Natural Phenomena

A road-cut or hillside where the sandstone layers are exposed, wet-weather springs emerge as frozen waterfalls. Very beautiful on the north-facing slopes. Hundreds of these ice sculptures that linger for days or weeks, some of them larger than a house. They recur, in the same places, a simple fact of drainage, some times in similar form. I'm always surprised, when I walk across one of last year's corn fields to get to one, how massive they can be. When melted, the ice is sweet water, and there are a couple of places, near the road, where I harvest stalactites for drinking water. This time of year, I carry an ice-pick in a holster and keep a couple of five-gallon buckets in the back of the Jeep. Ice weighs a little less than water; water being one of the few things that expands in both states from a liquid, hotter and colder: you got your vapor and you got your solid. Did you read about that guy that found the two-pound gold nugget in Australia? Which led to a consideration of concentration, why and how that happens. It's still raining, a year's supply of water, but I only collect 20 gallons because that will last me a month and I can't project further than that. I wash socks and underwear as the occasion arises. I keep a three-gallon stainless steel pot of water on the stove at all times, a test against need, I can wash my hair and take a sponge bath with a gallon of water. I'm set for months. Speaking of concentration, there's a site, Oklo, in what is now Gabon, where 1.7 billion years ago, at 16 different locations, uranium was so concentrated, it started, spontaneous nuclear reactions. Today was a concentration of sound. The most chaotic day yet. A decision was made. The theater has twelve rows of eight seats and an aisle down the middle. We needed to install a railing and there wasn't room, so we took out all the seats and will move them all to the left, eliminating one seat in each row, and put the railing on the right-hand wall. This involved removing a step at each of the twelve landings, cast in place concrete, and that involved Cody and Alfred using a jack-hammer for six hours. The steps freed from the landings fairly easily, but had to be broken into five or six pieces each for removal. Concrete has a specific gravity of 2.4, 150 lbs a cubic foot, and each step was a little over two cubic feet. Rubble now. It was very loud in the museum. Despite the fact that it's supposed to snow tonight, I had to get home, my brain had turned to jelly. I might be late for work tomorrow, but I needed to recover my sanity. And it was the correct call. On the way home, on the classical music station, I caught most of Beethoven's last quartet, which I love, it makes me sigh, sometimes weep; and then I was in the forest and the dripping trees were beautiful. I stopped to pull a family of raccoons off the road, so lovely in their winter pelts, thought, briefly, about skinning out the mother, but I didn't want the dead youngsters to see. Achieved my parking spot, at the bottom of the hill, retrieved my walking stick (an aluminum mop handle) from behind the tree where I stash it, sauntered up the hill, stopping often and looking at things. I didn't carry anything in, which I kick myself about, but I didn't want to stop at Kroger, I just wanted to get home. I knew there was plenty of food, whiskey, tobacco, and a new New Yorker in the mailbox. What more do you need? I've lived in a cave on the side of the road with less than that.

Tom

Phone is out again. I hate these glitches. I got home, ate, wrote, and was ready to call it a day. I spent an entire evening going through the footnotes of "The Swerve", which led to a dozen other books. I'm reading by candlelight at that point, the power had gone out, and I was thinking what more could they throw at me. Snow, of course. When I get up to pee, two in the morning, there's a new inch. The wind had died down, and the quiet was a blanket after a day of jack hammering and smashing with various sledges. I love the way snow muffles sound. Most of the year harmonics are what I hear, but an inch of snow (a foot is better) and the soundscape is considerably altered. I went out to the woodshed, for an armload of splits, oak and sour-wood, and I was looking at the tracks in the snow. The woodshed is a happening place. Nine different sets of tracks. And mine, sliding out to pee, two in the morning. Gotta be a blues song in that. Josh, the older son in the bathroom crew, said to me today that they had made a hell of a mess in the museum and I agreed they had. Today, I mostly consociate trash into peach baskets. Not that it's wasted, just that I have to haul the trash. A major side-bar there, I was looking for footing when the scree slipped beneath my feet. Read more...

