Using Bembo

Typefaces are personalities. I like reading a 42 line page, the first bible that Gutenberg printed; in an old-style type by candle-light. Meaning is enhanced by presentation. Great books and certain strippers I've known have a way of making a particular moment special. Not unlike watching a gang of turkeys work their way through the underbrush, or the way light plays with reality. I'm just an aging hippy, and I make no claim, but there are patterns in the way people behave. Mostly I watch their eyes. Deceit is always evident in the eyes. Green eyes I find particularly problematic. Counter-intuitive. Certain traits we could do without. Neil Young, any number of songs later, the sun comes up. I wanted to sleep in, but I'm spent, not sleepy, so I get up, make coffee and a large breakfast. Retreat to the sofa and read a Thomas Perry novel. Recharge my batteries. I have a battered music stand I got out of a dumpster at the College, an older one, when they were heavier and had a bigger lip at the bottom, and I use it as a portable dictionary stand, so I can keep an unabridged dictionary, currently, on that stand, is the Random House Second, which fits the stand perfectly, close at hand. I have a reading lamp, at the end of the sofa, which serves my reading purposes, but when I lean out of the light, to consult the dictionary, which I do a lot, I'm often in the dark, so I wear a LED headlamp at night or when it's overcast. There are four dictionaries opened right now, at the various stations. The Random House, a Webster's on the sofa (I had retreated to my writing chair), Barry Lopez's great "Home Ground", a dictionary of the earth under your feet, on a pile of manuscripts on the side of my desk, and the fourth is a slang dictionary, over at the island. I know where everything is, and I have a head-lamp. I still don't know how to make sense of anything (that's not a complaint, by the way, just a comment) and spend a huge amount of time staring off into space. Sundays I seldom do anything other than read. Late afternoon I treated myself to an Angus porterhouse and a baked potato, with an old vines Zinfandel that was large enough to engulf planets. A Ridge, York Creek, 2004, I found in Columbus, a BIG complex wine with notes of asphalt and fruit. I love porterhouse steaks, for that medallion of rib-eye, and they were on sale, which is confusing, when the corn crop has failed. I put the potato, wrapped in foil, right in the coals of the firebox and grill the steak for four minutes a side on a very hot grate. The potato with just butter and sour cream, kosher salt and maybe twenty grinds of black pepper; the steak I have with a raspberry/chipotle salsa that is stunning. I didn't keep track of how I made the salsa, it involved fresh tomatoes, late season raspberries and water-cress. I remember throwing in some dried cranberries at the end, to soak up the liquid. Cranberries are good with any red meat. I didn't seed the peppers. A meal fit for, you know, a king, which I merely keep in stride. That's arrogant, Howard is 80, he still herds wild turtles. Read more...

Slight Variations

I wanted to go into town through the fog along the river road, so I drove the long way around. On the seven-and-a-half miles on Upper Twin I didn't pass a single person. Hemlock trees in the Wilderness Area (where they don't cut or remove anything) were luminous in the slanted morning light. The dappled effect was so strong I had to put on sunglasses. There's a guy that raises fighting cocks on the creek, and a couple of them were in the road. Very beautiful birds. They looked at the truck aggressively and I shot them a bird and moved on. Had to wear a sweatshirt this morning, for the first time this season. Working the extra day because we needed to get a couple of pictures in frames. D had built the frames but a fairly large one hadn't been painted and I wanted to get that done. Used an excellent stain-blocker primer, after some filling with painter's chalk, then two coats of Cubist Gray. A difficult frame to paint because it had six 'reveals' (steps, with little sides and surfaces) and it's easy to leave what we always called in theater, 'Fatty Edges', (a void, where you missed a place, was called a 'Holiday'). Trade jargon is cool. Lunch, because we'd had the enormous Saturday morning breakfast burrito, was just a bowl of chili, with crackers, at the pub. And then we were right back at it, doing stuff that needed to be done. I finished what I felt I needed to accomplish, considering it was a day off; left at four o'clock, still had to stop at Kroger and get a few things, but, on my way home. There's a repetition to life, you make a pot of coffee, you shave, you look around for something to eat. The normal course of events. Harvey once told me, we were walking down around crow pasture, where Quivet Creek cuts through the marsh, he turned to me and said he couldn't do this, where anything was expected of him, that what he wanted was complete liberty. After a mere twenty years I understand what he meant. Now I just read body language and respond accordingly. Life, as we know it. Read more...

Dew Point

The point at which dew condenses. I'm more aware of this than most, because of the roof-line of my house. There's what builders call an 'eyebrow' overhang where the upper roof overhangs the lower roof and water drips there. I hear it as a staccato beat, which usually blends into the background white-noise of wind in the trees. I don't know what controls the size of drops of water, but they vary, and this morning they're large, and land with a thud. Different enough to wake me, almost a pattern, Miles Davis, "Kind Of Blue", or a Wes Montgomery extended jam from the early 70's, I forgo. They cxan;'tt the title, that rolled on forever. Started a fire in the cookstove and heated some water, my supper dishes were in the sink (a lovely open-face sandwich of vine-ripened tomato on toast with provolone and a fried egg) and I needed to wash them, and shave. Left home before the rain started so got to work early, let the elevator guys (Kevin and Patrick) in, then went and got Pegi and me a scone, made a pot of coffee, then opened the vault to get out the last of the Carters. TR carried all the smaller pieces downstairs while I was at lunch. The guys have manual control of the elevator (it's a counterweight system, and they're just hot-wired into the cable motor, with an up/down clicker) and made a couple of trips for us, to bring down four of the heavier pieces. Pegi helped me with those, TR had to go move the last of Meaghan's stuff into his house. Great to have Sara back, we had a couple of smoke breaks on the loading dock and talked about Carter. He's an obsession for me right now, and there are Carter files that haven't even been looked at. And what the hell does control the size of a drop of water? Living just in my head, so much of the time, has changed the way I look at the world. I need a few things at Kroger, and I get one of those arm-basket things, to get, what is the short list, whiskey and an avocado, but I have to walk a horizontal aisle, to get where I need to go, this fucking store is huge, and there's something I stop to read, a list of ingredients, and this lady behind me jams her cart into my ass. I'm a mild-tempered guy, but there are few excuses for jamming someone in the ass with a shopping cart. And I sprained an ankle. Did I mention that? Goddamned. Stupid woman said I was the problem, I had stopped, which is certainly true, there were some late fall flowers, or something I stopped to read, I had the right to stop. Read more...

