Job Security

My real job security is the number of hours that I'm the only staff member in the building. Peaked today as most of the afternoon I was the only person at the museum because the receptionist, Bev, went home sick. I just sat at the desk and read about the Renaissance. I was thinking about the vernacular, and the problems that early printers confronted in codifying the language. The triumph of the Vulgate Bible is that's in the vernacular. An interesting question came up (Mac, in SW NY state, always one for specificity) about what that channel of white that sometimes occurs in a page of text is called. I call it a river, and I called four other printers today, and they all call it a river too. There probably is a technical term, but I honestly don't know what it is. It's easy to avoid, hand-setting type, because you can increase or decrease the spacing, and presto, the line disappears. Often I add or subtract a word and the problem disappears. Em quad spacing is like that, you change one thing and everything else follows suit. Chautuaqua needed an image for their publicity, and I had TR shoot me, so we could send a photograph, as if it was the real thing, me in front of the vault door. I take a nap, I'm tired, and wake up to rain at two in the morning. It's the annual Tennessee Walker horse show on Mackletree, horse trailers and campers from all over the region, they pretty much close down traffic, but there isn't very much traffic anyway. I can go out the other way, the long way around, rather than killing a horse and rider. I'd feel bad about that, a skittish horse or a stupid rider, so I'll just avoid the issue, go the other way. I turned on the radio and it was the Jimmy Hendrix show. Manic Depression, then Hey Joe, then that great cover, Dylan and the Dead, All Along The Watchtower. It's a transport of joy. I think the rain has sufficiently cleaned the roof that I can put out a couple of buckets to collect wash water. Life is a series of small steps. Listen to the rain. Read more...

Another Tour

A painter friend who teaches art at the University called the museum and specified me as docent. Keri is a wonderful painter, I have an oil nude she did in college that hangs over my dining table. Place of honor, actually, because I'm looking right at it when I come in the door, and again, when I'm leaving and turn around to see if I've forgotten anything. She's a sweetheart, pregnant, and must be a good teacher because her students were animated. Most of them, she warned me, had never been in an art museum before. So I gave them the 'isn't-this-interesting' tour, and told them that they had to come back, to be able to really look at things. They applauded me. Imagine that, I just wanted to get back to my office, and then go to lunch, and they fucking applauded. They'd never had art presented to them that way. Probably never had art presented to them. I am good, when I hit my form, I can be lucid and sometimes funny. Joel called me what? A Dry Humorist, which I suppose I am. A dry Humanist is closer to the truth. A Humanist, originally, just meant some someone who was literate, which meant they could read Greek and Latin. Ancient Greek and Classical Latin were both 'fixed' languages, meaning they were completely set and weren't subject to change. Any modern language, currently in use, is subject to change. One of the biggest problems with printing from moveable type, was that the language had to be codified. At first, 1450 to 1500, books were printed in Latin, the language of the church, and the alphabet, the grammar, were established. Cicero is probably the benchmark. Poggio loved Cicero. I do too, it's clean and clear writing. But Italian was a spoken language and subject to change. English was even worse, Claxton, in England, had to decide what the language even was. They spoke French in London, and a guttural German everywhere else, Middle English is a dumping ground. I should probably retire, I have nothing to add, and I'm tired. If I didn't go into town I'd save hundreds of dollars a month. I could live on almost nothing. Read all the time and eat beans on toast. I'm moving in that direction. Human interaction is becoming a strain. Insects tell me more about the natural world, the way they announce their prescience, than any play by {insert here any modern play) might possible do. I'd rather be alone. Read more...