Museum Watch

Designated staff because no one else was available. The bathroom crew did great work today, getting half of the seats out of the theater. We have to rearrange everything to accommodate a hand-rail. They also framed in a soffit in the back hallway, which will allow for some recessed lighting. I mostly read about Lucretius. Sara came in, just before lunch, and I showed her around the changes, then we talked for an hour, it was so good to see her, we share so many interests. I dined alone at the pub. D and I can substitute items on the menu there (a rare privilege) and for Lent, they're serving a pollack filet dish, with roasted baby potatoes and green beans. The potatoes are excellent, so we now have them as the side-dish with our lunchtime sandwich. Steaming hot, with sour cream, most are just a single bite. They're so good. I have a beer at lunch, throwing caution to the wind, I wasn't technically working. I did sweep up some sawdust, but that's just a force of habit. Proust, I was thinking about today, would rewrite vast sections just to get the feel right. I'm tired, everything is wearing on me. Getting to the point where nothing makes any sense, three sheets to the wind. I really need to get some sleep. I need to eat, first, pick up some frozen meat balls, a jar of Newman's sauce, and some fresh egg noodles, Texas toast on the side. I drip all over a New Yorker, but who cares? Live a little.The drive home was lovely. I was particularly out of sorts, considering my failures, but I had a large bag of last week's hamburger buns from the bar next door, the inside of the Jeep smelled like yeast, and I knew I was going to make some birds happy. What I do now, to avoid geese in a feeding frenzy, is pull off the road to see which side of the lake the geese and ducks are occupying. They're always all together. I go to the opposite shore and spread the hamburger buns, then retreat quickly to my vehicle and watch. They know I've left them food. They launch off in a pandemonium of flapping wings, a feeding frenzy, and attack the line of hamburger buns as if it were a real opponent. I amuse myself. Phone went out last night and I couldn't send. another chaotic day, the bathroom crew, two electricians, carpet guys brought samples for the theater, half the board was in at one time or another; D spent all afternoon building a rolling rack for the new sound equipment, and assembled components; I flitted from place to place. Didn't get much done. I need to step it up a notch with the painting. Rained all day, I left a half-hour early, because it was supposed to start raining harder, which it did, just after I'd gotten in the house. All the wood stations were loaded with very dry wood, so with the propane torch I go. Stillt a good fire going quickly, to drive off the chill, 38 degrees and hard rain. The driveway will be a soupy mess tomorrow. Harvesting wash water while the temps are above freezing; half of my left-over lunch for dinner, along with a plain Greek yogurt, chips and salsa, and a Balance Bar, for dessert. It's not the life I had imagined. Still, it is an actual thing, you juggle things at the check-out stand. We all do. It's what you mean to say. Read more...

Tipping Point

I usually get up to pee in the middle of the night, two or three in the morning. It's a lovely interlude, especially in winter, when footing is an issue. If I have to come fully awake, as sometimes I must, I might not go, immediately, back to sleep. Sometimes I don't remember where I was sleeping and I have to retrace my steps. Often I get a short drink and roll a smoke, stare into the darkness, turn on Black Dell and write a few lines. No love's labor lost. This Greenblatt book, "The Swerve", is the best thing I've read in a long time, has me digging deep into the stacks for copies of things I'd forgotten. I can barely translate Latin, but it excites me when I get the point. The rules of language dictate meaning, the scrip. It's enough that someone merely mops. I'm cool with that, the way things operate. You need a system, parameters, within which to function. I consider the natural world my field, so I listen to the mice, gnawing at the insulation, and the raccoons digging through the compost. They tell me something I translate into action. Write a few more lines. My mandate. I had the best teachers in the world. They pretty much taught me to beat the shit out of a recalcitrant board. Later in life I came to the conclusion that the material dictated the terms. The board knows what it wants to do; your job is just to see it done. Everything else aside. Late winter my fingertips begin to crack, I use udder balm to relieve the pain, but I can't apply it to the two fingers I use for typing and every word becomes misery. Couldn't, rather, until last week. I was in the bank, depositing a paycheck, and the teller, noticing my name on the check, asked if I was that writer who lived out in the woods. I allowed that I might be, and she paraphrased something I'd written recently, yes, I said, that was me. There was no one else in the bank at the moment, so we chatted for a few minutes; she asked what I was working on and I described, briefly, the book about Janitor College and the agony of editing with split digits. She nodded sagely, opened a drawer and gave me a handful of those latex fingertip gloves (I'm sure they have a name) which provided immediate relief. The keyboard feel is not quite the same, and I make more spelling errors, but the pain is gone and I sound a lot less like someone suffering from Tourette's Syndrome. The real problem is that I pound too hard, when I have a thought, trying to keep up with myself. I wear out keyboards. A beautiful day, slight haze but a blue sky, and the world is shades of brown, rather than the mid-winter black and white. Green, I think, is not far off. Then there's the moon, rising through stick trees, so beautiful it breaks my heart. I feel like a well-driven mule, weary, chewing my cud, glancing to the side through hooded eyes. The epicanthic fold providing disguise. Content, actually, in the moment, smelling the manure, and thanking the higher powers that I'd spread a layer of straw. Best to keep one foot ahead. That last twenty vertical feet coming up the driveway is a challenge, most anyone would fall on their ass, I only stay upright by dint of a third leg, an aluminum mop handle I wield as a weapon. You really don't want to surprise me in the night. Read more...

