Pedestal Dance

Black Dell is bitching, the house was 86 degrees when I got home. Not a happy computer. I gave it an ice pack wrapped in a towel, but the AC unit was having a hard time getting us below 80. Still, I'm more comfortable than I usually am, at this time of year. Got up at 6:30 having slept right through, a great night's sleep, completely refreshed; which was strange, because yesterday I thought I might be coming down with some stomach thing, but it must been something I ate (can't imagine what that was, 'would have been' is probably more correct). I can't help but notice Stephen Greenblatt punctuates the closing parenthesis the same way Kim and I do. Sara, I think, taught grammar, at some point in her teaching career, and we occasionally argue about points of punctuation. I always love it, when I find myself arguing about a mark of punctuation. The pedestals haven't been out for a year, and they're beat to shit; I bring up maybe a dozen, patch, fill, sand, and paint. Cycling through. Charlotte and I talk about the Ohio Designer Craftsman installation, she has photographs of most of the pieces, and she has keen powers of visualization. Working with her, I can tell, is going to be different than working with Sara, neither better or worse, but different, the grouping of things, the way things are massed. I sense what she means. More than one way to install a show. Some delicate pieces, she noticed, needed to be protected: ceramic eggshells and fabric art that was very ephemeral. Spun sugar on a matrix of cobwebs. She wants to create a 'no-fly' zone around some of the work. I see what she means, and work toward making that possible. This is a difficult installation, a changing of the guard, my place in it is different, I don't know when to offer my advice. Sara and I would go out to the loading dock, sit on our foam pads, have a smoke, and talk about a certain arrangement. Even the language is different now, the colors, the configurations. I don't know squat, really, my powers of observation only extend to the very specific. Certain things will sink. Lead, for instance. Cast iron. Other things will float. Various woods. I make no claim. Still. I couldn't help but notice you walked with a cane. Is that an affectation or merely a disguise? I only ask because my left hip is getting wanky.