Bug Drone

This time of year, the cold air rolls right off the ridge-tops and down into the bottoms. When I get on Mackletree tomorrow, all the roof-tops will be heavily frosted, but it's 42 degrees up here and the bugs are celebrating with a fall cacophony that could raise the dead. I'll miss the first six or eight frosts. Walking down the logging road with a pair of clippers, to clear a winter path, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. The yellow timber rattler is back, her winter den is about 100 yards north of my back steps and that seems acceptable. I don't go over there much and when I do I carry a walking stick, forever poking at things, so she doesn't pose much of a the art Knowing there's a bear around, I tend to make more noise, and snakes are sensitive to vibration. Bears don't see well. So I'm making more noise than I normally would, I usually move around soundlessly in the woods, but it behooves me now to sing out loud, smatters of catches and advertising jiggles, bang my tuna-fish cans together. The squirrels were out in force today, like they were concerned about the winter, gathering acorns, running up and down trees. It worries me, I need three or four loads of fill, so I can get to my house, I need water and supplies; right now I need juice and bread and coffee and cream and butter, and other things, too numinous to mention. Strong line of storms each of the last two nights took out the power. I re-hung 13 Carter paintings and it took much longer than I expected because one of them "River Boat Pilot", an iconic painting worth a fortune, was framed to hang on D rings, because of its weight, and the wall, where it was to hang, had been framed with steel studs and both of the D rings fell on studs. I couldn't use anchors, so I had to wire the damned thing and hang it in a different way. Part of what makes working at a museum interesting is having to figure out how to hang some things. I have to move 27 paintings downstairs and the elevator is out of commission so that means 27 trips down the stairs, 13 of them Carter portraits (his painting degree was in portraiture) including the most valuable painting at the museum; D goes to Springfield tomorrow to get 11 self-portraits from Mark Shepp. They're great and witty. We have to set and hang that show next week. Then I want to take a week off and work on the Janitor Book, then Linda comes to rehearse the Emily show (next month), the performances, in early November, then the largest fund-raiser of the year, second week of November, and I'll then need another week off, to recover. A patron, Barbara Rosenberg, called today, and wanted to bring in some art work for the fun-raiser. She and her husband are wealthy and travel. They actively buy art, mostly high-end prints. As we all do, they have limited wall space, so we get their overflow. They keep very accurate files on the provenance of everything. By high-end prints what I mean are the ten to a hundred copies that are printed on special hand-made paper and signed by the artist. Generally there is a further edition of a thousand, done on archival paper, and signed on the plate. The difference in price is between thousands and hundreds. She brought us today, a Miro (8 to 12 thousand) and four Erte prints that are stunning, the printing is incredible, probably four thousand apiece. They're beautiful. Three of them are beautifully framed, the fourth one, my favorite, we'll probably hang on to until we can afford to frame it. If they insist on selling it, I'll buy it, I know how to cut a matt and build a frame. It's a four thousand dollar print and if I got it for three hundred dollars, I could afford an evening framing. However we're framing this. I wanted to be home, here, talking to you. Everything else is just the net. A random cast. I learned how to throw a weighted net in Key West and never forgot. Like riding a bicycle and all those other things. A weighted net might have half-ounce weights sewn in on the outer perimeter every six inches or a foot, and if you spin it correctly you capture everything larger than your mesh. A great spin that I always considered Jamaican. Maybe just who I learned it from. She was actually Haitian and threw a perfect circular net: I mean perfect. When the weights hit the surface of the water you could connect the dots. A figure with that many faces becomes a circle. I know it's not, straight lines and all of that, but I can imagine a circle. Anything that allows me to imagine. I'd better send this, another line of storms moving through. Read more...

Clear Evidence

Apa, a Nepalese Sherpa, has climbed Everest 21 times. He commands a high price for his services, as he should, a guide without peer. He says the mountain is different now, more rock and less snow. There was an article today about the decrease in Arctic sea ice and another about an ice-berg as big as Rhode Island that broke off a shelf in Antarctica. For my part, we had the warmest winter and then the hottest summer in the record books. It's still manageable, a few degrees, but on down the pike, things are looking bad. I'm OK with the fact that I'm nearly used up. I hope I have the good sense to just wander off, and disappear at the end, not be a burden for anyone, the burial laws in Ohio are fairly lax. No mandatory embalming, and I could, actually, be buried in a Lazy-Boy box Booby would dig a hole for. Fit ends, or fitting ends, you know what I mean. Why was I even going there? I have some thoughts about my younger daughter, a Sherpa child if there ever was one, and then I fix a great dinner that features a faux veal cutlet that resembles a flying saucer with a sauce, that if God had ever had the time, he would have invented. I should fall weeping to the floor. Steadfast, I just eat, and praise the gods. I was reading another essay at the island, as is my want, Paul Klee, then fell into reflection about what means what. Spent most of the day reading David Crystal, "How Language Works", very good chapters on pidgin and creole languages and a great chapter on translation. I have another of the cutlets with polenta and a perfect fried egg. Late afternoon, I have to turn off the radio and kill the breaker for the fridge. I almost require silence for my reading self to communicate with my writing self. Rummaging for a garbage bag I ran across a nip bottle of Glendronach, single malt scotch, and have no idea where it came from. I know it was Glenn, of course, but I don't remember the circumstances, so I roll a smoke, and drink that. It's good, one of the brighter, not too peaty ones, though I like those too. A busy plate, starting, actually, last Saturday, because I needed to get a jump on things, and went in to paint; but tomorrow we start hanging, and this is the most exciting part, where the actual work goes on the actual walls. I love the fact that I do it, but I also love the fact that I'm good at it. Good, a comparative word. Did I really just spend all day reading about the difference between syntax and grammar? Just shoot me, if I ever walk on your property after midnight. There's a warrant somewhere. Read more...

Definitely Sibelius

The way those horns come in over the top. Expansive. I can actually feel the snow. Maybe it helps that I spent some time in his hut, where he wrote "The New World..." and what is that screeching at the end? Trailing off into a very passive violin rift. Then a shift to Bluegrass, which I listen to, for a while, until the inane lyrics make me want to shoot myself. "You're the best mistake I never made", "Working hard ain't working anymore", "When people ask what's wrong, I take the blame". Made a crock pot of stone-ground grits overnight and have a bowl at dawn with cream and maple syrup, the rest I stuff into a can so I can chill them, slice and fry later, as a poor man's polenta. Some pork loin chops in the remaindered bin at Kroger. I pound these out, like veal cutlets, using the nozzle from a fire hose, my tenderizer of choice. It has a flared tip at the business end, so it doesn't slip out of your hand, and the thickened ring, where it attached to the hose, is a perfect meat hammer. These cook very quickly in a hot skillet, a little bacon fat, two or three minutes a side, and can be served in a variety of ways. Four meals for $2.12 isn't bad. I had a bag of carrots, I don't even know where they came from, B must have brought them over, and while I read at the island, an essay about Gericault, I caramelize a batch of slices using my largest cast-iron skillet, 12 inches, so I could keep them in a single layer, just a little salt, and a mere pinch of sugar, to give them the idea of converting. Ate the last of this week's tomatoes, sliced, with a round of polenta, and just a splash of white balsamic and a touch of wasabi. I picked up a jar of wasabi powder, which should last the rest of my life, and I just mix up a little when I need it. I'm always bringing home bottles of wine from the museum, so there's usually some liquid, other than water, to emulsify things. Reading back over myself, as I've been doing recently, I seem to be saying something that isn't said, but I'm not, at least not consciously, doing that, I'm just talking about cooking onions, which, on the face of it, doesn't seem that interesting. Conversion, why am I hung up on that? My parents are barely Christian and I never went to church, we were usually fishing, eating sandwiches from eggs in a jar and having an early beer against the heat of the day. Linda says at times that I'm a beautiful writer, I don't know what that means, exactly, but I take it as a compliment. I assume it has something to do with being honest. Upon close examination, I'm sorry, I just report what I see. Read more...

