Still Crazy

Rain comes in, staccato beat. I got up, to put out a couple of buckets, after it had rained hard for an hour, washing the roof of spring debris, catkins and pollen, the remnants of vegetable sex. I'll need to filter this water through a piece of tee-shirt, four pieces per shirt, that I push-pin to a frame, into another bucket. It's a good system, if you live alone and don't care that much about personal hygiene. I'm clean, generally, and my particular body smell doesn't seem to be offensive, a kind of musky tobacco scent that most people dismiss as a farmhand. Which is fine. Might be that I was mucking out the barn (conditional, do I have that correctly?) or any of the various chores that put me in direct contact with shit. Roy Blount Junior called his music "hard listening" which I think is a fair assessment of what comes to pass. Weekends especially, when I tangle with the beast. I never could understand why you needed to go somewhere else, addressing my ex-wife here, when we had everything at home. Which is, of course, the flaw, the something in the ointment. It's fine now, I don't care. What I see, actually, is that we are alone. Not a cause for alarm, we've always been alone. I can't turn on the radio because the news is sentimental. Finally I turn everything off and roll a smoke in what passes for silence. A distant Whip-O-Will, the drops of rain, frogs in that distant puddle. I pride myself on being fair. It's tomorrow, I have to go. Sleep usually helps. This time it doesn't. A branch breaks off a tree and sounds like a howitzer in the dark. I sit up so quickly I pop my neck, that top vertebrae (the Atlas?) grinds against the next one down with an actual sound, it doesn't hurt, any more than what I'm used to, I assume a certain amount of pain as part of the cost of doing business, but I do think, for a moment, that I might have broken my neck. How silly to die over a broken branch. I test various body parts and everything seems to work ok, so I just get up and roll a smoke. Fuck a bunch of grinding neck sounds. Cavalier in my thoughts, once I would have thought it might make a difference, what you might accomplish within a given timeframe, now I know it doesn't matter. Doctor John. Looking in from the outside. Clown college. Between rain showers I walk out the ridge beyond the graveyard, just at dusk I find a couple of very large morels, six inches or more, dark and earthy. I have enough small, lighter colored ones for brunch tomorrow, so as soon as I get back to the house, I clean them with a napkin (flecks of leaf matter), slice them into rings, and put them in the dryer that Mister Barnhart, in his wisdom, gave me a few years ago. It is possible that dried morels, reconstituted in Sherry or Madeira, are even better than fresh ones. I intend to research this issue the rest of my life. Mad-Tom, by the way, in addition to being the subject of several British ballads, is a species of catfish, of the genus Noturus , having a poisonous pectoral spine. Don't know why that came to mind, a friend in Colorado called me that, to distinguish me from the other Tom on the three man crew that we assembled once a year to build a house for someone. When it was Tom, Dennis, and me, we were a great crew. We were the go-to guys when another crew had really fucked up and didn't know what to do. Staircases were our specialty, but we could do anything, actually. Dennis once spent an entire winter building a set of bunk-beds, that could be broken down into a set of sticks and reassembled in minutes and contained not a single ounce of metal. And when it was put together, it was rock-solid firm. Attachment. At The Opera Company Of Boston we used coffin-locks a lot. Look them up, they're wonderful recessed cam-driven units that provide absolute closure. We used them to secure scenic pieces down to a turn-table, for instance, because they could be released so quickly. Half a turn with whatever that tool is called, the female Allen Wrench. I'm not sure I ever knew the name, we just referred to it as the Coffin Wrench. Friction and inertia, being what they are, a very tight attachment will hold almost anything, physical things I mean, not marriages or sanity, I can't speak to them. Securing a piece of scenery is fairly straight-forward, attach A to B. A broken marriage is a whole other kettle of fish. The dead and dying litter the floor. I usually advise that you scoop everything into a doubled trash bag and throw it away; sometimes you need to poke it with stick, to be sure, but you can omit that step if it looks like shit, and smells like shit, Chances are. Read more...

As Expected

I'm not usually allergic, but the cat hair has gotten to me and I'm doing my best imitation of a 1950's TB ward. My nose is raw and I can't see clearly. Julia gave us both a hundred bucks, which makes up for a certain level of discomfort, we were expecting maybe lunch and a bottle of whiskey. And then when I get home, my State tax return is in the mail, so I have a few hundred dollars, extra, floating out there; I vow to make a trip to the Scioto Shoe Mart, attempt WalMart again, that fucking gift card will be the death of me, and treat myself to maybe a chocolate bar. I don't look for reciprocity so much as just a rut that allows me to achieve the ridge. Sneeze, sneeze, cough. I don't want to talk about my failures, which are numerous and across the board, I can screw-up almost anything, trust me. Rather you should hire an incompetent accountant than you should keep books yourself. I love when the moon moves behind a tree. It was spectacular last night. I needed to start stocking the house, so I went into town, had lunch with TR and D. Then helped D tile where the heater had been. Mostly I fetched things. Left early, stopped at Kroger, whiskey, drinking water (39 cents a gallon in my own green tea jugs), a juice supply. I just get the amount of stuff that I can carry in one trip, as I park on the other side of the frog puddles, maybe 50 yards away, and my feet, the last year are so, are always tired when I come home. I don't want to walk back to the Jeep. What I want is comfortable slippers and a drink. I do go back out, in my slippers, and collect enough morels for dinner. A small fritata, six-inch cast iron skillet, my omelet skillet, to which nothing sticks (walnut oil, and a great many heating and cooling cycles), with some halved grape tomatoes and the usual caramelized onions. It's very good. Several pieces of toast, smeared with the last corners of the jam jars. I had some very good jams this past year, people send them to me, and I love toast, so it's a match made in heaven. The kim-chee Michael left in the mailbox is wonderful, D allowed he was not a fan, but I love it, scrambled eggs with kim-chee is one of my favorite things in the world. And I like just eating it when I'm grazing through some cheese and crackers. The radio, playing softly in the background, I jump up and crank the volume, Patsy Cline, doing a Willie Nelson song, "Crazy". Laid back, almost out of touch, looking for Mom's cell phone number, which I find, so I can call her tomorrow, I also find the email address for Esquire, who was on that crew for the American Premier of Berlioz's great opera, " Les Troyens", the same year we did Beverly Sills' last "Traviata". I get the occasional note from a year-book site that has me in their database, I haven't made contact with any of these people ever, but I still get messages. In Apple, I have to open the message before I can delete, in my preferred medium, parsnips running to turnips, I can delete things without actually reading them. I delete everything, as a matter of course. Heaven forbid you had privy to my thought. Still, I have to ask, her last "Traviata"? Read more...

Hawking Lugers

It's perfect. Deciding where you might spit. Nothing prepares you for the real world. Where you wake you coughing and gasping for breath. About which more anon. An interesting day. We had an old heater removed from the back hallway which had been in place before the museum was tiled, we have some of the tile, so we can fix that; I spent the morning with a hammer and cold chisel knocking out the cut tiles and mortar. D remembers at the last minute that one of the board members, Julia, had asked us to meet her at a relative's house at noon. The relative had died and Julia was in charge of the estate. Would we come out and look at the art work. Of course we would, thinking we might be looking at a few pieces. More than a hundred as it turned out, the house was crammed with stuff, some of it kitschy, but some it quite nice. We spent over two hours, separating things into various stacks. Many pieces are coming to the museum, for the next auction, some of the folk art (we know the artist) can be sold to a specialty gallery in Columbus, some things we have to find out about. There was some very valuable Theodore Roosevelt stuff, signed letters ($20,000, maybe), some rare posters, on and on. Very interesting. The woman had died at home, suddenly, and she had nine cats, the place smelled, and there was cat hair everywhere, D and I both suffering by the time we left. I know that when I wake up tomorrow there will be much hacking followed by the removal of much debris from my orifices. Late lunch, then repaired the wall behind where the heater had been, and the day was done. Flew by. Fortunately I needed gas this morning and stopped at the old Bodie's (turn left at the house that used to be painted white) and the breakfast sandwiches smelled so that I got one, sausage, egg, cheese. And a pint of chocolate milk, which I enjoy a couple of times a week, so I was well fortified for the day. Beef stew and a lot of crackers at the pub for lunch, and I wanted a beer very badly, to clean the roof of my mouth, but I drank copious quantities of water instead. I'll be coughing up a hair-ball tomorrow. Great line for a blues song. Writing that got me making up blues' lines (is that correct Mac?) which were awful, so pried myself from my chair and went out looking for morels. I found six or eight, just to the south of the grave-yard, then another couple out behind the shed, enough for a meal. I substitute baby roasted potatoes, most of the time, for my side, at the pub. Little container of sour cream. They accrue. So I nuke a handful of those, with the sour cream, saute a piece of shallot and then the morels in butter with black pepper, smash up the potatoes in a bowl, and cover it with the contents of the pan. I should have put a fried egg on top, I will, next time. I took a couple of books from the estate, Julia told me to, a history of carousels, for the library circus collection, and, for myself, a paperback copy of an Anthony Burgess novel I'd never heard of ,"M/F" (the slash, again), and I love Burgess, his writing is beautiful. I don't really care that he was otherwise a prick. At least what I heard, the writing is so considered. I think no one, modern, has added so many words to the OED. He picks at language like a rock-hound. Read more...