Acceptable Tolerances

Starting with a substrate that is neither square nor level, you fit the new to the old with care and a great many shims. It's a challenge to make things look decent. The criteria is, generally, what will suit the client: for the most part walking up and down on the earth is merely business. But at a certain point you have to please yourself. I've always known people who were very good at what they did, and I always watch them closely. The deftness with which they wield a chisel; the stroke they use, applying a final coat of plaster; that surprising flip of the mop-head when they change direction. Three things constitute a list. You give the list a name and you have a file. I'm jaded by the company I've kept. All things being equal you'd think the result would be the same, but it never is. What you get is all over the board. Assuming it was a game. Walking in, carrying a heavy pack, my sense of humor is reduced to a slight chuckle, when I get to the top of the hill I breathe a sigh of relief. When I'm on the ridge, and in form, I feel like I'm ready for anything. A good night, writing and editing. Went into the museum today, nominally a day off, to help D trim the finished wall sections: two small walls (40 inches and 18 inches) and the exposed end. Tricky trim. We try and cut things a little long then trim them a skosh bit (First usage 1952, from the Japanese Sukoshi), a word every carpenter I've ever known uses frequently. It's always accompanied by the 'bit'. So, as mentioned, there are no drawn plans, we are essentially building from a sketch, and we work hard at it all day. The joints are all good, miters that we pre-glue and shoot together, then slide on. Everything goes together unbelievably well, and when we finish, just after four o'clock, we almost hug each other. It's a stunning piece of work, or, as D and I are fond of saying, almost perfect. We just stand there and look at it, call TR over from the front desk, he's impressed, wants one in his house. Then we build the bench, which couldn't be done until all this other had been accomplished. Five legs that are 2x12 framing stock, covered on the exposed sides with cherry plywood and faced with solid cherry stock; the whole thing is 131 inches long and we make it a skosh bit short so we can fit it into place without marring the walls. The top is two layers of glued and screwed three-quarter-inch plywood, and we'll rim the outside edge with a cherry trim-board to contain the cushioned units (a piece of Baltic Birch plywood, a piece of foam, and whatever fabric Sara decides) and there you have what we think the sketch was saying. I'd rather have it this way, because I've learned to never trust drawings. Fucking architects, they rarely know what they're talking about; for one thing, they've never built a house. Better they should just give a competent craftsman the task. If you can find a competent craftsman. Last time I looked, very few people could do anything. Another heavy pack, because I was out of juice, and liquids are the bane of my existence. Next year I'll lay in a case of tinned juice; I like canned pink grapefruit juice, it reminds me of a chardonnay aged in steel, that metallic edge. The last two weeks, D and I have walked several flights of stairs hundreds of times, and I'm tired; I want to sleep in and listen to the radio, read a book, soak my feet in Epson salts, but I have to be into work on Monday, another day off, because Sara will be back and want to get to her office, and I need to talk with her, about the way the board is taking control. I begin to see that everyone on the board has a vested interest. I'd really rather never have anything to do with this, but I don't like it, and have to speak my piece. D knows more about this building than anyone, so if you're doing something to the building, you need to consult him. If you don't, you're a fool. Read more...

Sound Effects

The frozen woods at night, add a little wind. Sometimes it sounds like conversation you can't quite understand. People talking in the distance. Guttural language, a coyote near by, two crows discussing why you haven't left any dead rodents on top of the outhouse in a while. Another grueling week and my feet hurt. Sanding, painting, hauling away debris. D put up the first pieces of cherry plywood in the back hallway and they look great. The bathroom guys (David, the father, two sons, Josh and Cody, and a family friend, Alfred) are at that awkward point in a job in a job where they have to wait for something to dry before they do the next thing. They have another job going, somewhere, and flit back and forth. After lunch yesterday I prepped the Richards Gallery for painting. D and I discussed various aspects of the projects going on. There are no drawn plans, so it's difficult to keep track of what's going on where. Pegi asked me to stay in town for another night as we were supposed to get an ice-storm last night and someone needed to be at the museum to let in the sub-contractors. We did get an ice-storm, though not as bad as expected, Pegi didn't make it in until noon; but D made it on time and we worked most of the day building a wall extension, adding furring strips, cutting and applying cherry panels, then considering the trim problems that we'd created. A student came in, she had been in one of the college tours of the Carters I did last year; Tiffany, and she was enthusiastic about the museum and the work going on. I would have shown her the new Carters and lapsed rhapsodic, but we were just installing a last couple of cherry panels and decent carpentry requires absolute attention. I was set to leave an hour early, but a board member came by, wanting to see what was going on, and wanted me to rebind her family bible; which, by circumstance, I can do. One thing and another: D gets called away, I get called away; leave a little early but still have to stop at Kroger. Carry a decent pack up the hill, not making a point, just trying to achieve the ridge; not even that difficult, really. I stop a few times and notice the differences, the way a rock might have moved, the way you follow a trail. Where B had mucked out the catchment there was a pile of leaves. More leaves than you've ever seen. Leaves several inches deep. Way beyond anything you might imagine. There were police cars pulling in from every direction. The first thing I planned was my escape route. I hate lights and sirens. They were at the wrong place. I fry potatoes and make a very nice omelet with mushrooms and cheese. Go to bed early. I'm very tired. Read more...

Chaos

Finally get started painting in the small Mehser gallery upstairs, and had to stop right away for several conversations with sub-contractors concerning the re-model; then had to stop again to fill 168 holes, made with push-pins, from the last High School show. We thought the holes were so small that the paint would fill them, but, of course, it didn't, and they needed filling. I borrowed some of the filler from the bathroom guys, very cool stuff, it goes on pink and turns white when it dries. I have to wait for it to dry to sand it before I paint. Fill the time by hauling five loads of trash to the dumpster. Construction generates a lot of trash. Wood scraps I take home as kindling, but quite a bit of stuff has to get thrown away, mostly packaging. I take the sawdust home, and spread it in the woods, minerals and metals I take below the floodwall and drop in the chinks between dumped sandstone chunks that serve as a break-water. I was down there this evening, making my ablutions, watching a tow move upstream, settling myself before I went to the pub for a pint. Harried day. Though I did get three walls painted, which feels pretty good, considering the chaos. There was a crew in the alley, there was a crew in the basement, and there was a crew in the bathrooms. I was not going to be able to leave at five, after staying overnight in town, so I could be there at eight in the morning: but I could slip away for a beer, if I left them a number. I don't have a cell phone, but I gave them the number at the pub, went over and watched half a soccer game. Soccer at it's highest level, these guys are so good that they can do a blind kick toward where they expect you to be. Not a little pressure. Watch Manchester United move the ball. It defies, really, what the rest of us have to say. I have to do my laundry. Read more...