Finding Fault

I was in dreamland, deep into a fantasy that involved crows and the end of days. I was cooking for an impossibly large number of people, and some of them were irate that the portions were so small. Just getting to the scene where I gave a stump-speech about how everyone was too fat, vitriolic and impassioned, when there was a noise outside that brought me to full consciousness. What? I had new batteries in all of the flashlights, looking ahead to winter, so I had good light. I had buried a bad melon in the compost pile, and covered it with ash and soot from cleaning the smoke-chase in the cookstove. Two coons were digging it up and hissing like maiden aunts. It's comical. SNL material. I don't pretend to know why a particular thing is funny. To me. It's always so personal. In my artificial light the coon's eyes are bright red. Quite bright. Redder than anything you've ever seen. Intense, like that. The wind is blowing through, so I open a couple of windows, to clear the air. A new "House Organ" today and there was that piece by B about his encounter with a snake. It's a good piece. Being well and truly in the moment. I long for that. Of course everything is always up for criticism. Managed to get back to sleep. Stopped for gas on the way into work and got a sausage and egg biscuit and a pint of chocolate milk as part of my campaign to gain some weight. I wasn't looking forward to painting so many of the Carter walls, but I'm glad, now that they're done. They look so much better. Should be able to hang those walls on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sara gets back Friday, then we set and hang the big show downstairs. D spent most of the day cleaning floors. He's good, he uses a Sailor Stroke, which is an almost perfectly horizontal sweep that covers nearly eight feet. I told him that I'd get to the floor before the opening of the Portrait Show, but he was appalled at how dirty the main gallery was; TR swept, dusting out the corners, D mopped, and I painted walls. I still have the entry and signage walls to paint, and I don't know when I'm going to get to them, next Saturday probably. Difficult driving home, the slanted fall light was so intense. I got a pair of really cheap dark sunglasses because the transition between light and shadow had become so extreme that I almost had a couple of wrecks, saved only by the fact that I was only going five miles an hour. The dappled light on Mackletree was blinding. I stop at the lake almost every day, and clean the windshield, what Harvey said, "nothing furthers, everything gains" seems to apply. I don't know anything for certain, I just feed stale crackers to the geese out the truck window. Maybe not the smartest card in the deck; geese, I've learned, are violent, but I have to recycle all this stuff. It's a matter of not wasting food. The wind was blowing so strongly, gusting, that it made driving difficult. A white-knuckle affair, and I was glad to get off the state roads, onto county meanders that trace the bottom of hollows, underneath the wind. Driving across Kansas once, in a rental car, I had to stop and buy some bags of cement, to add some weight to the rear end. Don't even mention Wyoming in the spring. It's unbelievable, the way the wind sweeps across the high plains. There's always something. Wherever you are. Lake effect snow, or tremors from below, it's the local events that call attention. Best scenario, you merely respond, step out of the way of a lava flow, move to higher ground, whatever's required. I once avoided an ugly incident by just pulling my feet up on the table. That things should be so simple. Read more...

Nothing Gains

The surface abrades. It's the nature of things, the outside weathers. Even very hard faces deteriorate. Anything organic returns to dust and is blown away. Hard rock doesn't stand a chance against the agent of time. Everything depletes. I almost decide to stop writing, because it doesn't matter anyway. Picasso and those late angry nudes. Drubbing breasts and a slash of honey pot. I have to go back to bed, none of this makes any sense. Falstaff declares he would rather be a weaver, and I agree. Lovely drive into work. Stopped twice to drag dead deer off the road, one was still warm, and I could have salvaged a hind quarter, but I didn't feel like field-dressing and butchering as a way of starting the day. Jumped out of the truck at the traffic light going into town and cut of a teasel seedpod. Very interesting, the spikes (?) are quite hard and I can see how it could be used for carding wool. As soon as I got to work I phoned in my paint order, two gallons of Cubist Gray, they have it on file, told the idiot person, Jason, that I'd be in to get it after lunch. Wasn't ready, their computer was down, couldn't find the formula, the mixing schedule, the recipe, whatever paint guys call it. But, of course he hadn't called with that information. So had to go back to the museum to get the sticker off one of the nearly empty cans, go back to the paint store, and now there's a lady ahead of me that has a serious paint problem. She'd bought a gallon of expensive exterior enamel paint to paint the fake shutters on her house and it wasn't covering in three coats. She had spent all week painting shutters. It was clearly a bad batch of paint, and she should have been spray-painting the damn things anyway, because of the louvers, but it was bad paint, I got involved enough to go back behind the counter and dip a stir-stick in it. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't exterior enamel, which has now become a very expensive paint. I told Jason just to mix her another gallon out of a different batch (they were coded) but he called his boss first, who told him to give her a gallon from a different batch. I intended to paint today, but I never did. There was always something else. I'll go in tomorrow and paint, everything is prepped and taped, a couple of hours should see it done. Shoot the shit with TR and D. I'll need whiskey for the week-end, tobacco and papers, a loaf of bread. Read more...

Simple Confusion

Started taking down the Carter portraits for the main gallery Portrait Show, and have to rehang the space with other Carters. Ended up taking down most of the other work too, because D declared, correctly, that all of the walls (five) that were Cubist Gray needed painting. They all have marks left by the painter's tape we use to hold up labels. It never used to leave a mark. As with our packing tape, they clearly have changed the adhesive and the tapes no longer function the way they're supposed to. Maddening. A lot of painting tomorrow. I prepped the surfaces this afternoon, and they were in pretty bad shape. I won't have time to scratch my ass between now and October the 12th, so I need to stock the house with food I can prepare quickly or I won't eat enough, and I really can't afford to lose any more weight. This came to my attention when I had to punch a new hole in my belt to hold my britches up. I was born without a waist, so I'm essentially a skinny cylinder. A little over six feet tall, I've weighed plus or minus 142 pounds since the 11th grade and now I'm down to 130. When I tell people I'm trying to gain weight, they roll their eyes, but I actually bought ten four-serving packages of the Or-Ida Baby Red mashed potatoes (ten for ten dollars) so I could just eat something without chewing. It's the chewing that's bothersome. I weary of it. Also bought some thick sliced roast beef, several different cheeses, pickled peppers, and an assortment of olives. My proclivities. I need to eat more rather than less, and I figure that a loaded cracker can only help the cause. On a saltine, I stack a slice of roast beef, a slice of cheese, a smear of horseradish sauce, a slice of pickled jalapeno pepper, and a cured black olive. I make eight or ten of these, and line them up on the island. Every time I get up for whatever reason, I eat one. Chuck, at the hardware store, recommended that I drink a milkshake at every meal. He speaks with some authority as he has the opposite problem. Clearly he's had a milkshake at every meal. I don't understand fat people, what part of their diet they don't understand. The projection is that by 1230, 60 percent of Americans will be over weight, becomes the norm. Read more...