Logistics

Not much happening at work, just Pegi and me, and she's gone a lot. I clean up the kitchen, from the docent lunch, then move on to the bathrooms, mop the back hallway. Finals (2) weeks at the college, and I give several students tutorials on various Carter paintings. One young lady is fetching, in her skinny jeans and cropped top, and she's bright, asked several questions that required complex answers. She asked me how I knew a certain thing, about the summer of 1943, and I take her to Sara's office and show her the volumes of letters, and photographs, newspaper clippings, and record books. 1943, I show her, Carter was at Chautauqua, finishing work on "Let Us Give Thanks" so it could be in the Carnegie show that fall. I know about the cabin they were living in, I what were Mary's concerns. For some of the days that summer, that he was Painter In Residence, I know what they had for dinner. Almost closing time, I took a couple of platters back over to the pub (they catered the docent briefing), and the owner wants me to sample a new beer, I'm talking an ounce here, which she hands me in a coffee cup; a lemony thing, "Summer Shanty", and it's nice, in a summery way. On the ridge I see that B is working on his garden fence, so I stop at the top of the hill and walk over, to tell him Howard is bringing a loin, and wondering how many people we might be feeding. We draw the line at ten, agree to meet and discuss the menu. To feed ten people well is not an easy task. I have no doubt that B and I can do it, we cooked for seventy, once, at Howard's 70th birthday as it happens; but everyone else did everything else, brought the potato salad, made the coleslaw, even just opened that can of Medium Black Olives. Some gherkins, a piece of double cheddar, some medium pitted black olives, would be a good lunch, with a smile and a cup of espresso. I start a list. When you live 17 miles from the store, a list becomes very important. Especially because this is a big fucking deal for Howard, the French rights to a book, people flying over to film him; and the same people are making a movie of his masterful novella "The Man Who Walked To The Moon", one of my favorite books in the language. But, slash, And, my dearest friend, Glenn, could well be here the weekend before and we're considering another film also, a low-key study of the art of docenting, wherein we might look closely at a particular flower, a particular painting, or the way drainage affects the driveway. So there's much to think about. And I need to clean the house, a bit, at least, and muck out the outhouse, because I'm not used to this much traffic. When we did "Emily" Linda stayed in town, at Sara and Clay's apartment, and TR had his own place, so the burden was light. A great full moon, though I'd hardly call it pink, and those god-damn Whip-O-Wills make sleep almost impossible. B mentioned, reiterated, something: we were standing outside his cabin, and he noted (it had been much on mind) they we both preferred to be left completely alone. Not quite true, because I look forward to Glenn, and it'll be fun to feed some Frenchmen, and it's just a few days, in the course of a year. The conversation will be top-notch; which, therein, is the rub. Smacks me as elitist, but I'd rather not talk at all if I can't have an intelligent conversation. Definitely not pink, I'd call it a bright yellow white. What? Oh, right, I'd rather be left alone than to have to make small talk about how your dog likes to ride in the car with his head out the window, or wether or not the Red Sox can make the world series. Spare me. I hadn't wanted to get into this, I tend to avoid issues, but there are two worlds, at least: in one of them you toe the corporate line, and in the other you don't. Wrap in my tangled blanket and take it home. Read more...

Full Moon

Fucking ruckus. Two Whip-O-Wills, bad enough, then a pack of dogs tree a opossum on the compost heap, and she, of course plays opossum: there's 'fight or flight' and there's just playing dead. Drives the dogs crazy and I have to go out and throw a couple of rocks. I need a stethoscope, but I finally find her heart beat with my fingers and it's very slow. I put her on the roof of the outhouse, where, I figure, she's safe and I can go back to bed. The moon is full Thursday and all the scuttlebutt is about a 'pink' full moon that proceeds an eclipse. I don't know what that means. Why would light be refracted a particular way? It might be meaning, but it just might be happenstance. Pink, in my experience, is usually artificial, just saying, watch your flank. B came over, and we discussed a meal we might make for our dear friend Howard and a French crew that are interviewing and filming him for the release of a book of his in France. They'll be here a couple of days. I'm going to do a whole pork loin, marinated in cranberry/pomegranate juice with chilies, dry it real well, dampen it with maple syrup, then roll in ground nuts, sage leaves, some bacon barding, brown it on all sides, then wrap it in foil and cook off the heat (on the grill) for maybe an hour and a half. Roasted root vegetables, bread, the sauce. See what the French crew thinks. We could do a morel risotto, if Jenny comes over (she loves Howard, as do we all) as she is the morel queen. A nice creamy risotto might be better than the roasted vegetables. I've found that good old yellow Spanish onions caramelize the best. Sweet onions, which I love, are mostly water. I only mention that because I now caramelize the onions and garlic for the risotto. I can spend an entire afternoon making one of these; but it doesn't matter, if all I'm doing otherwise is reading a book. Not like it's lost time. Mostly I'm sitting at the island reading a book. I have a magnetized timer that I keep on the door of the fridge, to remind me when to stir, and I have a bookmark. What I think of as a 'closed system', and I make more risottos than your average guy, so I probably know what I'm talking about. Took three art history classes through the museum today. I was good, better than these students suspected I might be, in that I engaged their attention and drew them to some attention of detail, but I wasn't better than average, which, quite frankly is a place I desire to be better than. I'm not sure that's a legal usage. Mac mentioned the "conditional" and I had to laugh, of course it is. D was teaching, Trish was off, taking the 17 year-old step daughter to the doctor (due next week), so when Pegi left at four, I was the only person there. One of the art students came back, to ask questions about a specific Carter; they have to write a paper. She had picked the painting called "Chickens Through The Window", and I know a lot about that particular painting. I had her madly scribbling notes for half-an-hour. Had to stop at Kroger, for whiskey; and I thought they might have some Kim-chi, for which I had a hankering, but alas, no. Maybe Howard, or Glenn, who's visiting next week, can bring me some. When the skies finally clear, after midnight, the almost full moon pokes through the ether, beautiful and transiting my writing window. End of the day, I'm exhausted. The drive home centers me back in the natural world. The Red-buds, around that last curve of Upper Twin, are flagrant. They prefer open light, so they thrive on the verge, and there's a run of them, leading up to my mailbox, at the bottom of the hill, that would make you weep. All winter we survive a deficit of color, then this: what dogwoods remain, the Red-buds, and the crest of a pileated woodpecker. Read more...

