Cat Fight

Distinctive sound, cats fighting in the night. They seem to be in the woodshed, probably fighting over a mouse. I listen to them, for a few minutes, then go out on the back porch and throw a couple of rocks. Come inside, roll a smoke and get a wee dram. Finally hungry, and my stomach is settled, so I make a pouch of Ida-Red mashed potatoes and eat them with a spoon. Irish whiskey and mashed potatoes, so old world I half-expect a red-haired lass to manifest on my doorstep. Old world and old style, I prefer serif type, pot roast, and panty lines. The Chinese students were most amazed that I didn't have a cell phone, my older daughter has been on me about this too, that the possibility of instant communication should be available. And I will get a cell phone, the next time I take a road trip, so I can get help if needed; but I still don't have reception at my house, and depend on a land-line that is sketchy at best. I get very few calls, don't engage in social media, and don't play games. It frees up more time for reading. I was rereading Faulkner short stories today, The Bear, of course, and numerous other gems. For a drunk old shit-head, he could really write, that Southern Gothic thing; Cormac pushed that, in his early novels, up through Sutree, one of the great books ever, so gritty it makes your teeth ache. And I can forgive all the sentimental crap of the trilogy, for Blood Meridian, probably the great American novel. Fuck Philip Roth, and any number of lesser writers, there are two that hold the line: Pyhchon and McCarthy. It's not just purity of language, it's the narrative. Went in to the museum today, not to work, but to poke around in the Carter Archives, and work on the Janitor College manuscript. And to wait for D to bring in his photographs for the new show upstairs. C and M were off early, to Columbus for dinner, then on to Springfield, to air their houses and mow the grass. The photographs are very good, color fields, extreme close ups of car parts in a junk yard. They look a little like color-field paintings. It's going to be nice show. I'll be starting my museum tours next week, for the art classes, and the art-history classes, but will still get this show hung (with labels and lights) on Tuesday and Wednesday. It'll be nice to see some bright young faces, and I always enjoy the instructors, most of the them young adjuncts making almost nothing, with no benefits, who are perfectly happy to turn their wards over to me for a hour and fifteen minutes. We usually banter just over the heads of the students. I'm so familiar with the permanent collection, I can quote verse and line, l can point to the exact spot he was standing when he painted that. In a way, that gives an advantage, in another way it takes from, the miss-storey; damned you do what you have to. Plug the fucking dike. Really, I just rolled over, and went back to sleep. There's a reason, right, why I occupy the higher ground? A decision early on, that I didn't want to be positioned a certain way.