Raindrops

A patter on the roof, an off-beat that almost makes sense. Mickey Hart playing just off the rhythm, a Grateful Dead song I recognize, "New Speedway Boogie", sounds like Bruce Hornsby on keyboards. I harvest 15 gallons of very clean rainwater by early morning. Eat yogurt with raspberries and wheat germ, big travel mug filled with espresso and cream, walk over to see what the driveway is like. It's pretty bad, but I need to get to work. Go down in 4-wheel drive, tapping the brakes. Wet leaves in the ruts are very slick. In town with time to spare at the farmer's market, a week's tomatoes for two bucks and share a smoke break with Ronnie. Start on the Carter galleries tomorrow, so I went over my notes today, to make sure I'd know what I was doing. Took down a quilt and hung a painting behind the reception desk. Went over the logistics with D for the next couple of days. Manic activity. The crane comes tomorrow. Three elevator guys, two electricians, two security system guys, the crane guys. Free sample of Tony Sherman's chili over at the pub. Very good stuff, ground meat, tomatoes and chili powder. Chili is as various as the cooks. I've had some great ones, I've made some great ones, and no two were ever alike. In western Colorado, Tom Howe's chili is elk or venison shanks, cooked for hours with onions and garlic, stripped from the bone and added to about ten pounds of sundry roasted peppers, ranging from hot to hotter. Everything else was served on the side, chopped onions, cheese, beans, rice. I make a version with chunks of beef, tomatoes and beans, that I can slow cook on the cookstove all day, while I read, make a pan of cornbread sticks and use them as pointers, dripping butter, while I try to explain myself, later. Alone, at home, I lean toward the one-bowl solution. Just makes cleaning up easier. Phone was out again. Great night for sleeping, down into the forties, and I got up ay dawn to build a little fire; cooked an egg, fried a green tomato. Got to work early, Crane Day, and I wanted to check in with everybody. Ray arrived in a box-truck with the new components, Tony arrives with the crane. We blocked off the street and he got into position to go over the power lines. Three guys on the roof, one of them the signaler. A complex sign language. First they brought down the old pieces, to make room for the new. The old motor, and the actual cable hoist unit were huge and heavy. These guys were so good they picked up the heavy pieces right out of the doorway of the elevator building, which is a separate building on top of the museum. Four floors away and set back far enough that Tony couldn't actually see anything but the signal guy. This is all very cool and slightly arcane. The new units, strapped to their pallets, are beautiful: a peak of manufacturing elegance. As they should be, for the price we're paying. They get the new components up on top, I made sure there was plywood where it needed to be, to guard the newly repaired membrane roof. Then, Tony abandoned the crane, after performing flawlessly through hundreds of specific, somehow gentle though the load was heavy, events. I enjoy watching anyone doing anything if they do it well. Went and got the, I don't know it's called, Extended Reach Super Strong Backhoe vehicle and loaded all the scrap into the box truck so Ray could go back to Cincy. Everyone has an agent. Read more...

Acorn Fall

Sounds like a young war, acorns hitting the un-insulated tin roof of the woodshed. Not a noise you can adjust to. Random rifle shots. Read a long essay by Salman Rushdie about living with a fatwa. On my way out to the truck to get a couple of gallons of drinking water, I got hit on the head by an acorn and vow to go to the Goodwill for a football helmet. Fortunately most of the acorns are almost hollow, and though the blow hurt like hell, there was no blood. I collected enough solid ones for a batch of mush, shell them out and break them up, soak them in numerous changes of water during the day. I cover them with rainwater, which I heat up one time on the grill (a stick fire) and let cool completely, then repeat. You end up with a tasteless high-protein meal, not unlike tofu, which I like for the same reason: you can do anything with it. I fry cakes half-and-half with grits, salt and pepper, a little maple syrup, and they're wonderful. Equally good with a fiery salsa. With a smear of pesto they elevate into higher reaches. Sometimes I do sardines with a touch of wasabi. Caramelized anything. Point being, of course, you flavor things. I stand to harvest fifteen to twenty gallons of pure clean rain water tonight and tomorrow morning, should last me for several weeks, I've cut way down on my water use. This soft water I'll use to clean myself completely. That's important, right? because it's at least green. Pickle water. I hadn't thought about that. When you bathe in pickle juice, you are at least an item apart. One step removed. Hunting for dinner, with a single shell, you wait until two birds cross, it's a matter of habit. Two quail, for the price of one. Read more...

Disoriented

None of this makes any sense, I don't know who any of these people are. Punk rock is dirty gospel. Nothing much to say about that, I cringe when people say grace. Cut to the chase. Two steps back. Time to kill. The light has changed, slanted and hard. A cut off the new Bob Dylan album, soon after midnight, a ballad, it's very good. Soon after midnight and I fall into a reverie. Anyone could sing better than me, way over yonder in a minor key. 'The red hot palm of my hand' I hear as too many vacancies. The more you listen closely, the less there is to hear. Gone, the less I have to say the better, just a brush on the snare drum, a diminished chord. Greg Allman, now, on the radio. Almost dawn. Decided to stay up and maybe take a nap later (though I never do), made a triple espresso and a lovely sandwich of left-over fried potatoes, mayo, and a big slice of raw sweet onion. Escapism seemed in order, after a week I'd rather forget, so I read another Thomas Perry novel. Physically sore, but no more than I've come to expect. Good to get off my feet. I soaked them in hot water, dried them, then rubbed in an arnica balm that they seemed to appreciate. I put on a throw-away pair of socks and dust-mopped with them, then turned them inside-out into the trash. This is a laughable but not a bad way to clean. If you put a little spray glue on the outsides you can pick up an amazing amount of crap. A little dance around and under things. The edges are where shit accumulates. The ice caps are melting and low-riding countries are at risk. New Orleans is a lost cause, you ever been there? barges of petrochemicals above your head on the river. I mean, really. The time for sentimental crap is over. Grant them a great horn section, they are a marching band after all, and horns are important, but It's not a good time to live below sea-level. I've lived here, now, longer than I've ever lived anywhere, 13 years, and I probably won't ever leave. 1380 feet above sea-level. This particular cave, tree-tip pit, tar-paper shack, lined with books and supported by piles of paper, is about what I need. Four in the morning there's the usual ruckus outside, the food-chain fighting for my scraps. Indicates how cut-throat the game actually is, because I don't have a lot of waste. Two coons, bandits with their stripes, are arguing over a carrot. I imagine I know what they're saying. A comedy routine with a great many bleeped words. A paragraph about carrots in which the word fuck is used as every part of speech. It's spelling-binding. I have to laugh, walking back inside, getting a drink, rolling a smoke, conjugating fuck. This is, in fact, the way I spend my time. A loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, some tomatoes, and you. Pretty much my world. In the background there is often the patter of something, I want to say, not necessarily a note of longing, but something about memory. An actual event becomes hazy when remembered. You might be sure the Queen waved before the bomb went off. The evidence is that the bomb went off first. Read more...