Concrete Dust

Nothing for it. A new bag in the vacuum, and I go over the stage twice, then mop twice. TR wiped down the two tables that were on stage. He stopped back by, after teaching, and he, D and I cleared the stage. The classroom abuts the back of the stage, and there's a set of double doors. The stage piano, another baby grand, lives on a rolling platform (it doesn't move easily) which has to be rolled away from the doors, so they can be opened, then rolled back forward and locked in place. Then the piano gets rolls through, under the velour drape, and onto the stage. This is an enormous pain in the ass, but we only have to do it a few times a year. Safely accomplished, but I'll need to clean everything again, I'll wait until after the Stanley Steamer guys come tomorrow to clean the theater seats, which are also covered in concrete dust. Then I can vacuum the new carpet, which still suffers installation debris. I have to clean the downstairs hallway, so that the various workers don't track dust back on to what I've cleaned. It's a nightmare, but I'm beginning to get it under control. Someone smashed my mailbox, with a baseball bat I'm guessing, so I need to get a new one tomorrow and cut a board to fit the bottom so I can mount it on the post. Fucking vandals, I just don't get it, I wish them nothing but ill will. It's a sport, out in the country, to drive around with a twelve-pack of Bud Light and an aluminum bat, switch off the driving, and smash mailboxes. Why not just split wood? I'm supposed to get some thunderstorms, and it looks like I could, so I might have to stop writing. I already see some lightening. Rain. Better go. Quite the light show and thunder, to parse the time, but it's moving off to the SE and not a concern to me. I wore a throw-away set of clothes today. Wanted to stay in town and have a beer, but I knew I could beat the thunderstorms home if I left right after work, and I chose to do that, get my ass back on the ridge. Artillery in the distance. Rolling thunder. My writing window, where I face when I'm writing, is almost always the leeward, and I leave that window open, most of the time, for eight months of the year, because I like to smell the world, up here it's fecund and deep. I have to go, it's getting fairly vicious. Quite the spectacular storm last night. Quickly lost power and phone but it was fine because I would have sat in the dark, anyway, to watch and listen. Drifted off to sleep afterwards. This morning, early, the power came back on, I just rolled over and went back to sleep. A little dicey, getting off the hill. Slick at the top, but the drive in was lovely; it was still raining lightly, had rained hard in the night, and all the new color was washed of the dust and pollen. In toward town, the greens were stunningly beautiful. I took a group of college kids through the print show, first thing, last thing I did was take another group through the Carters. In between, TR and I got a start on cleaning the concrete dust from the downstairs hallway, which serves as backstage, and the percussion trio playing on Friday night all dress in black. I think I can finish cleaning it tomorrow, then clean the new bathrooms and mop the back hallway and the main gallery on Friday. I was having a smoke outside the back door, and Fatima pulled up, got out, looking great, and wondered if she could book me for three of her classes on next Wednesday, to do the whole museum. Of course she can, it'll take up my entire day, but we are, after all, a museum, and I am the best at this. I hit my stride when I'm bullshitting about twentieth century American art. It's just that I know so much detail, who was there, what was said, I know specifically where they were; I've sat in that same room many times since, usually my living room, it's not really comfortable or uncomfortable. Figure it out. I find my lifestyle leads me toward, first, removing a comma, and then justifying that: in the way the world worked, it wouldn't matter. If therefor then. Still no phone, so me and my modem are high and dry, no way to SEND. On the way home today, technically yesterday, daydreaming, I'd stopped for gas, picked up a burger and fries. There were a couple of people at the lake, and I didn't feel social, so I drove down to the turn-around where Mackletree Creek runs in. It's a fine spot, sandstone ledges, what I think of as creek-bank growth; not many thrushes anymore, but there are always crows, dining on the tossed bits of food. I'm not anti-social, but I don't want to waste my time, and I often stop, on the way home, looking for some mediation between the outside world and the inside world. Bear with me. There was just a ruckus in the outside world that broke my concentration. Two coons and a single piece of meat. That turn-off, where the creek runs into the lake, is also where I get my throwing rocks, the fines are perfect. Who would ever imagine that you would find a place where there were perfect throwing rocks? Another day cleaning the theater and the downstairs hallway. Stopped at the hardware store and got a new mailbox, then parked at the bottom of the hill and installed it, walked in, because there's a 100% chance of big storms tonight and tomorrow morning, and I don't feel like taking a Nantucket sleigh ride in the morning. The phone is still out, three days now, and I found the culprit on the way home. A large dead oak that must have hit the line pretty damn hard. The phone line is inside a shielded cable, very strong, and they keep a certain slack in the line, to absorb shock. Usually works, but this was a big tree. I'll catch one of the Frontier guys tomorrow, they meet for morning coffee in a parking lot out back. Better I tell them, because the lady I talk to in Nashville isn't going to know the area. Three-tenths of a mile from where Booby's sawmill used to be. Had to turn on the window AC for Black Dell, 88 degrees inside when I got home. She labors above 78. Enjoyed the walk in because that whole array of miniature flowers are coming up in the disturbed ground of the median. I usually walk up and down in the outside rut; and it's best, if you're going to look closely, to look when you're going uphill, leaning downhill can lead to serious injury. This could be the year of the squirrel, along with the cicadas, they're everywhere, and bark like small dogs when they feel I've invaded their space. I have to deal with territorial squirrels, and two pair of jeans that are impregnated with concrete dust. I can do this, I'm a professional. My turf, my call; I'll wash the contaminated pants in a separate washer, no big deal. Professor Longhair. The Cincy Percussion Trio. Coming tomorrow, a John Cage we're not supposed to hear. These guys are reconstructing Cage's music from mere notes. I think I'll have to stay in town for that. Send a note from town saying I can't send from the country, because, back of beyond, I'm the end of the phone line and not a high priority. I'm sympathetic, because they'll have to send out the tree guys and the phone guys, probably cost a couple of thousand dollars for my thirty bucks a month. I understand I'm a liability, but I had been promised phone service. "Broke Down Palace", The Grateful Dead in rare form, and I only heard it because that fucking pack of dogs woke me. Want to shoot them all, I was having great dream, in which I was the hero of my own life story. A pastiche that involved second cousins I lusted after. A great dream until these goddamn dogs entered the scene. I had left the radio on because I was listening to the news, Boston; West, Texas. But I drifted off asleep and the words were just a patter-song, playing against the rain. Information takes many forms. I can almost make sense of things, in a linear fashion, first one thing, then another. I have to laugh., because that is SO not the way life happens. Fits and starts is closer to the point. I try not to do anything I can't justify. Bottom line. After that, I just make things up.