Cross Creek

Sometimes it's hard to not run down with the wind, just for the exhilaration, knowing that you'd have to beat back up against that same wind. Sometimes it's difficult to get from one place to another, even when you can see where you want to go. Boston Harbor was notoriously difficult to navigate, in the day of sail, because it faced the wrong way. I watched several clips today, of them flipping the Casa Concordia upright. Parbuckling. We've all flipped things upright, finger toys or Volvos, but what struck me about this particular attempt, was the size of the chains, each link weighed nearly a thousand pounds. A very large chain. It crushes everything in it's path. It actually makes grooves in the liner. It's very cool, the way they pull it off the reef and pop it upright. I have the arrogant thought, that with the right crew, we could have done that. Building a bridge is even easier. I build bridges in my sleep. Dreams, that are as surely possible as anything else. Thank god I didn't start re-hanging, I took three first-year art classes through the Carters. I know the material so well now, the Carter Archives, that I'm a great docent in those galleries. I was a bit distracted today by the yoga pants, but I still did pretty well. They left knowing more than when they came in. Charlotte took them through the downstairs, then handed them over to me: a docent tag team. TR and I had started the day replacing some light bulbs. I know it's the subject of ridicule, but we have some light bulbs that are very difficult to change. The Cross Creek thing, the last time I was down there, I don't even remember when this was, probably the 70's; my Dad and I fished Orange Lake for Crappy. We caught a few, but that was hardly the point, anyway; driving in that morning, the door to Marjorie's house was open, and there were a couple of vans outside, like suburban Moms might drive. I told Dad to stop, I needed to know what was going on. They were giving it it's monthly clean, the ladies in the Marjorie Rawlings Appreciation Society, I was able to walk through her house, I saw where she penned her letters to Maxwell Perkins, saw where she lived.. Many of her navel orange trees were still alive, I ate a grapefruit from her private garden. I like some of her earlier stuff, Dark Moon Under, and I Iove Cross Creek, and the cookbook from that. I use variations on her recipes all the time. What emerges is Maxwell Perkins, he was a genius editor. He dealt with an incredible pool of talent. At that very time Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, a lot of others, he was the to go-to guy. I have to go.

Tom.

Listen, what's up? Read more...

Active Squirrels

At least four of them in the trees right around the house. Scampering about, shaking branches. These are all in their second year and they are feisty. They distract me, when I'm sitting and reading, with their antics and their chattering. B had brought back a few books and added a loaner for me to read Red Brick Black Mountain White Clay by Christopher Benfey. Nice read, nice to spend the whole day reading. An interesting piece of creative non-fiction. A genre of which I am a part, by default. I'm referred to as part of that. I'm not a part of anything, except in the most general way. I have an almost allergic reaction to being a part of anything. I'm an outsider, but I don't pose a threat; I spend most of my time alone, and I hate being interrupted. I'm on the verge of being a hermit, but I'm not completely, an isolate. It's more complicated than that. I enjoy the company of others, but I don't want to engage in bullshit conversation. The Dew Point is a product of relative humidity and temperature. I'm aware of this because I have a metal roof, two of them, actually, and an upper roof 'eyebrows' over a lower roof and I get a jazz beat of condensation, dripping down. Electricity was out last night, so I couldn't write, heard on the radio this morning that a couple of good old boys, drag racing on Route 125 took out a power pole. Spent the day locating Carter paintings in the vault and reshuffling the stacks, so I can re-hang the permanent collection tomorrow and the next day, in time for some promo filming that's going to be shot on Friday. I don't know what it is. Almost called Sara today, to give her a hard time. I had my map, that I had made the last time she was here, for the order of the re-hanging. And a painting, a watercolor, was supposed to hang at the end of the third bay, Fall Sunflower, where it would be in close proximity to another sunflower painting (a much darker sunflower) much larger, in oil. I know the Carter Collection and I didn't remember Fall Sunflower. TR didn't either, but we looked, twice, and then checked the log-book, and there is no Fall Sunflower, there is a Summer Sunflower, which I'm sure is what Sara meant. Then it got reasonably strange. TR had been reading up on Carter, online, and he'd found a site where there were some Carter's in an auction. One of the Egg Prints, that was supposed to fetch $3,000 (it won't), and a watercolor, I swear to god, called Fall Sunflower. Probably sell for between $12,000 and $15,000 dollars. I might bid on it, maybe just a few thousand dollars would buy it, and I have a few thousand dollars buried in Mason Jars. I wouldn't mind having a Carter on the wall. Read more...

Ohio River Blues

I've now lived here longer than I've ever lived anywhere; and it's a fine place to be, where the hollows feed their creeks into the river. Dendritically and forcefully when conditions are ripe. Nothing I could say would make it better. I love the way the debris field spreads across the road, the way someone with a chainsaw has cleared a path. There's a new Pynchon novel. No one writes better in the language. Ever, to my way of thinking. I reread his early short fiction today, "Slow Learner", and, except to pee, or to make myself baked beans and a fried egg on toast, I never left my writing chair. This is true. I told B, yesterday morning, when he came over, that I was well, and that I was working, after a fashion, but it was slow going. I'd spent twelve hours writing thirteen sentences, and several of those were quite short, two nouns and a verb. The dog died and I took a train to Memphis. The dog died and my pick-up won't start. The dog died and my lady doesn't love me anymore. I could go on. I didn't find anything of value, I got my feet wet, the late season bugs are a pain in the ass, I got those Ohio River Blues again. Sometimes you can clear that up with a wee dram of Irish and a couple of smokes, but sometimes you have to kill yourself. Beat your head against a book or drown in a grader ditch. Last rites. There would be finger-food. A force-meat. Pickles. Some very hot peppers. The guests get very drunk on Ronnie's distillation and several of them sleep in the yard. A manner of passing. Those Ohio River Blues again, lord god spare me, those Ohio River Blues again. Read more...