Converted Sugars

Noon talk by the potter in the upstairs gallery, Stephanie Craig. Very good talk but sparsely attended. Opening reception with her tonight, but I didn't stay for it, as it started clouding up and looking ominous. Freshening breeze and the leaves were turning inside out. Wanted to get home. Three days off, but I'll probably have to run into town one day, quick trip, to get some supplies, as I didn't have a chance to get over to Kroger today. Nothing prepared me to see the fox, I'd just stopped on the landing at the bottom of the driveway, to switch into 4-wheel drive, and she was about 50 feet away, in the median, with a young grouse in her mouth. She twitched her ass and glanced at me, walked down into the hollow. Love you too. I wondered how I knew it was the same fox, something about comportment, is that the correct word? the way she carried herself. This is absolutely the same fox. You could argue that I couldn't know that, for an actual fact. Shit, you can argue almost anything. But I do know what I see. Phlox on the wayside, a bunch of geese controlling the beach. Intelligence is over-rated. Afraid I'd lose power, I made a piece of toast (one of those over-sized loaves of multi-grain bread) and sliced a Ronnie tomato on top, then several slices of double cheddar, ran it back through the toaster-oven while I fried a perfect egg to go on top. With a goodly twist of black pepper, this is the perfect taste of summer. The piece of bread is so large that I cut the crusts off and use them to sop up the last of the juice and yolk. The tomato is so sweet I have the thought that late summer is all about converted sugars. What the sun does with starches. I have a dish in mind to cook, vaguely Greek, a kind of Moussaka, with lamb and tomatoes and eggplant. It's the eggplant and artichoke season and I'm anxious to get started. Have my eye on the various fall displays outside various businesses, the panoply of pumpkins and squashes. I draw a map, and raid these places, before the first frost, lay in my larder of winter vegetables. I don't think of it as stealing so much as salvaging. The cream soups and risottos. Linda said she didn't have the patience for risotto, and I can understand that, I have one that I cook, that takes two hours of moderate attention, though I can read an Elmore Leonard, at the island, while I'm stirring. So time is a consideration. We parse things differently. I was going to read that novel anyway, so I might as well be cooking. If you caramelize cubed carrots and squash, fold them into a risotto at the end, with large amounts of butter and cheese, you end up with a killer dish. Converted sugars. I hadn't realized that was so much the point. I had (once again) assumed some things that were not true. Phone was out last night, so I couldn't send, and decided to run to town this morning so I could call the phone company, they promised it would be restored by late afternoon. Had to run the gauntlet on the way in, as the Weghorst family was having their yearly congregation of Tennessee Walker people. They park campers, cook out, and ride their horses on Mackletree and into the state forest on various trails. The road is covered in horse shit. But these horses are beautiful, well-cared for, and ridden often, unlike the vast majority that are confined in too small a space and never tended. I drive slowly, stop often, and let them pass me. Do my shopping in town, stop by the museum to chat with TR and D, then head home, around the long way so that I don't have to go through the horses again. There was a nice package of chicken gizzards at Kroger and I bought them to make a dish I think I invented. I separate them into lobes and trim off some of the connective tissue, saute them with caramelized onions and red peppers and serve them on a bed of rice. I love the texture of gizzards, but, then, I also chew the cartilage from bird bones and the roadkill I bring home. Stopped several times today, to take a dead animal off the road, and give them a little dignity in death. A couple of cats, a beagle, a woodchuck; the crows can deal with them much more quickly if they don't have to keep flying off because of oncoming traffic. I carry a very sharp knife with me all the time, a Gerber, Linda sent it to me, and when I take an animal off the road, I open it up, slit the gut-sack from chin to ass-hole. Just being helpful. I'm proud of myself this weekend, I actually got rid of some things. I'd already stacked about a hundred pounds of paper that needed to be recycled, and a couple of boxes that needed to go to the Goodwill, and then I realized I didn't need that catapult, AND I didn't concern myself with any petty observations. Your problem, might simply involve zoochemistry. Biomorphism, something. Read more...

Cooler Nights

Reach for a blanket. Feels so good to snuggle down under covers. A ruckus at the compost pile wakes me at four in the morning, a couple of hissing feral cats. I throw a rock at them and go back inside, I was hoping for a bear. This whole compost thing has derailed me. Clearly, I can't have an orderly pile, fifty feet from the house, where I deconstruct my waste, denied me by circumstance, but I can still put my organic waste in brown paper bags and toss them into the hollow. The new strategy is that I throw these bags over the top of the truck into the ravine. Fuck a bunch of consolidation. Waste is what waste does. It's cool, throwing bags of crap, over the truck, into the ravine. I admit I was wearing a tee-shirt that might have been offensive. Sorry about that, but Republican tendencies lead me to a line of thought. No river fog today, but several mornings recently it was pea soup. Early, as always, I went upstairs to check for messages and there was a email from D about discussing my Janitorial Responsibilities. Trish had complained to Pegi who told D to tell me that I had been slacking. A foul mood ensued. Bit my tongue. Cleaned and vacuumed the theater, an event in there tomorrow, then scrubbed the floor in the Ladies Room, on my hands and knees, with every cleaning agent we had on hand, because I thought that was probably where the reprimand had originated. The floor is stained. Like so many of my clothes, it's clean but stained. Between janitorial responsibilities, lunch at the pub, Barb sat next to me, and asked why I was in a sour mood. I told her, she immediately offered to hire me and said that I could sleep on the sofa in the front room, nights I couldn't get home. Nice to know there are options, but I love my job at the museum, and I love working with Sara. Of course I've been slacking, we're rebuilding the elevator and there are a dozen guys coming and going. Next Tuesday a crane is coming to lift heavy things onto the roof. The museum is a job site right now. Of course I'm slacking. I have a huge amount of work ahead of me, restoring order, when the construction is finally finished, why are they bitching at me now? Pegi and D are truly busy, way too much on their plate, and Trish is so over-weight that I sometimes wish I had a fork-lift to move her around, so I wouldn't have to hear about the agony of walking. It's a good thing the nights are cooler, because I seem to be backing myself into a corner. Things heat up. I had begged everyone to not leave anything soaking in a sink full of water, the gasket would fail. And, of course, that's exactly what happens. Johnny on the spot, Tom Terrific, I plug the plumbing leak. Did I not predict this in every particular? Not really. Read more...