Another day, lovely walk down the driveway, blackberry canes just beginning to bud, the red maples in the bottom are leafing, the poplars leafing too, from the top down, as is their fashion. Myriad miniature flowers. A white trillium. Much to be done for the concert, Percussion Group Cincinnati. I finish getting the theater ready, the bathrooms, mop the hallway from the elevator to the stage in the basement; and after lunch the group was there to unload. They had done a show in the morning for elementary school kids at Portsmouth West, a performance they call "Music From Scratch" where they do a show using objects they find in the classrooms. Their vehicle is an extended-cab van and it's packed to the gills, packed better than any vehicle I've ever seen. A huge number of instruments. More drums than I've ever seen in one place. They set up, which takes a couple of hours; I check in every once in a while, to listen to them plink, and to talk with my friend, The Music Guy, Michael B, who will be reading the text for a John Cage piece from the 1942 "Credo In Us" which they're actually not supposed to play (there are copyright issues), but these guys are Cage scholars. Cage wrote pieces for them. So they swear the audience to secrecy and play the piece anyway. It's brilliant, written for Merce Cunningham (who is rumored to have 'collected' the text, they're all quotes) and his dancers. There are radios involved, prepared piano, and the largest xylophone I've ever seen. All three of them play it at the same time in the last piece they do "Chilean Songs" and it's a knockout. They play under and over each other in a way I never would have thought possible. The concert is wonderful. Then that aspect of theater that the public never sees, where you grab a quick bite to eat, then pack everything up, then load it out, every thing is heavy and it's late. I just stayed in town, not just because of the concert, but because I knew they were doing the main concrete pour in the alley today, and I was damned sure going to be there for that. It's a huge pour, nine guys; and there are five guys working next door, dismantling a brick parapet forty feet in the air, before it falls apart. I needed to be there so I could allow them access to the bathrooms because they drink a lot of Gatorade and need to piss. Bob's concrete crew are pretty good. I had a better crew in Colorado, and a better crew in Mississippi, but they are putting a reverse chamber down the middle of the alley, for drainage, and they spread on some colored pigment and imprint a stone pattern. It looks nice. TR and I go over to the pub for lunch and watch a bit of soccer. I have a pint of beer, because I'm going home after and intend a nice afternoon and evening of doing nothing but hunting for morels and reading. Which comes to pass. A couple of hours later I'm deep in the forest, with my kit, kneeling on my foam pad, looking at a perfect small white flower. Yesterday and today were the Bradford Pear sepal snow days: blowing and drifting petals that clog the gutters in town, but out here, in the country, the most exciting thing is that I find a large clutch of morels. Polenta is left-over grits, the way I do them, in a crock pot; I pack them into a tubular form, whatever's handy, then slice them, and fry them in butter. Morels in a cream sauce on top. Lord god. And that got me thinking about a risotto which I'll probably do tomorrow. A morel risotto would lead to a left-over fried cake, which, topped with an egg, might well be one of the best things ever. Looking down the pike here, just saying, I can't listen to the radio, it's too loud, I kill the breaker for the refrigerator, nothing but the hum of Black Dell and her harmonic overtones. The susurration of new leaves. I hadn't built a fire, and I wake up, at three in the morning, cold, temps have dropped to near freezing and the house is chilled, so I go through the motions, start a fire, burn a broken desk chair, rock maple, I pulled from a dumpster, roll a smoke, get a drink, it's the weekend, after all, and I have things to think about. I worry about the museum, the way the board is assuming a hands-on control, the way Pegi is losing contact, the fact that D might leave to become a full professor. I have to think about my place in all of that. I don't care about the politics, no vested interest. I'd just as soon retire, actually, look at very small flowers with a magnifying glass. The rest is all bullshit. The natural world is the only reality. Three crows and a frog. Take it or leave it. But I love installing shows, and that incredulous stare on the faces of college students when they realize my enthusiasm for the print show or the Carter collection is genuine ("possessing the claimed character...", I've always loved that definition) as I reel off facts about some particular time or place. I have three of Fatima's classes on Wednesday which will be fun but exhausting, and I know D wants to get the back hall and front entry painted next week. However nice it would be (future pluperfect?) to sit back in my rocking chair on the back stoop (I actually have a rocking chair, from Selma, Alabama, that sat through the marches) flicking ashes from a hand-rolled cigaret toward a coffee can half-filled with sand. Sometimes I almost know where I am, in the narrative, but usually I have to add connective tissue, which I later excise, to get me from one place to another. Timing is everything. Trying to reproduce the spoken voice is difficult, the leaps we make. There are a dozen people, maybe more, with whom I can say anything. They'll more or less understand. A figure of speech, a footnote. A side-bar. But I have to say, the green is exploding, even the oaks. Color comes into play, at first just a lonely saxophone, then a replete chorus with full orchestra; and those young leaves are soft, so when they brush against each other the dance is sexual. Sensual, leaning in toward each other. Hand around the waist, whatever that means; soon, I realize, I'll be encased in green. Spring unfolds on the ridge. Two Pileated woodpeckers, monstrous in the maze, their red crowns blazing, fly in to confuse the situation. Young squirrels bounce from tree to tree. Not quite depressed, but feeling off my feed, I watch from a certain distance. I don't want to be involved. I've had enough involvement. Usually it just leaves you breathing hard, wondering what you could have done otherwise. A moment at the edge of tears, the stages of grief. Somewhere deep in the forest, I don't know where I am exactly, but I know the road, Upper Twin, is off to my right, and I can always find my way back home. Enough morels for dinner tomorrow, and the buds of sassafras are set to burst. They're luminous in the last light, vibrating in the breeze. Two large dogs, Great Dane crosses, trail me for a while, but when I stop and look at them, they drop their tails between their legs and head back the other way. The word is out, I think, that if a dog attacks me I kick it in the throat and they usually die, ending most fights before they begin. I hate fights, try to stop them before they begin, if someone insists, I pick up a 2 by 4 and slap them on the head, fair play only extends so far. I keep a sawed-off twelve gauge shotgun at the back door, bird-shot, but stil. It's best not to disturb me late at night. Get your ass shot. Alvin Youngblood playing the delta blues, reminds of Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson, late, tomorrow already; I'd had the radio on mute and crank it up when I go outside to pee, standard procedure, there might be something I want to hear. Worth listening to, I get a short glass of whiskey and roll a smoke, he plucks those strings so strongly. There's a song with no words, that he plays, about going up the river, and the harmonics build, he sounds like Leo, a cascade. Then he draws out some blues chords that stretch my heart strings. Things are coming my way, the best music I've heard in a while. Sounds like he's destroying a guitar. Not many people play with that much feeling. "Jackson High-Heeled Momma" might be the title of one song, mostly he just growled and played great guitar. He started in Carroll County, Mississippi, where I lived for ten years, what you going to do when your biscuit roller's gone? A nice segue into Doctor John. Set your thing on fire. Hey now. Blow wind blow. I heard him play at a roadhouse in Cruger,a garishly painted concrete block building with the acoustics of a gymnasium. She's so heavy. What do you want to be? One of the beautiful people. I think Paul is over-rated, Greg Brown is a way better writer of songs. Going to leave you at the station, I don't need no aggravation. Bonny. Mr. Nelson, round and round, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues". Take me to the river, walk me in the water. End of the work day Monday and still no phone. I read all day, Dave Barry's new book, which I found a little flip, but I did have some good laughs, and Best American Essays 2002, which I picked up for a buck off the sale table in the library. Made the risotto, with shallots and morels, drop dead killer good. It's about all I ate today. Pissed about the phone. The ridge opposite is a wave of color. Enjoy the view while I can, soon I'll be engulfed, encased, in a sea of green. I get my big Monday clean-up, bring in the sheep-watering trough and heat water, shaved and washed my hair at the kitchen sink, then soak for a while, rinse with the sun shower out on the back porch. The wasps have claimed the front deck. I rub lotion everywhere I can reach, then sit on a towel until it all absorbs and I can get dressed. I know D will want to start painting tomorrow, so I put a pair of throw away pants and a tattered shirt in my pack. Wednesday I'm Fatima's docent pretty much all day. I do this better than anyone. Bullshit banter, I'm so good at it, the waters just part. Hey, what about history? I have to go sleep. This is exhausting. Barely get to sleep and there's a knock on the door, and it's that kid Travis, needing to use the phone. I explain that it isn't working and have him pick it up and listen, so his folks won't think I was just being a prick. I explain that I can't do anything about it, and no, I can't drive him over to his Grandmother's house, because I had been drinking earlier and I was still a bit buzzed. Give him a glass of juice, and send him on his way, down the hill with his flashlight. I don't like how this is developing, I don't live on the ridge so I can help a 10 year old kid score pot for his step-dad. I hate being interrupted, unless it's Phillip wanting to talk about doing a Beckett play, or B with a book that I really need to read, and they yodel, from a hundred yards away, to warn me of their approach. A sharp hard knock, in the middle of the night, is shocking; all those thoughts run through your head, "1984", police state, who would I call even if I had a phone, where's the shotgun? In another world I'd mentor this kid, he's bright, he sees the way the world moves, but I'm busy, very busy, as it happens, and I can't make room for this. I want to be alone. I don't know why this is. For the most part, I'm comfortable with a book and the quiet; though it's never actually quiet. Birds now, and a dawn breeze that rustles the soft spring leaves. I value my privacy to a ridiculous extent. My fall-back positions are a tree-tip-pit and a sandstone overhang; where I keep dry tinder, I can always start a fire.

Tom

Phone works. I'd better send this and start all over. Read more...

