Intermediary

Intermediary is not quite the right word, but I couldn't find anything closer, doing my internal word-search. The person or thing that mediates between you and the world. I got this show hung, busted my ass to get this show hung, as near perfect as you'd want to approach. Any closer, you'd scorch your fingers. Sara and D were both over the top in praise for the job I'd done, and it does look good. When I apply myself, I'm competent. No claim, other than that. There doesn't have to be. I do my job and you do yours. There are potatoes for all of us, the occasional road-kill, and mushrooms in the spring. Anything more would be too much. The clutch in the truck is dying, it needs rear tires, the hood release doesn't work, nor the radio, the turn signals have died, the wind-shield wipers don't work, the AC is dead. An endless list at work, but nothing pressing, so I take the afternoon off (everyone thought this was a good idea, because I'm the one that has to work Monday, when the museum is closed, and a holiday, so the elevator guys can stay on schedule. Library, tobacco store, Kroger, then I go look at a Jeep Liberty D had spotted at a lot where they do salvage re-builds. It's very nice, and everything works, I drive it, and it's cool, leather interior, and a comfortable ride. Thirty-five years in a pick-up truck jades your experience of what a ride could be. D had given me the quick lesson in buying a vehicle from a lot like this and his strategy worked perfectly. He (Teno) was asking 7 thousand and with the offer of cash and my truck I got him down to 54 hundred, which seemed like a deal. So I bought it, told him I'd pick it up Tuesday, left a deposit, stopped back by the museum, had a smoke with Sara and D, and went home to start cleaning out my truck. I wish I'd gotten some fill in the driveway, so I could drive the truck to the woodshed, a load of found wood and a few wooden chairs that fill the bed, stop at the house and empty the job-box, clean out the glove-compartment, shred the pile of papers that's accumulated on the seat. I wasn't aware that was a list, until I read back over. Life is, usually. Nothing you wouldn't expect. It's going to get colder now. How do you deal with that? Damn phone was out again. Good dinner of left-overs from the meeting of the board, Manicotti Florentine Cold enough this morning for a fire in the cookstove, burned another chair, beech, to take the chill out of the house. I needed a couple of days off to read and re-charge for next week. Read through a few issues of The London Review Of Books that B had brought over and started a book of essays by Sebastian Junger, walked over to B's for a chat, cleaned a couple of loads of stuff out of the truck. Then got an early drink and picked up where I stopped writing last night. My habit. Thinking about wardrobe. I have several neatly folded piles of clothes, three, actually. One set is clothes that will never be washed again, these are clothes that I'll crawl around under the house in, or muck out the outhouse, after which they go in the trash; I only wear cotton or wool, so they rot nicely. The second pile is clothes I wear to work, which is a spreadsheet ranging from a day that I'll be painting or hammer-drilling into concrete walls, to days that I might docent three groups through the Carter collection. And a third pile that is new or nearly new clothes I wear to someone's house for dinner or attend an opening at the museum. All of these piles are composed mostly of black tee-shirts, black jeans, and denim shirts. I keep a nice sport's coat at the museum. I haven't actually bought a new pair of jeans in 15 years. People give them to me or I find them at Goodwill. Clothes are just a bother. I know TR is at the museum, so I call and talk with him about the Emily Show, we agree about every salient point. I want her, Emily, to react to both Zach and the audience, I want her to completely destroy that fourth wall, no mediation at all, you and God, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher calling for no interference between what is said and what actually happens. For the sake of what happens, I have God in my pocket, a heat warmer I didn't use it last year. Fall is just a change in color. Burn a chair, fry an egg, nothing really happens. Some grease in a skillet, I prefer bacon fat, but you could use butter or olive oil, to simply fry an egg. The glare is too great. Nothing is simple any more. A pattern in the detritus. The fines, as I said, or the scum around the drain.