storm front missed me to the south; I'm eating another cheese and tomato sandwich, with bacon bits; I can't believe, lying like I do, for the sake of irony, that anyone would believe me. Read more...

Critters

Some kind of a ruckus at the compost heap, after four in the morning, and I don't recognize the voices. Sleeping on the foam pad, down-pallet on the floor, windows open and the AC off, the forest bugs droning a dirge in the key of G. Hillbilly blues. But the voices are unfamiliar. I pull on some jeans and my house-slippers, which are very ratty moccasins that were once lined with a synthetic fur (I love them, they have a doubled leather bottom that prevents the penetration of almost anything) and grab my CSI LED flashlight, a gift from our light-bulb salesman, Andy, who plays a mean guitar, and head out the back door. It's a small black bear and a bobcat, fighting over the chicken bones and vegetables I'd used to make a stock. I hadn't seen a bear, one on one, for a very long time (1995) and only one other time (1985) had I ever seen a bobcat in the wild. My light bothered them, so I switched it off and retreated inside. I just wanted to know what it was, making the noise. I've had four close encounters with black bears, which might be above average, or about average, I don't know, I only know the bears I've seen. One in a dumpster in south Alabama, one eating berries outside of Telluride, one in that state forest in central Florida, and this last one, defending his turf, above the flood plain of the Ohio. I knew this bear was around, somewhere to the west. On my morel hunts I'd seen several rotted stumps that looked like they had exploded. When they're rotten enough, a bear will take them apart, looking for bugs and grub worms. Pretty definitive, when you factor in the paw prints. Also, I know the Naturalist for the state forest and she said that there was a 'nature cam' somewhere between me and the end of my country lane, maybe four miles, and it had recorded a bear. I'll be needing a book about bears, odd that I don't have one. Friends know that I feast on books about the natural history of anything, so they send them to me; these are, for the most part, from library book sales: Carma sent me, via D to save on postage, five at one time last year. But never a book on bears. Thinking about driving out my country lane to the west, I almost never drive that four miles of chip-and-seal, once or twice a year at the most, beautiful country, but all my business is in the other direction, and West Union is a dry town. Imagine that, in this day and age. The central hub in West Union, is the dairy store, which makes sense, fat people eating ice cream. I've taken to these incredible toasted vine-ripened tomato and mozzarella sandwiches in the morning, one of the best sandwiches ever, especially if you have the time to fry a few strips of bacon. Just saying. Read more...

Between the Lines

What's not said. A litany of things. I'm a middle child, for instance, and I don't know how that affects me. I assume some things, that I might not be as secure as either a first or last child. I probably over-think any given thing. It's certainly true that I dwell in the moment. I fully believe people should be taught how to laugh, as there are few things worse than working with someone who has a high-pitched and cackling laugh. And they should be taught to walk. Dancers walk well. When I see someone walking nicely I usually ask them if they danced in college, they often look at me strangely, how did I know, and I tell them they walk like a dancer. I've only been wrong once or twice in the past decade. There's an Asian woman, Thai I think, that has a massage therapy storefront a few doors down from the museum; quite beautiful, tall and reed-thin, lovely ankles, and she walks like an angel. These are things that can be changed. I got into theater in the first place because I had a horrid southern accent (there are lovely southern accents too) and Speech class was also Drama class, the last two years of high school, an elective. I left there sounding vaguely mid-western; the southern returns, when I visit someone in the south, but otherwise I sound like I was raised in Des Moines. I spent the night in Des Moines, one time, we all sounded alike and I could understand every word. There's something for that, simply being understood. Regionalism comes into play, colloquialisms more than diction: what you call cornbread and what it's cooked in. I spend an hour reading the several pages of entry about 'corn' in the Dictionary Of Americanisms, a two volume set Howard sent me when the Bowling Green library was weeding the stacks. Why they weeded this out escapes me completely, I never fail to spend an hour looking up even the simplest word. Ronnie gave me some extra tomatoes at the farmer's market this morning, told me to eat them first, and they were luscious. I poached an egg, to go on top of the second one, with some shavings of ptarmigan cheese. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten. Read more...