The Woods

Ephemeral, the nature of things, soft greens and reds on the other side of the hollow. I took a long walk today, before the bugs and snakes get out. A light pack, couple of Balance bars and a bottle of water, the usual foam pad and magnifying glass, I can amuse myself for hours. There are these little lost hollows between the south ridges and the north ridges, you have to hike into them. Most of them have a spring, at their bottom, and flow, from the south, into the Ohio, and from the north into Ohio Brush Creek, which also flows into the Ohio, but many miles from here. I argued with Jenny that the drainage was dendritic, but she argued, correctly, as I've since found, that it's merely irregular. Came upon a spring today, I could probably find it again, where the water just bubbled out of the ground, cold and sweet. Climax oak and beech, no under story, and a lovely creek that wandered vaguely south. I wanted to make a large circle, cross Upper Twin, and come out over on Mackletree, so I needed to head west, all by dead reckoning, and I did hit Mackletree, within a thousand feet of where I thought I might. Looking at the map, when I get back to the house, I maybe walked six or seven miles in four hours. Found an old house site, nothing there but a few flowers, a couple of wretched apple trees, and a goodly clutch of morels, which I have folded into an omelet long before I get back home. I caramelize part of a shallot, squeeze out a handful of frozen spinach, and fry the sliced morels with a large pat of butter, several twists of sharp black pepper. I have a six-inch cast iron skillet that I use for nothing other than making omelets. Dedicated equipage. I always drink whiskey out of a hand-blown glass from Iowa, take my notes with a Cross pen in which every single part has been replaced (they have a life-time guarantee), and eat my meals on one of several pottery plates that are too heavy but singular in their color. A creature of habit. I sling my back pack over my left shoulder, to keep my right arm free, always count my steps, and carry a tune in my head. It's not rocket science. One foot in front of the other, anchoring the mop-handle walking-stick every other step; I haven't fallen, knock on wood, in several years. Walking up or down the driveway, mid-winter, crampons, a crust of ice and snow, always leading with my right foot, it's amazing to me that the walking-stick falls almost exactly in the same hole. Shouldn't be surprising, because I take care to walk in yesterday's footprints, but there's a precision that I didn't think I was capable of, and it becomes a game, nailing a hole just so. The pilgrim, alone, as is proper, hunched over, beating his way back to the cave he calls home, his tree-tip-pit, often makes a guttural sound. It's a warning he spreads before himself, so as not to be surprised. Bears leave the area, mountain lions run away, your basic alpha male. Read more...

Jargon

A lot of people, I can hardly understand them anymore. And everyone texting all the time, even when you're talking to them. Jargon, in the workplace, springs from necessity: a carpenter needs to call a thing something, a printer, a paper-maker, a secretary. We need names for things so we can refer to them. A mason, for instance, calls an upright brick on edge, a soldier; and upright brick, face out, is a sailor. Across the trades, especially, it can get very thick, a patois, that, as a subset, becomes regional. Calling cues, as a Stage Manager, is a tightly contained language; being the ram-rod for a large concrete pour; installing an exhibit of paintings. English is a wonderful, very rich language, and I find myself trolling through it almost all the time. Most of the notes I make anymore are simple word lists, and I'm sure I spend an hour a day with my reading glasses on, scouring back through several dictionaries, usually trying to find out when a particular word came to mean a particular thing. The easiest way to codify something, is to couch it in a dead language: botany, and to a certain extent, architecture (ogee, plinth, pediment), and I do love having a conversation with Jenny, the Park Service Naturalist, because she drops in the Latin name for a specific plant, not to flaunt her knowledge, but because that is the name of a specific plant. On the other hand is a time I had just given a reading, at the University of Pennsylvania, we were walking outside, a couple of students, my host and myself, having a smoke, I had a flask I passed around, and we were talking about the 'corruption' of language even then. I think I was still using a typewriter. And out of the blue, one of the students, a male, 20 maybe, said:"Man, that reading was the shits." I didn't know what he meant, it sounded like a negative review, but it turned out that it was a compliment. I still don't understand the mechanics of that. He said he had never heard anyone read in such a natural voice, and we talked about that for awhile, whatever the natural voice is, and he wondered how I was able to tap into that. I didn't want to tell him that it often took me eight hours to write a page, a paragraph, hooks and glosses and adumbration. Removing conjunctions, changing periods to commas. This is hard work. To make it feel easy. If you lived in the south, you had an uncle that told stories. The oral tradition comes to bear. Bear, in that usage, for instance, meaning a load carried to a specific point. I'm not concerned with 'bearing' so much as the span of the beams because wood is so good under compression. I make a guess, pi R squared or some calculation, an algorithm, and elect to carry that load with a 6x10 inch Pony Beam, I don't know why it's called that, fucking jargon. Read more...

Late Wind

No rain, but a wind howling in off The Plains, that makes you sit up and take notice. The house shakes, it carries the load beautifully, through the beams down to a post. Designed with high wind in mind. Highest ridgetop in the county. More exposure than you'd ask for, normally, early homes are nestled in the hollows; the tops of the ridges reserved for graveyards and orchards. It's wild, a night like tonight, snapping branches like gunshots in the dark. I was napping, on the sofa, when a deep rumble came in from the northwest, like a freight-train, and the house bent under the strain. Oak is so wonderful in this regard, look at the way Viking longboats dealt with the sea, they literally ripple. I have to get up, the house is shaking, but I still have electricity, amazingly, and that blast, 60 or 70 mph wind, was the front of this new weather. Supposed to be nice, actually, and I look forward to that, but the immediate consequence is that a precarious pile of books falls over and I have to stack them back up. I have a very good LED headlamp that Howard sent me, and I'm sitting cross-legged at the bookcase I've fabricated from a defunct aquarium and some planks, it's not a handsome thing, Ellis Island, for books just entering the system. And it's a good thing, this windfall, because it allows me to see these books right now, and I might not have seen them for months otherwise. It strikes me, though, sitting thus, reading the titles and the authors out loud, with a headlight, that this could be considered strange behavior. I don't even know where these books came from. I process books. Real books, that exist in space and time. I organize them back into two piles, spines facing out. The top books in both piles are books that I want to read, and get them moved into the stacks, although the stacks are full. I installed a couple of bookshelves upstairs, and I'm moving collected works up there, all of Faulkner, all of Jim Harrison, all of Claude Levi-Strauss, which frees up several feet of shelves downstairs. This project is going well, except that I spend an inordinate amount of time handling books. It's my second favorite thing to do, after punching at a keyboard with two fingers (first finger of the right hand, middle finger on the left) and seeing what I remember. Pretty much a passion for me, now. The rest of the social niceties are meaningless crap, and I don't have any time for meaningless crap. Meaningful crap I have sufficient time for. One benefit of global warming is the opening of the Northwest Passage, a very good thing for China and Canada. I think about that for a while. A woodpecker flies into the scene I see, looking a little worse for wear, like he'd been beating his head against a tree all day. Completely dark, after nine at night, the kid, Travis, shows up with his foster dad or step-dad or whatever, and I almost shoot them. One thing you don't want to do is surprise someone who lives alone in the woods. The kid is fairly bright, but the father is dumber than a sack of rocks. I explain to them that I live alone for a reason and that I don't like being interrupted. They don't get the point, just want to use my phone, to see when Granny is picking them up in the morning. I have no patience with stupid people, may they rot in hell, purgatory isn't good enough. Read more...