Later On

Nothing is ever the same. B came over with some books. Coffee and conversation. He's headed off to a memorial service for our mutual friend Aralee Strange, late of Peach Mountain, then to the Athens of the South for her final years. We discussed the written word and performance. I haven't read in public very often recently, but I've noticed that when I read off the screen, as I do constantly when I'm writing, with only the occasional word audible, that my spoken voice has become quite flat. I don't inflect as much, or punch words for emphasis. I leave it up to the reader (or the listener) to decide what they will. The antics of three crows completely diverts my attention. I was reading about the history of making paper, in Europe, this would be the fourteenth century, concurrent with the life of Petrarch, the first of the Humanists, which led to the Renaissance, because of the printing press, the actual agent of change; and I was deep into an internal dialog, when this gaggle of crows discovered the mice I'd thrown on top of the outhouse. Talk about a 360. I love the crows, and they love me, though they can be impertinent, we manage a working relationship: I give them mice and they give me a raft of shit. I thought a colon there was exactly correct. I think the misunderstanding here is that the crows think they need to thank me, and their way of doing that is this raucous crap that even TR wouldn't consider music. Oh, wait, yes he would. The sound-scape is a very real thing, right there, just stop and listen. Not that it would change your life, listening to bugs, or the rain-drops on your roof. Just that we could reach a kind of peace if we just took time to listen. Read more...

Saturday Staff

Got to town early, so I could sit for a spell with Ronnie at the farmers market. He has a guest chair, at his table. His offerings are thinning out, this time of year, but he bakes bread, sells home-made jams, and he had sweet potatoes and butternut squash. The sweet potatoes were selling fast, and everyone loves his raspberry jam. As he's running for office, the idle conversations with customers tended toward the political. It's always interesting sitting there with him, for 30 minutes or an hour, watching people. I know, to speak to, a great many of them, and they all love Ronnie; he's a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, a good musician, singer / song-writer, built the family house himself, traps beaver, and is the best feller of trees I've ever known. The honey lady was there, and she is a stunning woman; she carries herself like a dancer. Went to the library, and could not find a book I wanted to read, fiction, I mean; I have a ton of non-fiction, but I like to leaven things with a bit of fiction on the weekend, and it just wasn't there. I'll dig something out of my stacks, and reread it, a Dorothy Sayers maybe; and I'm thinking about reading all of Faulkner, in order, next winter, so I could just start now. I have almost everything, because Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, sold a cube of cheap paperbacks of everything commercially published. So cheaply published, I have to add, that I hold these books together with rubber-bands. But I have them. Lesser Faulkner. TR met me at the bar, in the pub, for lunch, and we watched the end of a soccer match, no sound, Celtic music in the background, talked about the possibility of him getting a free ride from Princeton for a PHD in composition. I have a rather dim view of higher education generally, it being mostly a question of whether you can afford it, on the other hand, a large percentage of the people I've ever held close had advanced degrees of one sort or another (but seriously, a Doctorate of Divinity?) and they are all interesting and engaging people. It's certainly true that you make more money, down the pike, if you have a law degree, or replace hip joints. Right out of high-school I went into professional theater, the consummate back-stage guy; solve problems, make sure the show goes on. Keeping track. See it for what it is. And I was always writing, I've been writing for fifty years, and there's no end in sight. Stylus to the clay. The driveway, perception, I hadn't thought about this, what happens when things change? A nagging tab of plastic, or something, throws you into an alternate universe. String Theory allows this. It could be. Read more...