Hermeneutics

I tend to tease things apart. Force of habit. What makes something work. Words on a page, for instance. Tuesday morning is Farmer's Market, so I always get my coffee to go, sit on the back of Ronnie's truck and roll a smoke; he usually rolls one to, if he's not too busy. Late season, but he has lots of tomatoes, several kinds of potatoes, and squash. He gives me produce, or charges very little (his granddaughters charge me half-price; I have these deals all over town, where I don't pay full price: I'm a good listener and can sometimes be very funny) and we chat for ten minutes. Creek talk. Ridge talk. He'd heard about my bear. Woman at the next booth over, just a table, actually, loaded down with jars of honey. A beautiful young woman, six feet tall, tights and a tee-shirt. She follows me off a few steps, when I leave, really, she says, a bear? I give her the three minute bear lecture, ever the knee-jerk docent. A forty-two line page (the Gutenberg Bible), single spaced, is between 500 and 600 words and takes about three minutes to read. Reading fairly carefully. I can scan one of these pages in a minute or less, but reading every word, out loud, would require three minutes. What was I talking about, right, the three-minute bear lecture, SO, I can gauge these things quite closely. After three minutes, talking about a specific thing, most people get bored; my favorite of the Carter paintings I could talk about for thirty minutes or an hour, but there are only three or four people who would want to listen. I'm cool with that, I'd just as soon lecture to a blank wall, which suits me, oddly; lecturing to a blank wall is familiar terrain. Phone out again. I saw the tree that did it this time, had to stop and drag pieces off the road with a couple of good-old-boys coming in from the other direction. All trace of it gone this morning. Passed the phone guy, heading in to make the repair. A little chaotic at work, two new elevator guys, and I had to show them where everything was, then two construction guys who are going to help the elevator guys move heavy things, then the crane guy. This is getting exciting. The two elevator guys are pounding and drilling in the elevator shaft all day, fitting pieces with plenty of persuasion. Mid-afternoon, everyone was gone but me, I had to stay in my office for a couple of hours, holding down the fort. Read an essay on Schiele that got into the whole art and pornography issue. I come down pretty strongly for free expression: if I don't want to see something I just don't look at it. Young boys are always going to point and laugh. Young girls realize their power. Me and Elvis both liked bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. Doesn't mean anything. "Me and Elvis" is a contender for the title. After Jesus, Elvis is probably one of the top ten names. Just guessing here, I have nothing to base this on, and "Me and Elvis" sounded a whole lot better than "Me And Jesus". I can't believe I just said that. I should be flogged or stoned or something. Isn't there a Christen scale of things, of course there is, Dante, wait. I just found myself in a ring of hell. Read more...

Mystery Balls

D had a day of it Friday. Identifying objects. People bring things in to museums. Someone from New Boston brought in some cast balls dug up when a water main was replaced. They don't seem heavy enough to be cannon balls, almost four inches in diameter, junk metal, lots of impurities, nicely spherical except for a slight flat spot where the pour must have been ground down. There are fifteen on them, uniform, and D cleans a couple, one of them is almost white, and we have no idea what the material is. He puts out some queries, someone will know something. I need to weigh them, if they were cannon balls they'd have to be close to the same weight or accuracy would be out the window. It was anyway, as I think about it, the powder charge, the wadding, everything varied; they shot chain and hooks to tear up rigging, these weren't rifled barrels but simple cylinders you stuffed with crap you found in the corner. Spiders and shit. Brown Recluse cannonade. Black Widow fusillade. Had to do my laundry, needed some things, so I sauntered into town the back way, stopped several times to look closely at plants I couldn't identify. Drove back and forth through the ford, to clean the undercarriage. Distracted, thinking about things, I forgot to stop at the library, so bought a Columbus newspaper at the convenience store next to the laundromat. I do this a couple of times a year, buy a newspaper. An interesting article on Black Bears, they've started turning up outside apartment complexes rifling through the trash. Two-year-old males often wander 100 miles looking for unoccupied terrain, they're solitary, and there's always the chance that Dad would eat them. Older males occasional eat the young, to bring the females back into heat. Opportunistic omnivores. Their claws are not retractable, but they can eat blueberries as daintily as your maiden aunt. Stopped at the museum, to check the damage from the auction; TR, between classes at the college, stopped by, with Megan. They're looking at the Carter paintings because he has a class coming through and he wants to engage them with specific details. Pegi stops by, on her way to the first classes of the season for her circus, wonders why we're all there. It's just a convenient hub is all, no big deal. Crowded, by my standards, I pack up and leave. Not unlike a bear looking for a place the sandstone bridges a hollow that could be called a cave. Home, in other words, where I can eat beans on toast, and fart like a sailor. Read more...

Secondary Considerations

The very tall Thai yoga/masseuse person was watching us, D and I having a smoke after lunch, amid the raining Linden fall. She noticed I was walking hunched-over and mentioned she could do something about that. I had no doubt that was true, but I don't even take any kind of pain-pill, nothing, because it blocks you from reality, and I certainly didn't want a raven-haired beauty manipulating my lower back. Also, no one mops correctly anymore. I've done what I can, but I'm a voice lost in the wilderness. Fucking kids, they think they know everything. I usually just hit them hard, with something they don't know anything about, sweep them off their feet. You can only mop if you've learned to mop, there is no other way. The widely touted third path is a myth. It's a binary system, yes/no, on/off, black/white, there is no third way. I woke in the night, maybe three in the morning, and the power was out, I had to remember where I was, the floor, right, in the living room. Made my way to where the kitchen matches were and struck one, lit a candle, then the oil lamp I keep at hand. Put on my LED headlamp, so I could see what was in front of me and finished reading the Thomas Perry book. Most of today I read about Cassiano dal Pozzo, looking at the drawings he commissioned. Born in Turin, 1588, functioned as the Court Scientist under Urban VIII. He was an archaeologist, a botanist, a zoologist, a geologist, and the foremost ornithologist of his day; and he assembled a vast library of drawings. It's fair to say he presaged Linnaeus, and even hinted at Darwin in his interest in what didn't fit. Read too much, looked at too many pictures, and didn't eat enough, so I got a headache mid-afternoon. Made a mammoth baked potato, with butter and sour cream, salt and pepper, and chopped scallions. Ate every single crumb, and wiped the plate with a piece of bread. Got a drink, rolled a smoke, and went right back to the drawings. Thought about drawing as the first attempt to capture the thing itself: flat light, front and side view. These are the weighted, leather strapped gloves Roman boxers used. No joke, this is them. That set of drawings even shows you how to put them on. They must have made a wax cast, then poured it in lead, a set of knuckles that seated perfectly in your fist, bound with leather straps. Every detail is clear, I could make a set of these tomorrow. I don't want them, but I could. Lead knuckles pack a lot of weight. One glancing blow and you win. Read more...