Shopping Experience

I hate Walmart, but I had a couple of gift cards that had to be spent there and I needed a few things since I literally haven't bought any clothes in ten years. People give me clothes, they gain weight and I don't. So I headed out to the Super Center. It wasn't too crowded, I found what I needed, a pair of work jeans with a hammer loop, a Levi denim shirt, and a pair of shoes that felt like they'd be comfortable to work in. Headed to the bank of cash registers. Two lines of ten people each at the two open registers, all of them with shopping carts piled high. After ten minutes I placed my would-be purchases on a display case and left empty handed. Stopped at the library, then at the museum, to help D put away tables and chairs, he said Sunday morning, before the church crowd, was the only time to go. Stopped at Kroger, for whiskey and a pork tenderloin, drove home the long way around, up the creek. A lovely ride. Boosted my spirits after my failed shopping venture. Jesus Dudley Christ (thank you Mac), I can't even go to the fucking Walmart. I almost had an anxiety attack, I was so close to getting some things that I've needed for over a year. Kroger actually carries underwear, it's too expensive but who cares? You can bet I had a running dialog with myself the rest of the day. I do the whole tirade thing very well, it's why I left theater, using temper as a tool. For a few years after that, maybe a decade, I'd go off on a rant, usually about some piece on the radio, usually on a Sunday. A performance piece, actually, to amuse myself and vent whatever might be stored beneath the surface. Not much, anymore; I mostly stand aside and watch, as my friend Joel, the Wittgenstein Plumber, said: "the shit flowing downhill". It's the perfect temp at the house, open a couple of windows and smell the outside. Found another clutch of morels, so I cut some slices of the tenderloin and pounded them out very thin, rolled them up with caramelized shallots, morels, and shaved parmesan. These are really good. Write home about good. Trace through all of history good; and I eat them, dipped in a butter sauce, with my fingers, and feel like I own the world. There might be three or two other people that could claim this spot, but right now, but I think I'm at the top of the heap. Just in terms of something you had eaten recently. Wait, what were we talking about? I certainly notice that I'm more easily confused, what did Sara or D or B mean by what they said. I'll go to my grave not knowing, but these cylinders of authenticity, they cloud the playing field. Read more...

Country Music

Willie Nelson writing songs for Patsy Cline. An interesting hour listening to music from the Country Music Hall of Fame. Nashville and Bakersfield, California. Robert's. RCA Studio B, Elvis, one-pass recording. Chet Adkins. What's his name, playing the piano, "Last Date", Floyd Cramer. " Gentle On My Mind", John Hartford, a great song. Elvis recorded 200 songs in that studio. "It's Now or Never". I have to look into this, even though I've always found the lap-steel guitar to be disconcerting. No pain no gain, right? I found a small clutch of morels, stuffed them with caramelized shallots and cream cheese. I don't want to tell you how good these were. One of the best things I've ever eaten. Filled all of my water buckets, wash water for a month. Got to town early enough to have a chocolate milk and a scone beneath the floodwall. River traffic in the fog amazes me. Putting stuff away, from the reception, then setting up for the music event all morning, cleaning; then in the afternoon, D replaced some lights in the permanently installed artifact exhibit, and, now that the dust has settled, I started cleaning all the surfaces. Had to haul trash, from last night, to make room for the trash from tonight. I grazed a bit, while Pegi and Meagan arranged the finger-food on various trays and in various bowls. Again, so many people there, that I left half-an-hour early, drove down the river road, which is beautiful right now, then all the way up the creek to it's very source. In the bottoms, on the river, colors are exploding. The background color, a palette of green, intensifies. So much happening that it boggles the mind, I look at a bush one day, and it's a bunch of sticks, the next day it's leafing out. It all happens so fast. Next thing you know you're a grandparent. I run the Jeep through the ford a few times, to clean the wheel wells, stop, in the middle of the creek, clamber out on the hood without getting my feet wet, roll a smoke, watching a couple of young squirrels frisk about. I hear another vehicle coming up the road, and it's a Park Ranger I don't know, who stops, to see if I'm in trouble, parked in the middle of the creek, sitting on the hood, smoking a cigaret. He's clearly perplexed, but I put him at ease, with a few simple questions, what's this, what's that, and he asks me to roll him a smoke. I get this a lot, because I smoke, and because I roll my own. I roll him one, it's an easy gesture, I've rolled thousands of these, and he's taken with my dexterity. I blow it off. I can roll a cigaret, big deal. Meanwhile three crows have set up a raucous chorus in the background. He's never heard of Patsy Cline. Someplace, you draw the line, meaning emerges. Deny what you will. When your panties are in a wad. I've experienced almost everything, but this new spring is special. Emerging as it does. Read more...

Frayed Nerves

Too nice a day for ire to get the upper hand. D said some hurtful things to me, in a tone of voice that I'll not soon forget. No one has talked to me that way for twenty years. I held my tongue, which is unusual for me, went about finishing the high school show. Attached the labels on all fifty pieces (had to count them three times, because I had a left-over label, and no corresponding image in the cheat sheets Sharee makes me so I can label correctly) which led to a few phone calls. The piece is not in the show, alas Breanna, you didn't make the cut. The Bradford Pears in town are beautiful. Because they're self-crowning, require no trimming, they're a popular urban tree, except that they have too little limb-strength and they're always losing major branches. But they look good, for about a week, in the spring, then it rains white blossoms for days, as the leaves push the blooms out of the way. I wouldn't plant one on a bet, but a lot of people do, along their driveways. My driveway is pretty ragged, sassafras and blackberry; my life is pretty ragged, when you get right down to it. I was considering just throwing a dart at a map of the United States and moving there. I could be done with Southern Ohio, it's clannish, and I'd rather never know anyone ever again, than to be talked to in that tone of voice, I'd rather just be left alone. D left early, to take a girl child to the dentist, and Pegi came and asked me what the hell was going on, and I told her, truthfully, that I didn't know. She needed to leave early too, I told her everything was cool, I had to finish the labels and mop the floor. There were 120 third-graders in the museum today and the main bathrooms were a mess, because there are no toilet paper dispensers, no paper towels dispensers, and no trash cans. Looked like a young paper war had erupted. I hesitate to say anything, saying is, specifically, what got me in hot water. If you were going to paint the walls of the theater, future pluperfect, you would do that before you re-carpeted, eliminating the need for cutting-in two hundred feet of bottom edge. Hello? I have to go, thunderstorms, moving in from the northwest. This whole storm seems weak, but it comes in like a lion. Oh, that's right, April. I had a good day, solo at the museum, collected trash and debris, cleaned out the two galleries swhere the high school show is installed, and got the kitchen cleaned out for the food-service for the reception tomorrow evening. Got the carpet scraps (large pieces and copious quantities) hauled over to the Cirque studio, so that TR and I can start cleaning the theater maybe tomorrow. Have to set up for the reception, then the next night for a concert in the main gallery. Pretty sure D doesn't think I work hard enough, but I'm right at the limit for these old bones. I have some art history classes tomorrow, to docent, then three next Tuesday. I look forward to them. Took the morning off to go get my taxes done. So, I didn't know Social Security was taxable, but I hadn't read the fine print, that revealed you could earn up to a certain amount and it wasn't taxed. I fall below. So instead of paying an extra thousand I get a thousand back, which I can immediately send to my older daughter, so that she and her significant can visit at the end of summer. April 10, 2013, and I work most of the day in a tee-shirt. Mopping chevrons. Sorting shit and hauling it to the basement. And on the way home there's a Bald Eagle eating roadkill, a coon splashed flat, I can tell from the tail, and the eagle is a female, and I know what her home-life must be like, taking care of the kids and trying to keep house, an eagle's nest is even messier than my house. Read more...

Ridged

The glow of the Red Maples breaking bud on the far side of the hollow, a lovely thing. Rain coming in, but gloriously warm. I'd been reading so much non-fiction, it was a relief to spend the day reading the latest John Sandford novel. Great escapist reading. After this next rain should be the first big flush of morels. I'm getting a few, but there hasn't been a flush yet. A flush is where you stand in one place and collect eight or ten. Several windows open, to cool my old black Dell. Beans, a fried egg and morels on toast for dinner. Down to a tee-shirt. Frogs having a last go at it, out at the puddles. The puddles need some water or we're going to have another die-off year for the frogs. It's not critical yet, but the egg cases are floating on the surface, slightly exposed, and they want to be under water right now. I want to do a book of the frog pieces, a conversation that would put Emerson off his feed. I did learn a lot, and there are hundreds of pages, over a three-year period, that mention the frogs and my association with them. A small book, a novella, about the fox, and a somewhat larger book about converting starches to sugars. Play to my strong suit, what I do every day, navigate the schools, try to make sense. I'm so far behind I think I'll never catch up. Those Red Maples, they just appeared, as a spread against the lowland, am I supposed to make a connection, or not? The Poplars spray a soft green on top. Thinking about how well B framed his reading yesterday. He read the work chronologically, and it was all about direction, and walking, and seeing. There's a much more complex, abstract, side of B, that I know very well, but there is also this thrush addled naturalist, others as well, we should all be so gifted, to have such a neighbor. I try to hold up my end of the stick. I'd been reading for hours and I wanted to take a walk, but I was only dressed in boxers and a black and white tee-shirt that depicted a surfer giving a finger to the world. I picked up a very heavy canvas shirt at The Goodwill, and D had given me a pair of rock-climber pants that are ballistic cloth, and I know my capacity for finding myself in a thicket. Our Spring Line includes outer-wear that repels blackberry canes. You forget the number of thorns. So I suited up and walked out, and I'm blown away, immediately, by the fact that the inside is not the same as the outside. These dudes are crazy. I might defer to a symbol . A trout rising to the fly. We'll sort this out tomorrow. Read more...