Fair Game

A flash of orange out my writing window. It faces SSW with a view along the ridgetop. B coming over for a visit, I see that he carries a book, and I have one for him, a Sargent tome with a great many of the watercolors we had discussed the last time he dropped by. The book he has for me is about Poggio's discovery of a copy of a copy of Lucretius in some monastery in Germany. "The Swerve". Poggio is a cool dude, I've run into him before. He had beautiful handwriting, and with several of his peers is responsible for what we read today. The letter form. B was wearing orange because it's the hunting season and it's best to wear orange and clang two cans together; I sing off-key and loudly, whatever indicates you're not fair game. I know, I know, how revealed you feel, but believe me, it's best to not get shot.The 'swerve' of the title is the Renaissance and the rediscovery of Lucretius (specifically, "On The Nature Of Things") began what we think of as modernity. Poggio found the codex in 1417, when books had to be physically copied, but at least paper was available at last, most of the books of the time were on vellum or parchment, copied from papyrus originals. A fascinating period, which, because of my life-long passion for printing (and paper) I've read a great deal about. More books were produced between 1450 and 1500 than in the entire history of writing and copying, then doubled again in the ten years after that. Issues of literacy and church control (of what was believed) became the subject of courtyard debates. I say courtyard, because you couldn't have the debates in public because the Inquisition would burn you at the stake. Alas, poor Bruno; Galileo under house arrest; Hypatia dead in Alexandria long since. A wonderful book. I give up the afternoon and evening to it and by the time I went to bed I had reference books spread on every flat surface. Then, this morning, I jumped right back into it. I hadn't realized the key role Lucretius played in early modern philosophy. I dig out my copy, the Stallings translation, a Penguin edition; I also have an earlier, Copley, translation that I don't like as well. I can chip at the edges myself, but Lucretius is difficult to translate. He's just bloodly difficult. He wrote very beautiful work that doesn't quite make sense. But he does mention atoms by name. He has fun with the language (this is the most difficult thing to translate) and he makes his point. That you should enjoy your life, because after that, you were merely dust, which it also happens, I know way to much about. Recycling at that level. Where bedrock becomes dust. So it's a perfect book for me right now. Read more...

Hard Stop

Certain elements of my life don't make any sense, that I'm alive, for instance. I should have died at 27, but I didn't have enough sense then, to see the long dark road ahead. Besides, if we all offed ourselves who would be left to tell the tale? There's something to be said for hiding in the back of the cave and keeping quiet. For one thing you live to a ripe old age, gather patina, and sound like you know what you're saying. I beg to differ with certain particulars. That whole alligator thing is bullshit. I never did. I've only ever encountered a few bears in the wild, and in each case I just screamed. Bears, it seems, are as shy as I am and they just run away. Black bears, anyway. Wanting to work out a method for doing an entire pork loin, I experimented with a tenderloin. Ground several small packages of different nuts, broke them into pieces in my larger mortar (don't powder them, think little pieces), pat the tender dry, then rub on either sorghum molasses or maple syrup, and roll in the chopped nuts, place a line of sage leaves down the length, wrap with several slices of bacon, then tie up (allows you to compress the tapered end, which I usually cut off, slice thin, and fry in butter as breakfast meat), sear on all sides, then bake for 30 minutes with a goodly splash of apple cider and white wine, surrounded with apple slices. I served myself with mashed potatoes and roasted Brussels Sprouts. It was a killer meal. The gravy was sensational. I'd bought a decent wine, a Ravenswood Old Vine Zin, that was complex enough for my jaded palette. I prefer large, complicated, red wines. A student of tannins, I wrote the book on charred casks. I would have kicked up the fruit a bit in this particular wine, more wild blueberry or something, it falls off the tongue and there's something left desired. Read more...