Still Hurting

Setting up for the auction on Sunday, hauling boxes from the basement and the third floor. Debilitating. I had to rest between rounds, but we got it done, and D agreed that I could leave an hour early. Stopped at Kroger and laid in supplies, sushi, steak, potatoes, humus, avocados, juice, whiskey. Went to the library and got the new Thomas Perry, "Poison Flower" and there's a New Yorker in the mail box when I get home, so I'm set on reading material. Because yesterday was payday, I bought a piece of nice double-cheddar and a jar of sweet pickles, half-a-pound of sliced roast beef and a box of saltines. I eat a box, four 'tubes' of these, a month. I sometimes line up ten of them, smeared with mayo, a slice of cucumber on top, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and walk around, eating them. One of my favorites is half a sardine, a squirt of spicy mustard, and a pickled round of jalapeno pepper. Yes, you do know what I think about what I say before I say it. Key to something we won't talk about here. Because I don't have the energy, this back shit has sapped me of my energy. I just want to lie down, go to sleep, wake up better. Fuck a bunch of pain. Ironically, I got a call right then, from a Canadian drug company, though the actual call was from China, offering me pain killers or whatever I might desire. I always ask them what the weather is like there, wherever they might be, to break the ice, so we can talk like human beings. Weather is a great common denominator. We all have it. I'm not used to being this exhausted. Pain exacts a toll. I fell asleep on the sofa, again, dreamless; awoke to a good soaking rain, after three in the morning. Get a drink and roll a smoke, put out a couple of pickle buckets to collect water. Collecting water strikes me as a slightly bizarre venture, but I need wash water. For weeks I've been carrying in a gallon a day, from the Kroger water station, 39 cents, my container, enough for coffee, a shave, and a sponge bath, but I already have gallons of extra water, and I'm planing a full-scale bath, with bells and whistles. Rhea left a container of 'Hello Kitty' body wash. I'm good to go. I plan to scrub off an entire layer of skin. Dirty skin, tarnished with layers of living. I wish I had a cowboy hat, so I could compete in the real world. Of course, the goddamned phone is out and I can't send. I talked with a Frontier Telephone guy working at the large junction box out on Route 125 and he said they were aware of the problem, the dead trees that could, and do, regularly, take out the line; but there are only five residences in the six miles that trunk line services. Low priority. Easier just to patch the damage, and cheaper than taking down hundreds of trees. I could probably get a satellite package but then I'd probably buy a TV and watch that instead of reading. I have an addictive nature and I don't want to start watching TV. Next thing you know I'd be watching all the episodes of "Lost" and I don't want to go there. I'm comfortable (not right now) with this particular life-style: hiking in, carrying water, intermittent services; people leave me alone and I don't get into trouble. Human interaction often leads to trouble. You get drunk and wake up in someone else's bed. Without your toothbrush. How embarrassing is that? I maintain a vow of selective celibacy. It's amazingly effective, I haven't gotten laid in months. Read more...

Some Better

The electrician, Mark, said, first thing this morning, "you threw out your back didn't you?" We talked about that for a few minutes. This is a fairly common injury in the trades. I'm getting better, but I still walk hunched over for the first few steps after I get up. Pain, as Kim mentioned, does mean that you're alive. I did ask Pegi, at one point this afternoon (we've having a find-raiser auction on Sunday, and stuff needed to be carried in and put somewhere) to just shoot me and get it over with. D was off on his second job, teaching, TR was gone, and the old ladies bringing in things for the auction were more delicate than me. I let Trisha go and stayed with the elevator guy until six, because I needed to touch base with him, how were we doing, were we on schedule. I don't know elevators from doodle-squat, I assume there's a cable, and brakes of some kind. I get the sense that he's winging this, that all these jobs are different, he's on the phone a lot. I'm reminded how D and I realized we could build a bridge over the Ohio with two phones and a good directory. It's not brain surgery. It's just a matter of calling someone who knows what they're doing. Barge in steel trusses, you can get a price on that, two thousand yards of concrete, you can get a price on that, the shoring, the cribbing, you can figure that, the labor you can ballpark, pick a number and multiply by two; making a bid, you cover your ass. I've never been so far off that it exceeded the parameters, close, a couple of times, but never really exceeding the guidelines. I look at this fairly closely, as a non-professional merely pre-viewing data, raw stuff that comes in. I was pretty sure Linda would remember that Rikki Lee Jones thing, which actually happened. I had a fallback position, I can't remember it now. Fell asleep writing, fighting pain is tiring work. Passed out on the sofa and didn't wake up. Got to work on time and the back hallway was filled with junk for the auction. When TR and D got there, we moved everything into the main gallery; they did, mostly, while I addressed the floor. Pegi had said to let it go until after the auction, but I couldn't do that, it was just too awful. I couldn't manage my Modified Chevron stroke, with my back the way it was, but I could mop like a girl, a simple forward and back motion, and managed to get the job done. That exhausted me for the day. Ephemeral pain, those twinges that disappear quickly but hurt like hell. Payday, and I went over to my bank's drive-through walk-up kiosk to deposit my check and there were a couple of people in front of me. The register, that delivers AC for that little building, is in the floor, against a wall of glass that faces the street. I leaned back into that flow of cool air, holding the back of my damp tee-shirt open with both hands, and I got one of those rays of pain that makes you see spots, but was able to grab the metal mullion to keep from falling, and everything was fine, the spasm passed. Healing is a painful process. I'm doing a minimal installation in the Men's Room tomorrow. A simple label at eye-level, that reads: "If I catch you throwing chewing gum into the urinal, I will kill you." People are so stupid it mystifies me. Tuna in oil is so much more flavorful than tuna in water. I had a salad of bitter greens with a can, and a sprinkle of really bright white balsamic vinegar. Taste is a relative thing. Read more...

Translation

I'm read in France now, too. Strange thought. It's difficult enough translating me into English. Rodomontade, roister, rotund. Surcease, susurration, svelte. Down in my back (hurts like the Dickens (what does that phrase mean?)) but at least I know what caused it. I was leaning over a pile of books to close my writing window, felt that little tear in a muscle and knew there would be hell to pay. Hyper-extended. A little patter of rain had started and I didn't want to short-out my Black Dell. She's sensitive. All that time alone, wondering what I'd ask of her next. It can't be comfortable. Not knowing. From past experience I extrapolate that the pain is transitory, and I just shouldn't lift anything for a couple of days. There an equation that defines this, horizontal extension over vertical lift, the weight doesn't matter that much, it's all about 'position' or form, maybe, rather, a kind of yoga pose, The Corpse, where you pretend to be dead. Not listening to the chatter is a big part of it. If you exclude the external world, even for a few seconds, what you're left with is yourself, not always a pretty picture, but the remainder, nonetheless. Rain deer, remorselessness, retroactive. With Levi-Strauss it's always triplets, I'm not sure what they mean, but it's always the case. Flaunt, fledged, fleer. Anile, animus, anserine. Maybe there's a pattern, I'm hard-pressed to say. I do sense a connection, as if there was a relation I was supposed to see, but I don't get it. Ineffable, ineluctable, inexorable. Sure enough my back is shot in the morning, it's not the standing or the walking, it's the transition from sitting to standing that really hurts, the bending and squatting. I'm not much use, at the museum, cleaning up after an incredibly messy event. The bathrooms are horrible and the floor in the main gallery looks like there was a beer fight, and something was served at the dinner that I can't identify, clear and very sticky. I'll clean this up. because no one else will, even if it takes a few days. D could do it easily, but his time is better spent elsewhere, TR wants no part of it. I'm still the go-to janitor of choice, a default position. Oh fuck, is that vomit? Tom will get it. Usually I'd enjoy this shit, going to the hardware store, stopping by the university, but my back hurts and each of these stops is in and out of the truck and the physical movement causes me to cry, hurts Big Time, not a Little League pain. It's exhausting, hurting like this. I use up all of my reserves just closing up, getting home. I had to stop at Kroger, for whiskey and juice, I limped around like the cripple I was, and when I got home, and finally achieved verticality, leaning against the side of the truck, swearing like a sailor, staggered to the house like a drunk on a three-day binge. Self-medicated and assumed the fetal position. You'll probably feel better in the morning, I remember thinking. Pain is a touchstone. Your own ability to deal with that. I'd rather not, but if I have to. Read more...