Clean Laundry

Every article of clothing clean and stashed away. Well supplied. I went in to work for a few hours, hanging artwork. D set the 3-D pieces on the newly painted pedestals, then lit the show. When it was clear that we could easily finish up on Tuesday, I picked up a few things at the store and headed home. The non fruit-bearing Oriental Pear trees in town , and the red maples at lower elevations in the forest, are breaking bud. The daffodils are blooming everywhere, defining where houses used to be. Usually next door to where a trailer is now. The history of Appalachia. B came over, we exchanged books, had a short drink, and he wanted to tell me he was reading at the forest service lodge, a lovely venue, about life on the ridge, tomorrow, and did I want to go. I refuse his offer of a ride because I need to be able to get home whenever I want to, so I'll need my own vehicle, but I do want to go. I don't get out enough, I'm locked into this pattern, where I turn off the phone and kill the breaker for the refrigerator, because I just want things to be as quiet as possible. I want to hear the squawking of a crow, the tentative footfalls of a deer in the leaf mast. Listening closely. A quantitative difference. Usually, in the literal world, where you live, there's a lot of sound, but if you're prepared to sit quietly on a stump in the middle of the woods for hours at a time, you begin to hear a different music. I have a new keyboard, by the way, and I can actually see what I'm doing. Hunt and peck. I do this with two fingers, any more, I think, would be an affront. It's the keys, brother, the very next note. Where were we? Right, gathering dust-bunnies. I can't believe myself sometimes. I appear to be operating in the real world, but it's a joke. I'm not, really. I mean, I do my laundry, and this woman comes up to me. The actual world is a trip. And wonders if I want to party, I think I understand what she means, and tell her no, I'm just waiting for a friend. A bend in the path. My first plan is to drive the Jeep to B's reading at the lodge, but then I think I might as well ride with him, because several people were stopping at Drew's for a drink. The reading was great, the specificity of place. If you knew this drainage at all, you knew how precise the descriptions were. Stopping at Drew's was surprisingly fun: conversation, drinks, and I didn't have to drive. His study takes up half of a two car garage, separate building, cement block, but he has a large space sectioned off by bookcases (a strategy I've used many times), heated with a nice wood stove. A comfortable place. We spend a couple of hours talking about a broad range of subjects. There are other liberals in the world. I have to go. Read more...

Visually Literate

D set the show in the morning, while I did some touch up painting, lunch, then I started hanging, solo, while D moved on to some other things. It's fun, hanging a show alone, taking my time, muttering numbers, looking at each piece closely. D came in and painted the pedestals for the 3-D pieces. I'm going to go in tomorrow, do my laundry in the morning, and hang the rest of the show (or most of it) so we can finish up on Tuesday, labels and lights, since D teaches on Wednesday and the show opens on Thursday. All the galleries will be filled for the first time in months. I'm sick of the construction projects. The first phase of the alley, paving, walkway, lovely wrought iron gates, should be done in the next week or so, restore and clean the theater, paint the back hall and the front entry; then I might take some time off. Finish the Janitor College book and maybe take a road trip, go away for a few days, maybe not so much go away as just stay on the ridge with the phone turned off. I had another one of those days when I couldn't help but notice that there are a lot of very fat people waddling around. A couple of ladies came in the pub, just as we were leaving; one of them barely fit through the door and the other one was probably a hundred pounds lighter. The larger woman must have weighed 400 pounds. I suspect the specific gravity of human flesh varies extremely. This was as close to pure blubber as you're ever likely to see. I don't see how she came sit on just one chair. I almost ran back inside to warn Barb. Same thing, depositing my check at the bank yesterday, the guy in front of me was huge, had to walk with the spay-footed, spay-legged, shuffle, that is characteristic. I'm trying to gain weight that I seem to have lost over the last year. I don't like to weigh less than 140 pounds, a bean-pole at that, with chicken legs. I brought in another dozen eggs, a loaf of the multi-grain bread I favor, a back-up pound of butter. Some rain and warmer temps in the forecast, and I'm completely looking forward to variations of beans, eggs, and morels on toast. The occasional small steak. I went off in my head for a while, I'm prone to that, studying American watercolors from 1920-1940, forgot completely what I was thinking about, and ended up spending several hours looking at pictures. Read more...

Extreme Mopping

The back hallway was a mess and I tackled it today. Not that large a space, maybe 14 feet wide and 30 feet long, but the main-floor bathrooms are there, the elevator, access to the basement through the theater, and the kitchen. It was dusty, dirty, and tracked up like the ground around a salt lick. I used three changes of water in my mop bucket, scraped off the tile surfaces and used a peroxide cleaner and scrub brush on the grout joints. Mopped the entire surface four times. At the beginning of the day D had said the job looked impossible, but I actually got it looking fairly good by the end of the day. Sharee brought in the rest of the high school art show. Some of the pieces are quite clever, and there's the usual teenage angst. We treat this work just like we treat any other art work, hang it carefully, well lit, labels, and as the reception is always at five o'clock I usually stay, to watch the reaction of the kids and their parents to having their work taken seriously. A nice note today from Linda, she liked the piece I wrote last night, which makes me read it back over and I liked it too, which feels remarkably good, after all these years. I like the plain style, and how I can split off, right in there middle of something, add a grace note, and my readers follow my intent. When I wrote that line last night, No bull-pen. I wondered if anyone would get it. Of course they did, and I feel like an idiot for questioning their ability to make sense. If the language is spoken correctly, the sense is inherent. I have to go take a nap. I'm exhausted. When I wake, a few hours later, I'd left the radio on, and Bach was playing, a Partita, transcribed for guitar. It's lovely, but I have to turn it off, kill the breaker for the fridge, I need silence. A mythic goal. I sit at the island, get a short drink, roll a smoke, stare into the middle distance. Something's wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. I'm delinquent in the usual ways, I haven't talked to my parents, I haven't talked to my girls, the yard is overgrown, the books need dusting. I maintain a semblance of order by acting like I know what I'm doing, point of fact is I have no control over what is going on. I allow my concerns to motivate me, lunch, maybe a beer after work, but something is off kilter (good condition, order, I had to look this word up in several dictionaries) and I just can't put my finger on what it is. I have enough money to pay my bills, I've been careful to not offend anyone, I haven't committed an act of treason. Live in a tree-dip-pit long enough, and the past comes back to haunt you. Your many failures. I'd wipe it all away, if I could, but that's just not possible, you are what you are. Read more...