Snow Day

'Rhapsodic non-fiction...' A phrase I heard on the radio. I have to stop reading (Farley Mowat) and consider what's meant. Snow flurries in the morning, then waves of harder snow, but breaks in the cloud cover and shafts of light turn the gently falling flakes into crystals. It's beautiful, serene, restful, and lulls me into reveries and reflection. I've written non-fiction most of my life. The book I'm editing now, about a Janitor College that doesn't exist, seems to push the envelope, but it's rooted in non-fiction. Clogged toilets, for instance, occur with greater regularity in restrooms that are open to the public, because people will throw anything into a public restroom toilet. Came a time when a toilet at the museum was, I thought, hopelessly clogged, and would require mucking out by hand the masses of human excrement and sodden toilet paper. D, who had preceded me as preparator/janitor at the museum, said that there was a technique, for just this situation, that he had learned, that involved holding back most of the mass with the plunger and flushing it down in batches. Later that night, after a couple of drinks, I imagined a campus where there was a course in unclogging toilets. One thing led to another. I called Glenn, to clarify some points of syntax, and he was interested in doing a documentary film about Janitor College. You reach a point where things might as well be true. I would play myself, in a fictional version of a non-fictional story about myself. A part I was born to play. Glenn has already lined up a shooting schedule and decided on the single-malt scotches he'll be bringing, I just have to be myself. Begs several questions, not the least of which is who that is. The I that is me. I do, for god's sake, mop in a pattern that I call a Modified Chevron (because I have to refer to it as something) and consider it a practical stroke, it eases the pressure on my shoulders and lower back, and it gets the floor clean, which is the whole point, insofar as I can see. Another good title would be "Oh Crap" but that doesn't have the ring of a best-seller. "Side-Boobs And Great Asses" might be a good title, but it has no relation to the truth. I like for there to be some relationship. The film, for instance, could be called "Glendronach" which would pull several threads together, esoteric as they might be. Maybe they'd pay for us to use their name, cover the cost of production; Glenn owns the equipment and both our times are free. We could shoot this movie for a few thousand dollars. I'm struck and flattered by the fact that Glenn wants to use me in his next film; a simple guy that watches tadpoles, who would think. I make another skillet of potato-egg-chorizo, some toast, walk the logging road in the gathering dark, and take a nap. When I get up to pee the back porch is a sheet of ice and I have to come to full consciousness to keep from killing myself, which leads to rolling a smoke and getting a wee dram for my troubles, and turning on the radio. A show I really like called "Jazz After Hours" and it's Miles from "Bitches Brew" then some Hammond Organ that can only be Booker T. Later, I may have napped again, some tenor sax that stirs my sex in a pleasant way, reminding me I'm still alive. Traversing (magic word) the layer of clay near the top of the hill, I use the aluminum mop-handle to keep my balance; one time I throw my entire weight against it, my feet looking for a purchase, and it deforms, slightly, but I stay upright and continue homeward. Nipped that bastard in the bud. I can at least still walk, though stumbling. The accumulated hail is like walking on ball-bearings. Best to just pee in a pot and throw it out later. Read more...

Idiopathic Malaise

Feeling a bit off my feed, and my feet hurt. Damned glad it's Friday. D got the first panels of cherry plywood cut today, got two coats of stain on them and all the trim, so that they actually look like cherry (some of the trim is poplar, but it takes stain very well and will match when we get done with it). I spent the afternoon trying to restore order. Stopped at Kroger on the way home, another heavy pack to tote up the hill, but I'm well supplied now and will probably follow Mac's suggestion to blow off the laundry and just sit on the ridgetop for three days. I might reread Pynchon's "Mason And Dixon", a masterpiece of fact and humor and stylish writing. Soon as I get home the slight drizzle turns to hail or sleet, BB sized droplets of frozen stuff. It's gone very quickly because the ground, finally, retains some heat, though the air is below freezing. Beautiful clouds, just after sunset, lit from below, vibrant pinks and lavenders; then they wisp away and the temperature drops like a rock. I have enough firewood for the rest of the winter, and I want to burn everything possible from the woodshed, so I can organize the space. Before the sap rises I'll drop a couple of oaks. I hoard impossible wood, Osage Orange, various knots, and those pieces where a major branch bifurcated, that are impossible to split. Some winter days I'll go out and spend an hour splitting a recalcitrant stump into wood I can fit into the stove. Just something I do, there's not a point, other than the obvious BTU's. And the fact that I'm outside. Knots and crotches are incredibly dense, so there is a return on invested labor. They burn all night, and rekindle, easily, into a fire the next morning. The layer of clay, where the driveway cuts through, at the top of the hill, is slicker than snot; it's all I can do to keep from falling. Right foot here, left foot there, it's all very precise, or I end up on my ass. Careful is the watch-word. Basho, walking back to his shack, three sheets to the wind. Crows are a mainstay of winter. I often stop, down at the lake, to hear them complain. Indulgences. Three crows, two Pileated woodpeckers, a single agitated duck, might well make your day. The difference between me and almost everyone else I know, is that I do stop to look or listen, sort through a pile of detritus. Precisely because it is brain science. Bagpipes in the distance, a penny-flute in the fore-ground, maybe a kettle drum off-stage, announces an act. A genie, with some talent, and his assistant, wearing almost nothing, make you believe something that isn't true. Fools you, right? I don't believe anything anymore. Read more...

Madsong Stanza

Whipping post, again. But I got the Jeep back and I'm sitting in my writing chair at home, a glass of whiskey and a smoke. Parked at the bottom of the hill and carried in a heavy pack, juice, booze, yogurt, fruit, the ingredients for a pork-fried rice, and a gallon of drinking water. I'll carry in another load tomorrow, and be set for the three day weekend. I need some books. Four, probably: two non-fiction and two fiction. I have a canvas bag I've adapted for carrying books, found a guitar strap in a dumpster and sewed it on with dental floss, but I can only use it on a light-pack day, when I can carry my backpack on one shoulder and the book-bag on the other. Every thing requires consideration. Mop handle walking stick, and I try to keep the other hand free, for picking things, and breaking any potential fall. To save my collar-bone (designed to fail first). I should invent an implement, a glove-like thing, that you would strap on to your free hand that had a spring built into it to absorb the shock of falling. I might have to go into town for a couple of hours on Saturday, to do my laundry and buy a pair of work shoes. My feet are killing me. The bathroom guys finish a drop ceiling in one bathroom, then grout the tile; they're a very good crew, one of the best I've ever seen that wasn't mine. Not bravado, but I've always had a penchant for putting together a very good crew. I just assemble the people who know what they're doing. I'm the greatest helper ever. Tom Terrific. I know what you need next before you can even form the words. We have to wrap some walls, in the back entry, with some cherry plywood, and, since the building is an old bank, 80 years old, fully matured concrete, we have to make frames of lathe, to provide nailing, and they must be glued and Tap-Conned to the concrete walls. None of the walls in question are square or plumb. D started building what look like ladders, one-by-three on the flat, pocket-screwed together, which we attached to the concrete walls after lunch. The bathroom crew were impressed. What I see are a bunch of trimming nightmares. This is difficult carpentry, interesting and engaging, we make up everything on the fly. We consult each other. We're working from a watercolor drawing, there are no plans. It occurs to us, not for the first time, that what the committee wants, envisions, is a look, with absolutely no knowledge of what it will take to achieve that. There's always a disconnect, between the person that wants something done, and the person that actually does it. The one is an idea, and the other is a practical way to make that happen. I painted a fifth coat of white, over the black, and it is now a white wall; strip off the tape and newspaper, and there you have it. A nice job, if I did do it myself. I expected at least a minor epiphany, but there's nothing there, the black wall simply becomes white. I expect injury, you work in the field, with steel wedges and sledge hammers, eventually you hit your thumb; a few stitches and you're fine, but it makes you conscious of other possibilities. How frail you are. I have to go. Read more...