Accumulated Words

I collect words during the week, on a folded piece of paper I nearly always carry with me. Sometimes I can't read the notation, exactly, and I get side-tracked. A word jotted down at a stop light or a particular adjective, noted atop a washing machine during the spin cycle. So I'll be looking up ingenious and spend half-an-hour with ingenuous. Sometimes I remember the context, but mostly not, the words just become a palpable thing, in and of themselves. The other part of the algorithm, is whether or not I'm interrupted; a phone call, or a visit (doesn't usually happen, but still a part of the equation) can easily break the train of thought. Then, later, you're wondering why there were fourteen dictionaries scattered about. Like an event had occurred and you hadn't noticed. An orgy or something. Forget everything you know. Start all over again at the beginning, you were sequestered in a corner, talking string theory with a physicist from Pasadena, she intimated time travel might be possible, if you could avoid the various pit-falls, the grand-father problems, and what your daughter would say to you. I just mediate. It's a cool supposition, what I think happened. Nothing a stick of butter couldn't fix (my Mom's solution to almost any cooking problem). That you might be the alien. Just supposing. I could drown you in butter, and the problem would disappear. Foe confit. The fat from ribs is always a pale orange, from the various chilies, but I prize it for it's flavor. And I love when it penetrates everything, like the smell of cabbage. Sagacious, salubrious. salutary. Embrocation, emetic, emollient. Diminished chords seem to be saying something. Who is that, singing in the background? What a voice, flitting around the edges, almost blue. I met her once, at a coffee shop in Ojai, she was having a problem controlling her kid, we smiled over waffles. Rikki Lee Jones. Electricity was out for several hours this morning, and the phone has been out since last night, so I couldn't send this. The little cans of baked beans were on sale, and I had bought ten of them ($4) a week or so ago, so the fall-back meal is beans on toast, sometimes with an egg. I harvest enough rainwater to shave and wash my hair. B comes over and we discuss mostly painters. Side-bars into Drought Stress Analysis, maenads, magniloquent, maladroit. We dance around a great many subjects. Standard. Drill-tone. I have to go. Read more...

Leaf Fall

Hot, muggy, overcast; enough warm breeze to keep up the early leaf-fall. A red maple out my writing window appears to be dead. It went from sickly green to withered brown leaves in a matter of days. I had a few gallons of drinking water in my truck and I walked over to get them. The dried puddles are imprinted with hundreds of tracks, critters looking for a drink. Even the birds have all gone down to the lake. I'd been staring at the Raven map, "Landforms And Drainages of the United States", for several hours, trying to pin-point some places I had lived, when the rain finally starts. Some sonorous thunder, and I rouse myself to fix a meal before I lose electricity. A few rounds of homemade polenta fried in bacon fat, an egg on toast. I fried a diced potato for a sandwich later. We often used to take a container of fried potatoes with us when we went fishing, a jar of mayo in the cooler with the beer, and a loaf of sliced white bread. With salt and pepper, I enjoy these fold-over sandwiches to this day. A fried bologna and potato sandwich, with sliced onion is as good, in its way, as almost anything. It is September, I forgot to flip the page on my Outhouse Calendar, but it now is an 'e' month and I can eat oysters. I love them raw but I love them best roasted on a grill with a dollop of something, a watercress butter, a marsala infused chicken stock, some minced wild mushrooms in a port sauce. Don't get me started. Easy access is unlimited, solid. Most relationships are destined for failure, look at the odds. You, Melissa, and you Jason, exchange these stupid vows, that mean nothing, in the actual world, and expect that to create a connection. I miss the whole point of these weddings. You'd have to call me a cynic. Watching the wedding rehearsal Friday afternoon I was struck with a deep sense of dread. The words are merely pro forma. Listening to the blues, late at night, where the heartbreak occurs, too many shadows. The light has changed. It's harsh now, and slanted in a way that draws attention to particular detail. The webs of those 'October Spiders' refract some light. I don't understand light completely. But I do know what I see. Leave you with that thought. I have to go. Thunder. Read more...

Most Chaotic

A day for the record books. Most Chaotic. The elevator guys were tearing things apart when I got to work, loudly. Using hammer drills and big metal-cutting saws, stuff was falling down the elevator shaft. Then the wedding-party decorating crew arrived, to work in the main gallery. Then the electrician arrived, to confer with the head elevator guy and I had to listen to part of that conversation because I need to stay on top of scheduling, for instance the electrician needs to come in on a Monday, soon (when we're not open), so he can shut down all power to the building, he needs to add some new sub-panels. D had taken a 'personal day' off, TR was maxed out on his hours, so he was gone; and I was left there with the petty bullshit. I only slightly vented one time, when Sara and I were out having a cigaret, and she'd already pre-approved my venting. The son of a sailor swears like one. It's what you hear early on. There's a particular rock embedded in the driveway, that, when I'm walking in, I like to address in the middle of my (right) step. It means I'm 42 paces from my door and nothing else matters. Inside my house, things are frozen in time, I mean it's hot (86 degrees) but things are just as I left them, the essay about Winslow Homer's later style on the island, and eclectic cookbook open to the idea of corn pudding on the sofa, and a long article about bears at my desk. No fiction, because town was congested and I didn't feel like bucking traffic to get to the library. "River Days", arcade/fair going on. I slipped in the back way to Kroger and got a few things, but these goddamn holidays are a pain in the ass. Clay surprised me at lunch today, a welcome break, I was getting morose, fucking weddings and elevators. How constructs are finite. And he had some pictures, on his cell phone, from the National Gallery, and we talked about art and Emily and road trips. We agreed, absolutely, that the museum was not the venue for certain events. Weddings with kegs of beer would be high on my list. Say what you might. Clever sleek bastard with a hat could be just enough to turn the corner. I only acknowledge that it might be possible. That there was a corner, that it could be turned. Read more...