Powerless

It's been a record spring and summer for losing either power or the phone. Sometimes I just turn around and go back to town. Spending Sunday alone at the museum, where, at least, it's both quiet and cool. There's a big museum catalog with much text, from a show that was at the Columbus museum in 2000, "Illusions Of Eden, Visions Of The American Heartland" and I spent the day reading and looking at pictures. I did watch Julia and Jacques make sausage and pate (again), and another show, "American Pickers" where two guys buy junk for resale. There's some pretty good microwaveable frozen food, and I ate well, walked over to Kroger in the morning and got supplies for the day. I'd avoided the "Janitor College" book for a few days, I had the time and a high-speed internet connection, so I read myself for a while, looking for patterns, and made a page of notes about the ordering. Attention to detail. Not so much telling a story. It's all in the cove or ogee, the way detail is revealed. A large crown molding might say something, but it would probably be purely personal. Came back out to the house early this morning and all my services were restored. It's so nice to be back on the ridge, with services, that I celebrate with an old vines Zin and a mushroom omelet. No loss of sleep, though my hours have become odd. I write when I have electricity and send when I have a phone. It's a stupid system, but the best I can do, under the circumstances. A great title, I think, "Under The Circumstances", which might be what I'd call the Janitor College book. I love the page, a few years ago, in which I talked about Janus, the two-headed god that defends doorways, and I think that could be the opening of the book, custodial considerations. Then you actually study the work, one does, does the research, and becomes a docent. Glenn mentioned that connection in an email, and I printed it and push-pinned it on the wall. He was correct, he's nearly always correct, and he always brings a new single-malt, so I post that email on the wall, in a place where I'll see it and read it several times a day. I need to be reminded, takes a sledge-hammer for that. I'm remarkably inept when it comes to the real world. Nothing is what it seems. Enough rain, the last couple of days, that the fire danger has receded; leaf mat saturated and the young green plants providing an impenetrable barrier, and the ticks are so bad that only a fool would walk in the woods. So I don't expect to be surprised by any visitors, though I do keep a barely legal sawed-off shot-gun in a concealed but accessible place near the back door. Being robbed three times in twelve years seems to be a pattern, and if I'm ever here, when someone violates my space, I would shoot them in a heartbeat. When the poor rob the rich there's a certain justification, but when the poor rob the poor the system has failed. I could move somewhere else, but there are too many books, and I don't want to build another house. I'm tired, and this a perfectly good house, with a roof and everything. I screwed down enameled steel, this time around, so that I wouldn't ever have to deal with a roof again. Preparing for the endgame. Say what you want, I'm usually in over my head, anyone I went to Janitor College with is at risk, dropping like flies. No reason to panic. What you need is to clear the playing field. I don't argue, as a rule, because it's a waste of time, though I might disagree with your position, and you would certainly disagree with mine. Never nothing. Even a truck-stop in Kansas might reveal something: a storm front that looks like a mountain, tornadoes waiting to happen, dust devils swirling between buildings. The North Platt has dried to a trickle, particular birds are pissed, it's their flyway after all, and now there is no water. Increasingly, this is what we see. Everyone hanging on by a thread. Read more...

Storms

Big storm yesterday afternoon, but it dried out enough that I could get home; and, of course, the power was out. Came in this morning before the next line of storms moved in. Stopped at the traffic light where I go over the Second Street bridge, where it goes over the Scioto. It can be a long light, but I never mind, gives me a chance to roll a smoke. Looking over at the embankment, I noticed a plant I hadn't seen in a long time and I had forgotten its name. I've learned to stop thinking, at moments like that, and the word came to me, Teasel, with those very hard and spiky seed pods that were actually used once to card wool. I was Saturday Staff at the museum, TR at the desk. Read some interesting essays in another book about mid-western watercolors. Looked up Lichtenberg Figures, which are the fractal patterns that occasionally result when lightening strikes certain surfaces, like human beings. Thought about that for a while. Looked at some images of some work Maya Lin did, I think in the nineties. Stained the cracks in broken sheets of glass. They look like, as she calls them, Geography Lessons. I was sucked right into them, because I look at maps a lot. Contour maps, geodetic survey maps, maps drawn on the back of envelopes. Imagined maps that might lead to the promised land. Didn't want to go any further down that path. I searched the food network and found a show, Julia and Jacques, doing a "Cooking At Home" show that featured sausage and country pate. Charcuterie. How could I not watch that? Read more...