MadTom Saga

Sometimes it actually seems things are constellated to drive you crazy, but Tuesday I did get the Jeep to town. A slow-motion procedure that took most of the day and six or eight phones calls (more than my monthly average), as no one really wanted to drive this far out of town. Finally got in touch with a guy on the west side (I'm seventeen miles west of Portsmouth; but he gets called away twice before he can get to me. I make three hikes up and down the driveway, because I don't have a cell phone. We finally meet, after two o'clock and get the damned vehicle to the service center. Interesting ride in with Jeff and his wife (who came along to see the state forest in winter). They couldn't understand why I would live the way I do, but they thought it was cool. The car guys didn't think it was anything serious, but they couldn't get to it until today; put in a new battery, but have to wait overnight for all the computers to reset before they can run diagnostics on everything. Another night. I figured it would be. The museum is a wreck. The bathroom guys are laying tile, grouting tomorrow; the remnants of the Sunday Tea, tables and chairs everywhere, everything layered in dust from construction, and tea stirring sticks flung about, which, I suppose, is better that champagne flutes thrown against the walls. I started painting the black wall white today, patched and repaired, taped it off. It's in a recess, and the bottom and two sides of the recess are black formica, so I taped on newspaper to cover against spatter. There's always going to be spatter. Two coats of primer and the first of two coats of finish, and it's looking pretty good, still, it feels like I'm buying penance. The first thing Gutenburg printed was promissory notes between man and god, everyone sins and the holy church needed a source of revenue, not that different from L. Ron Hubbard, and buying your way to salvation. Maybe you can. I'll take my chances with oblivion. It seems I chose oblivion a long time ago. Read more...

Ruckus

Four in the morning and it sounds like a young war. That pack of dogs again. I had to clean out the fridge, and I buried everything deep in ash on the compost heap, but not, apparently, deep enough. Ruckus was the word that jumped to mind ([?f. ruction and rumpus] O. Henry, 1909, Roads Of Destiny) which I finally tracked down in "The Dictionary Of Americanisms" that Howard had sent me years ago, rescued from the trash at Bowling Green. A word from the Arkansas frontier. I'm sick of these dogs, they run off the wildlife, and they bark at me, which I find offensive. I scatter them with a couple of rocks, but I'm pissed, because I know I'll never get back to sleep, and I had been deep into a slightly erotic dream, in color, that involved the very best ankles I'd ever, personally, known. A banked fire of Osage Orange is easy enough to rekindle, and the house is quite warm, so, looking toward the next incident, I brew an espresso, unpack a couple of shotgun shells, removing the pellets, and repack them with rock salt. I need to make a show of things, but I really don't want to kill anything. I have an old 12 gauge skeet gun I've cut down to the legal limit (18 inches of barrel) that I stash in the space between the double-sided bookcase that forms the largest interior wall of my house.The next time those dogs raise a ruckus, they're in for a surprise. I have to smile, I should be so well prepared. Maybe it's not enough to be merely ready, but it feels pretty good; bring on the dogs, we'll see. I have a cheap bag of gnarly apples in case the fox returns, tobacco and papers, whiskey enough, rice, some cured meats, acorns, I could go on forever. Read more...

Somewhat Later

Listening to a train, across the river, over in Kentucky, I sink deep into the blues. Lost love and dead dogs. I only sound cynical, I'm actually a fairly happy person, grin and nod as required, defer to superior forces, but that lingering note, a train disappearing around the bend, hovers in the air. Leo and his harmonics, birds scratching through the litter, other things we might not talk about openly. How beautiful Fatima was. Her eyes beg the question. Sorrow. How much I miss. Build a few piano chords, add an accordion, a base more felt than heard, maybe some brass in the distance. I finally have to mute the radio, when everything reminds me of something else. I sense another heartbreak. I'd be a lousy choice for a fling, but I'd rather than not. A devout Catholic might argue otherwise, sex without a condom, whatever the consequence, the Pope knows best. He mediates, after all, between people and god. I harvest enough rain-water to shave, a silence fills the room. To bed early and slept late, still tired. Ran into my creek-bank mechanic at Kroger and he said he couldn't work on the Jeep, didn't know anything about them, and recommended a place in town. I'll have it towed tomorrow, probably have to spend a day or two in town. Snow on Wednesday. My Visa bill was in the box and it will be officially almost paid off this month. Almost, because I want to run a small balance and continue to use that account, for the $25,000 line of credit. So I'm completely out of debt. No mortgage, no car payment, nothing but an electric bill, a phone bill, and the various taxes. I feel liberated, like burning that deed in Mississippi, after five years of a single annual payment. I own 27.33 acres here, two ridges and a hollow; I pay taxes on a tree farm, I'm looking at the tax bill, it's due this week. The county doesn't know I live here, that I have a house on this property, because there is no building inspector. In the country, you can pretty much build whatever you want. In Colorado, where codes and inspections were heavily controlled, the Building Inspector signed off on the goat dairy because it was agricultural, but we were subject to state agricultural inspection. I've never actually pulled a building permit, I've always lived in the country. Different rules. There's a show of Sargent's watercolors in NYC and I'd love to see it. He was a master. I look at some of the reproductions and I salivate on the page. The watercolor portrait of Isabelle Gardner he did in 1922 is incredible. He told her he was just keeping his hand in. Read a great essay on single-malt scotch, soaked my feet in hot water, and went to bed. Read more...

