Wind and Leaves

No rain to speak of, but gusty wind, and the leaf-fall is reaching a critical mass. They collect in declivities, like the ruts of the driveway, or along the curbs in town. On Mackletree, they rooster-tail behind vehicles and pile up on the verge. There's a point in the Emily Show where Zack stirs a bowl of leaves with his hand and then throws lentils on a snare drum and a cymbal. Linda is crossing from the desk to a point down stage center, where she does most of the poems. It's an incredibly poignant moment and you can't help but watch the way legumes catch the light, bouncing off the floor, and off of Emily, as she makes her way toward a conclusion. It's so cool it makes me gasp. Rain wakes me later. I'd been over to Sara and Clay's apartment, where Linda was staying, so we could drink a couple of glasses of wine and talk about mundane things, our kids, what we were doing; and it struck me that we were still doing something, we weren't quite dead yet. For instance, I tell Zack I want something a little more quiet or that something needs to be louder and he knows what I'm talking about. The beauty of the combined arts is that people are working together. Becomes a dance, right? I'd rather work alone, late at night, controlling every nuance, but that isn't always the way things work out; sometimes you find yourself in a crowd, justifying something. Fuck a bunch of justification. That last run-through, where the pacing was almost perfect (and I had said, at the very beginning, that the flow was the critical aspect) was so close to perfect that it actually scared me. In the real world, you shouldn't be able to do things this well. I knew Linda was good, but I had no idea that Zack was a genius. TR's music spins a web. Emily comes in over the top. Had to go into the museum on a day off to be there for the elevator guys. TR was in for a while, between teaching gigs, and we talked about how well yesterday had gone. He's on a cloud. Saw Linda off. Talked with the elevator guys about the upcoming inspection. Busy few weeks coming up: change out the upstairs shows, the performances of Emily, then the big fund-raiser; another event next Saturday, a Sister City thing with a bunch of Germans, dinner in the main gallery, and a theater presentation of Celtic dance. I've got to find some things for Emily, a desk, mostly, and a black skirt for the table Zack uses for his pots, pans, trash cans, and to cover sundry cords for various pick-up mics and lamps. The man is obsessed with lamps and dried grain. I had never considered lentils as a musical instrument. At the end Zack is throwing them against the snare drum and the cymbal, some of them actually hit Emily as she crosses over for a beautiful ending, where she winds a music box, and says her last words. The music, coming into this, is terrific. It's a great hour, and an hour is nothing, 168 a week, certainly you could spare one. I love my new ride, and especially the heated seats, what a great idea, give that person an Oscar. A warm ass is sometimes just enough impetus to get on with the day. In the winter, when we smoke on the loading dock, which is cast concrete, I provide rigid-foam cushions that ameliorate the shift in temperature. I carry a block of ethafoam in my backpack, something to kneel on, might as well be comfortable, when it's necessary to watch something closely for a long period of time. Tadpoles, or a kind of ant you'd never noticed before.