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.