Running Power

The problem was that several of the areas in which elevator upgrades needed to be accomplished were in dark corners of the basement. In most cases the areas in question had no electricity, so we had to find a 'chase' through which we could snake power cords. Good bit of detective work. The museum is physically a very confusing building. It's difficult to figure what exactly is above you, where you stand on the second floor. My ability to visualize something is quite strong, so this is a nagging failure for me, but nobody else can figure it out either. We nose around in the basement for an hour, discussing the various problems and probable solutions. This is a cool thing to do, D and I do it very well. We got light to three different places, that we'd never actually seen before except in the beam of a flashlight. Some very old candy wrappers. An old brick with a brown stain and section of brick-wall that had clearly been an in-filled doorway. The opening doesn't appear on the other side of that wall, but it's a thick wall; two walls, actually, with a space between, one of them was probably part of the foundation of the building that had been on that site previous to the bank, before it was a museum. History, and the occasional skeleton bricked into the wall. What is it about the French that they appreciate Poe and Jules Verne. I knew the house was going to be hot when I got home, so I stopped at the pub for a pint, figuring to fortify myself, and, of course, the conversation. Astra is back, she isn't being deported, which is good news, we can continue to make Asian jokes. Extremely hot when I got home, 88 degrees inside and it was almost nine o'clock before I could turn on Black Dell. The weather cramps my style. I don't know when I became such a whimp. At the mercy of whatever whim. Now, I figure, if I can back out the driveway, I can get on with my day. The driveway is problematic. There's a clearance problem. Intrusive blackberry canes. I bleed, thus. Fuck a bunch of thorns. Read more...

Later Thoughts

Fuck a bunch of Johnson grass, wild asparagus, anything that waves in the wind. If you look closely, there are these miniature orchids, what they mean. My attention. I'd rather look closely than not look at all. Consider death and dying. The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star", or Edgar Meyer transposing the cello suites. Even The Allman Brothers, "Sweet Melissa", is a lament if you listen closely. Boz Skaggs, his first or second album, with Duane playing lead guitar, is heart-breaking. Brother can you spare a dime. I'm not without resources. I bleed, therefore, not unlike other critters that bleed, if pricked, a blackberry cane in passing, green briar, whatever stands betwen me and home, I might leak a few fluids, but nothing serious. I get to the museum early, to explain to Pegi why I wasn't there yesterday. D showed up in the rental van loaded down with ceramic work for the next show upstairs, had to get it now, weeks early, because she's (the lady potter) going to Canada for the rest of the summer. D thought she was hot. Unloaded the large tupper- wear 'totes', which have become the shipping container of choice for potters, into the downstairs hallway, put the rear seats back in the van. D returned it, I retreated to my office. A lot of other people in and out. Read some of Mary's letters, thought about Emily. I wonder what Linda thinks about the 'tells' that will make the character more real. They'll also indicate movement. Have to get this thing out on stage. I've got some ideas. After lunch, when TR is done with his Camp Group, we form a work chain: D downstairs, loading the elevator, me upstairs, unloading the elevator, TR carrying the totes into the vault. We'd straightened things in the vault, so that we could line them up down the middle, and still have access mostly. We don't really have storage space for even a relatively small show like the Stephanie Craig. Usually an incoming or outgoing show is just pushed to the center of a gallery (so I can access the walls) while it awaits either shipping or installation. It occurs to me that you could shingle a roof with old license plates. It would take a lot of them, but there are a lot of them. If you started collecting them when you were a kid, and people gave them to you, when they knew you had started your collection, by the time you got married and built a house, you'd have plenty of them. License plates hold up very well, with any luck, they could be your only roof. Took a nap and woke up thinking about license plates, go figure. Then a complete sidebar, into care for the aging, myself included, a phone call I didn't want to field. Late supper of things I can eat on a cracker. It's not that I'm anorexic, but I don't eat enough. A list of ways to die. I'd been working on this for a long time. You notice, time to time, someone dies an odd way, drowned in beer or buried in molasses, and you make a note. There was a nice list on Mandatory yesterday or the day before, about weird ways people had died. My way is equally good. Just saying. Explicate whatever. Read more...