Somewhat Deranged

I would never declare that I wasn't a touch crazy. Goes with the turf. When the slogging gets difficult I carry up frozen condensed juice, that I mix with rainwater; less weight, and I have to have my juice to re-hydrate, as the house is very dry; so dry my fingers crack and my lips become painful. The wind freshens, a lofty sound, high in the stick trees, and the house shakes a bit. I had to get home, to secure my place in the elements; and I needed some things: clean long underwear, the solace of solitude. So many false starts this week, dealing with sub-contractors, dealing with board members, trying to get something done. Thank god we got the vault completely re-organized, otherwise I'd feel like I hadn't accomplished anything. It's beautiful, what we did in there, the space is completely changed and so much more efficient. We found one of the four things in the permanent collection that I had not been able to track down. D and I painted a wall, finally, with the new red, and I actually did influence the selection, they went with Burning Bush, when I kept referring to two of the final three as Corvette Red. It worked. I'm beginning to get a handle on this, the way you influence decisions. It's so nice to get home, and be able to think about commas in peace. False starts. Spare me the bullshit, our failures are just a learning curve; you either get the point or bleed out on the side of the road. If I'm home, I either read or write; if I'm in town, there are other options. Dangle that on a stick. You could probably draw some conclusions. Would you rather do one thing or another? I mean, seriously, would you? If so, that leads in another direction and to further consideration. Yesterday D realized I'd tipped over the edge, a week in town, a dead vehicle, and that I needed the ridge for a few days or I'd become completely useless. He drove me out to the bottom of my hill. I couldn't remember, exactly, what supplies I had there, so I went over to Kroger and bought some things, loaded my pack and the canvas bag I carry in my off-hand. The driveway is half-frozen, must be 33 or 34 degrees and there are still traces of snow in the lee of the trees. Real friends are those that will drive 17 miles into the woods and deposit you at the bottom of a hill. I don't even get the mail (I forgot), I just shoulder my pack and assume the posture of a Buddhist monk climbing to his cave. A certain hunch. D drives away, and I can hear him for a mile or more, as I walk up the hill, the way sound plays in these hollows. I stop a great many times because I'm carrying a heavy load. Home is an illusion, I know that. But if I could just get there, I'd be a part of that illusion. All is as I had left it. I build a small hot fire from the remnants of an oak table I dug out from the furniture store dumpster, make a chorizo from a pound of ground pork, and fry up a mixture of that, with onions and potatoes, red pepper, and four eggs. Excellent fare. A dram or two of whiskey, as a restorative, and I feel almost human. In so far as feeling helps the case. Too tired to wonder about that. A nap, then back up just after midnight to start writing, replaying the week in my mind. Selective hearing stands out, as a major theme. Getting the main gallery ready for the Sunday event, an afternoon tea with a talk about heart care, was a Herculean task that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Supposing I have enemies. I'm sure I must. My former father-in-law? Whoever that actor was, in the production of "Camelot" we did at the Cape Playhouse, when we 'forgot' to wedge the chocks under the rolling platform that carried the tree he jumped into to sing a song when he first sighted Guinevere? (A horribly funny sequence in which his momentum sailed the platform, and him, off stage, suffice it to say he had been a total asshole.) Certainly several poets whose work I declined to publish. An entire generation of younger janitors that I dismissed, publicly, as being under-qualified. More likely I'm just considered slightly eccentric by anyone who has even a vague knowledge of my lifestyle. It's going to rain, you can smell it, so I take a walk, before the ground thaws completely, down to the mailbox. A double issue of the New Yorker, various cable offerings, and a Visa statement which indicates that I'm completely out of debt. It's true I still owe certain favors, but they're more in the realm of barter: I'll pick you up at the airport in Columbus if you'll drive me to the bottom of the hill, I'll listen to you if you'll listen to me, I'll trade you a lovely slab of Black Walnut for one of those spoons you carve so lovingly. What isn't said is the thing. Two crows exchanging gossip, three deer working up the slope on the opposite side of the hollow, the fragile crust on which we base assumptions. I hope no one calls. I'm not sure I could be coherent. And I hate to sound stupid. Read more...

