Inculcate

Term paper time at the University, end of the semester coming up, so I've been explaining Carter to a bunch of Art History students. Ended the day as the only staff person there, which will be happening a lot between now and Christmas. I'll take off some time in January and February, try to get The Janitor Book done. First chore is just to get the paragraphs cleaned of headers and footers, and stack them up. I read each one several times and make a few changes. When I make even a slight change, I have to go back and read it again; and, of course I change a lot of changes back to the way they had been, which also means rereading the paragraph again, to make sure I'm correct in my changes. An interesting process. I edit myself quite strictly, when I'm writing at night, but some errors slip through. B said that I was not to worry about the tense problem, the problem of tenses, that I was transparent and cogent. Which is what matters. One thing that strikes me, is that the voice telling the story is as close to my speaking voice as I've ever gotten. Strange that it should be comic. But I hit a kind of stride in these pages, and the cadence blows me away. The remembered past becomes the present. It all changes. Next thing you know you're a cockroach, a fly on the wall. Our narrator, Tom the Janitor, can generally be trusted, and is a kind of fly-on-the-wall; we don't know enough about his graduate studies, and he omits most personal information. But he's likeable and honest. He seems likeable and honest. And the research is pretty good, the Janus stuff, the doorway guardians, the way people die unexpected deaths. If you're deep into mopping, a perfect, ephemeral, modified chevron, and someone asks you a question, it sometimes takes a few seconds to get your bearing. I was mopping the main gallery, and this beautiful young woman comes over, Bev, at the desk, had sent her to me, and she coughs, to announce her presence, she needed to write a paper on one of the Carter's and which would I recommend. I took her by the arm, upstairs to the Carter galleries, and told her to pick her favorite, and then I'd tell her everything about it. I'm so conversant with these paintings.