Night Noises

Sleeping badly, that recurrent dream concerning very rickety scaffolding, and there's a noise outside that brings me to full consciousness. I had cleaned out the fridge, turned over most of the stove ashes and organic matter in the compost pile on top of it, but an enterprising pair of raccoons had scented out the left-over ham and bean soup and were making a meal of it, when the four young dogs that belong to the foster kid up the road, sauntered up the driveway to see what mischief they could scout. Young dogs are no match for veteran raccoons. Animal rights groups wouldn't like this high-light film, but I figure the dogs have got to learn, and just hope one of the coons isn't rabid. I have a new bucket of throwing rocks outside the back door, but the problem with throwing rocks at four in the morning, is that there's no way to warm up. No bull-pen. I don't throw with great velocity (58 mph in high school) but I'm incredibly accurate throwing rocks or shooting a sling-shot (my weapon of choice) out to about fifty feet. I've thought about writing the history of the sling-shot, but I'm guessing someone has already done that. Anyway, I swing my arm around a few times, and step out with my best LED flashlight in my left hand, grab a rock and let fly with my right. I hit the brindle pup in the belly (I feel bad about that) and she lets out a squeal. There are six animals and they split off in six different directions. They make a horrible ruckus in the leaf-mast, but it fades quickly into the distance and silence returns. A normal night-time silence which isn't silence at all but a kind of buzz of potential. Sometimes I think I can hear the moon. Below freezing, but no wind, so I go put on my bathrobe and get a drink, roll a smoke, sit in the dark, on the back porch, the stoop, and consider the nature of things. Half moon at a rakish angle. I'm careful with my ash, a coffee can of sand. And I sit there until I'm so cold my teeth chatter. I just want to feel alive. Come back inside and the house is so warm, I stoke the fire and put on a kettle of water so I can shave. Small mercies. This is way it goes. You just do what you have to do. I think I'm cool, I don't feel any particular guilt about anything, but there's a nagging sense that I'm failing at something. I don't have a significant relationship, I spend my nights alone, I microwave frozen lasagne; still, in my defense, I'm not harming anyone. Managed to get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Haul trash and re-cycling, docent a college group through the Carters and dazzle them with stories. They've been assigned a two page paper, to write on any Carter painting and seem to think it's a chore. Two of them stay after the rest leave and I take them down to the library. I told them to come back over and I'd show them some of the good stuff from the vault. Spent most of the afternoon working on the floor in the Richard's gallery, where we'd repaired the ceiling, a real mess. Sharee started bringing in art work for the high school show, which will go in that gallery. She apologized for being early with the work (wasn't supposed to there before Friday) but she had some helpers today; I gave her some shit about it, joking around, and the helpers had no idea, for a while, that we goofing on each other. Didn't have to stop anywhere, I had left-over lunch enough for dinner. Half a Rasher, which is an 'Irish' BLT made with a smoked Canadian bacon, not unlike what B and I both do with whole pork loins, several small roasted potatoes, which Barb allows D and I to substitute as a side with anything we order. I knew there was whiskey enough, and tobacco, at the house, so I drove down the Ohio, then all the way up to the house, along the creek. It's beautiful, green, in patches on the ground, those first miniature Iris, I don't know what they are, purple, very small, growing in disturbed soil. This time of year, I become a fan of color, burned out on black and white, though I always enjoy the sharp contrast of winter. The way you feel alive. In all honesty I sort of like not knowing. It frees me up. Whatever that tense is. Conditional. If I had ever been to a gym. There's a place where a small creek flows into Upper Twin and the creek-bed is eroded down to shale, which stair-steps down to grade. A lovely triple waterfall that catches the afternoon light; a hap-hazard orchard, in a little piece of bottom, where a house had been, only identified by a bank of daffodils; I find a pocket of morels that takes my breathe away. I have them on toast, with a fried egg, and break out the dryer, because there are too many to eat at a sitting. Too many morels is a state you strive for, most of your adult life. This year, the leaf-mat is fearsome, but I notice cracks in that layer, where mushrooms seek light, and I harvest very pale morels that are so sweet and earthy that they make me cry. I'll leave you with that. Read more...

Return

Sara had asked me what you called it when you brought paint around the edge of a wall surface. It's called a 'return' and I had lost the word. I found it the very next day, when I was looking at the specific place we had been talking about. One returns the edge. Linda returned my call. I see a thread here. Always great to talk to her, then Glenn got on the phone, arranging a visit in a couple of weeks. Probably going to start filming his next project, with me as "The Docent", talking about the Carters and whatever else takes our fancy. I imagine a serious take on The Janitor, mopping his Modified Chevron and rapping about the Renaissance, the history of printing (one of my favorite subjects), and whether or not we'll find enough morels for another omelet. There'll be the usual nod to drainage. Glenn always manages to tie that knot. Any given place, water or ideas, flowing downhill. Desire paths, the path of least resistance, reading sign on the driveway. Someone tried to drive in recently and didn't make it, I could tell from the scrapes where the transfer case bottomed-out. Either one of B's students or someone looking to rob me. They didn't make it. The ruts defeated them. The ruts, drainage, there you go. I could docent the driveway. Docent the drive in, the long way around, cleaning the wheel-wells at the ford, and admiring the wild rhododendron breaking bud. Usually, when I drive in this way, I've thrown time to the wind. I might stop, in the middle of the ford, scramble onto the hood, roll a smoke, sit very still until the birds come out and watch the sun set. Not like I have to be anyplace in particular. When you live alone, certain restraints are lifted, you flit like a butterfly, stop, more often, to watch insignificant events. The frightful behavior of squirrels, the way a back-water forms, red maple buds in the spring. I don't pretend to know, but the overriding evidence is that something is going on. D really hit the ground running today, a mission statement; he took apart the common room, cleaned it, reorganized everything, got rid of some things. We re-hung the most valuable painting at the museum, Carter's "Let Us Give Thanks" ($250,000), then, while we had TR, hung new lights tracks. Required three of us to keep them secure at the joints, mark for the anchors, take it down, set the anchors, then get the unit screwed up into place. Working over your head is always a pain in the ass. I put some things away, then made a list for tomorrow, because the large, juried, Best Of, high school art show comes in on Friday. After that we have to tackle cleaning the theater. Sharee (she's coordinator for all the art teachers in the county) always makes sure the pieces are rigged for hanging, so it's just a matter of setting the pieces. D and I will do that in an afternoon, with a few changes the next morning. There are always a few changes, you sleep on the arrangement, then tweak it the following morning. Most people that do this kind of work, have their best ideas in the morning. By four you're brain dead and incapable of making reasonable decisions. When we were working four ten-hour days in Telluride, we'd schedule dumb work for the last couple of hours every day. I've watched some very good carpenters screw up two or three pieces of trim, trying to get a window cased before quitting time. I have to do some shopping, I hate shopping, but I need a pair of jeans, a new denim shirt, a packet of boxer briefs, and a new pair of shoes. I want wide Clark Desert Boots, I need for my feet to be comfortable again, and I'm willing to spend some money on that. Creature comforts are become important. I require clean socks. Read more...

Confused

Often get on a different schedule over the weekend. I'll stay up late, or go to sleep for a few hours then get back up in the early morning, get a drink and write some more. I'm liable to read a new John Sandford novel at a single sitting. There's no telling what or when I'll eat. I'll turn on the porch light and go outside to pee, have a swallow of juice, and just stay up, pursuing some line of inquiry I'd made a note about. I enjoy the unstructured aspect of parsing time in a random spread. I post notes to remind myself to listen to certain things on the radio: "Terry Gross, Monday", "World Cafe, Wednesday". My list is impossible for the next two weeks, no way to get it all done. I have some personal things I have to get done, taxes, laundry, and I have a theater that is a disaster zone and there's supposed to be a concert in there on the 19th of this very month. The Red Maples are budding, giving the sumac seed pods a break. Color returns That's not what I mean, what I meant was more akin to that spray of freckles, across the bridge of Kori's nose. A slight headache from reading all day, so I went out in the afternoon, hunting for morels. I need to pick up a small good steak, a New York strip, or a rib-eye, to have with them, mashed potatoes and a pan gravy I make with bacon fat. On a Tuesday morning, after a holiday weekend, I often find nice cuts of meat remaindered. Maybe a piece of lamb tomorrow. Some shoulder chops, probably, because they don't sell well, and I love them, for their marbling. It's still a lamb, technically, less than a year-old, but barely. A baby lamb, cooked whole, at Easter, just doesn't have enough meat to make it worth the trouble, it's good, but if you kill it at eleven months, there's actually something there, a leg, some chops, a rack you can decorate with little paper hats. Big clouds moving through, but there's no sense of rain. A false alarm, but it keeps me on my toes, where you use dead cars as rip-rap we call Detroit Riprap, works fine but it's hell on the environment. I'd rather just use large rocks. I've had some success, diverting small streams, when I could think like water. I usually fail. Even a simple ditch, most times, is beyond me. Water, moving downhill, is a powerful force. Read more...