Lost Week

Totally exhausted. Yesterday, at one point, there were fourteen people making various messes. There's an event in the main gallery on Sunday, so we spent today at an attempt to restore some order. We got everything back into the vault: and, having built some incredibly efficient shelving, installed new lighting, and cleaned out the detritus, the space is transformed. The first part of the week I just moved things around, keeping the artwork safe. One potential disaster after another. Alfred was cutting through the front wall of the main gallery, to open a 'chase' where we could run sundry cables (power for new outlets, audio/video feeds, security camera lines) and he was making a hell of a mess, only exceeded by the mess Mark, the electrician, made the next day drilling five one inch holes in all off the studs. I pull out the old light track brackets upstairs, and fill the holes, but my main task is to go to the Pittsburg Paint store and get samples of three colors: Lusty Red, Blaze, and Burning Bush. Red is the most difficult color to paint a wall. It streaks, the solids fall out if you don't stir constantly. I clean a section of wall and paint a square foot of each color in a place where we can get good light on it. I like Burning Bush, but it's not my decision. Lusty is too Corvette. Blaze is stuck in the middle. The bathroom crew all liked Lusty, which says something. They've done well, and I like them, they're good guys. There's a touch of the rural anti-intellectualism, but I can deflect that with stories of my own. For whatever reason the word 'implication' pops into my brain and lodges there, I carry it as a mantra all day. Thinking about implication. Family, for instance, the sub-text you know runs constantly. I resisted a couple of commas there, and I think meaning is distorted, nonetheless it is a back ground noise. One morning was a zoo, when the crew arrived to tear up the paving in the alley, jack-hammers and Bobcats tearing and scooping, a war zone; the basement was a cloud of concrete dust, because of the windows. D and I agreed to paint a wall tomorrow. We need to paint a wall, because we have so many of them to paint. best we get our shit together. Read more...

Modigliani Again

Museum guy again today, keeping tabs on the bathroom crew. A lovely time actually, alone upstairs. Read some of Mary's letters, spent a good bit of time looking at some very good reproductions of Modigliani's work. Failed, for yet another day, to resolve the Jeep issue. Can't reach my mechanic, and I'm beginning to be concerned about him. Cold and snowy as it's been, I've missed several slogs up and down the hill; there was six inches on the ground out there, and that makes for quite the hike. I miss the raw splendor of the place when I'm not there for even a day. It occurred to me that the Cooking Network (I was watching a show today about cooking game birds) is an amazing resource for people who like to cook. It interests me much more than any sitcom or almost anything else I'd ever watch on TV. Having Hulu at the museum, I do watch a few things, before or after work, on days I get stuck there; and I'd like to watch a few movies that I keep hearing about from other people. But, by and large, I'm glad I don't have one at home, hell, I probably would have watched the Super Bowl yesterday; when, instead, I got the whole game, in eight minutes, without sound, on the bar TV at the pub while enjoying a nice Lobster Bisque and a pint today. I'm much more interested in Manchester United and the European Soccer League. Spare me the side-boob sightings and the size of various asses, I mean I can be distracted but I'm not really interested. More demolition. The cabinet for the doll heads is destroyed and it didn't take that long, though it was over-built, built-in, and heavy. I hate particle board. Parts of it were dowelled together and there were way too many nails. Laminations of three-quarter inch Baltic Birch plywood. Couldn't save much, glued and screwed as it was. D and I spent some time in the vault, deciding where and how to build some shelving units for the permanent collection, made a list of the necessary components. Worked overtime comparing various shades of red with the cherry plywood we'll be using in the back hallway. Exhausted, after days of this. Read more...

Trapped

Snow in street lamps
A prismatic dream
after a night at the pub

Stayed in town to make some phone calls, to try and solve the Jeep issues. No luck, no one was home. I'll deal with somehow, still exploring my options. Two tours through the Carters takes my mind off problems, and I had a good time. College Art History students. Stuck in town now, snow and more coming AND I don't have a vehicle. Went over to the pub and had a pint, talking with the help. The owners came in, after a day in Columbus, babysitting the grandsons. I was ready to leave, but stayed when John came over and bought me a dram of Paddy. We talked as Barb jumped right back to pub management. The place had gotten very busy before a road-show performance of something at the University Theater. I didn't sleep well, then everyone called in that they couldn't get to work, which meant I was alone, so I buried my nose in Carter research. More snow. Pegi calls in that she won't be able to get to work to open up for the bathroom crew and I agree to stay to let them in at 8:00 Monday morning. I'm becoming the Phantom of the Museum. Walk over to Kroger through a blizzard. It is beautiful in the street lights. They had some nice small cod fillets, I knew there was a toaster oven at the museum, so I got a package, and a pouch of Baby Red mashed potatoes, and a shallot, and a bottle of whiskey. They weren't the best codfish cakes I've ever made, but they were pretty damned good. I stole some of TR's left-over salsa to top them on top of the left-over mashed potatoes. I remembered Cape Cod, doing my Post-Doctoral studies in codfish cakes. Better to be remembered for one dish than to not be remembered at all. Actually, I'm a good cook, I love letting the ingredients speak. It's all in the materials. Thinking about that today. Remembering the codfish cakes at Kay's Restaurant, where I sometimes supplied the cod, after a stint of night-fishing on the outer beach, which allowed me access to Kay's knowledge of cod and codfish cakes. I went to school in her kitchen. It wasn't my Mom's kitchen, which was completely Southern, and involved no seafood other than fried fresh-water fish and never any garlic. Read more...