Huzzah

Awoke early, made a double espresso, tried to remember what I was supposed to do today, but mostly I killed a little time before it was almost full light, so I could drive down the driveway. Because of the rain yesterday afternoon, I didn't want to try it then, and it rained again last night. I didn't know what the status was going to be, so I stopped at the ridge end, and walked over to feel what the slippage factor might me. After 13 years I have a feel for this, and have often gone back to the house, made another cup of coffee, smoked a couple of cigarets, and given it another hour or two to dry out a bit more. Slippage always occurs at very top, the steepest part; but the steep part ends at a curve, and you don't want to be out of control there, so there's the maximum amount of camber, to throw you in against the bank. It felt good to me, just a little slippery, but the Jeep does very well going downhill, and it was like being in a different universe. It's a completely different driveway. The real test, of course, would be coming back up. I got a few things done, in the morning, then Pegi left, then, after lunch M and C were off somewhere to get some art, and I was the only one there. It's pretty good job security, when you find yourself the only one there. Closing up the museum is a process, now with added security, that requires my full attention, I don't want to set off an alarm. Nothing worse than finding yourself in the position of confronting a cop with his hand on a gun. So I'm careful, follow a set routine. I wanted to stop at the pub, but I was more curious about getting back up the driveway, and Scott had said his family business had secured the contract for rebuilding the bridge on Mackletree, and he'd built in a temporary ford, we could use, after hours, by just sliding the ROAD CLOSED sign out of the way. Sounds small town enough for me, so after work, I drive in the regular way, and sure enough, I can get around the construction. Nobody else is driving that way, because the road is closed, but I have a special dispensation, I just gave the boss $600 in cash to grade the driveway, and that means I can get home directly. Cash, in small town America, lubricates the system. Stopped and got the mail, before I pulled into the bottom of the driveway, and then everything was changed. I didn't recognize any stations of the cross. You'd have to drive this for yourself, the difference between night and day. I drove right up to my house, as if this what I'd always done. Life is good. Read more...

Driveway Saga

B came and got me as I'd overslept. Up and writing in the middle of the night will do that. Scott had already started on the driveway and B had cut the saplings. We tossed brush, then walked over and down behind the dozer, a D3C. He'd worked his way up and was finishing on his way down, we were throwing large rocks off the edge. His second time up he'd carved a ditch away from, and graded the puddles. Second time down was serious finish, with much twirling around and driving the dozer backward. The whole piece of work is a thing of beauty. He's the best I've ever seen. At the bottom he carved out and graded the winter parking places. Then he said that he thought he should go to his storage barn, get his roller and make a few passes before the afternoon showers, he was on his way down the final time when the showers came. He settled for $600 cash. Money well spent. And a joy to watch someone do something that they're very good at doing. I had backed the Jeep over to B's parking area, so Scott could work on the puddles and my section of driveway, and when he left I drove all the way home. It's been two years since I could do that. I'll need some fill (creek-run, it's called locally), but lord love a duck. It's almost completely done. Ate a large potato and egg late lunch, then walked back over and part way down. There are now actually a couple of places where it would possible to carefully pass. We'll have to dig out the catchments for the culverts after the first big rain, but then they should be self-cleaning, the ditch is perfect (or will be, when the fines wash out) and the camber is perfect, enough to slide a vehicle over to the bank side in those moments of panic when ones loses control. I can hardly wait to drive out tomorrow. I fully intend to start laying in winter supplies next week. New shocks and serious off-road tires would significantly reduce my walking in and out. A break I've been needing. I think I'll ask TR and Meagan out for a celebratory dinner; I'd like to cook ribs, before the season disappears. Next month I have to clean the stove pipe and run-out the flying squirrels; it's not something that's optional. I have a system for that. It's an ugly half-a-day, like the half-a-day I'll spend mucking out the outhouse and the composting toilet. But it's only once a year, one nasty day, and I can reward myself with a good bottle of wine and a wedge of that excellent English Double Cheddar. Not that I'm carrot driven, just that certain things need to be done. The driveway has been constructed, then rebuilt four times, in fourteen years, and average life of 3.7 years. That's good enough for me. I don't expect to be here 3.7 years from now, so this could be the last time I pay to have the driveway rebuilt. Read more...

Dressed Correctly

After B left, with the news that we would be doing the driveway, I selected an outfit from the pile that would be labeled "Clothes Not To Be Worn In Public" and set them out on the table. Starting early tomorrow and I don't want to miss a thing. B and I have to clear an easement for the new ditch, which means cutting a bunch of saplings, and clearing them out of the way, not a big deal, but history has shown that I need to wear a long sleeved shirt. I'll tee-pee the trunks of the saplings as firewood, and haul the tops down the slope where they'll make a fine habitat for small critters. This is so exciting. I'll need a couple of loads of creek-run gravel, which is just the fines from a certain point in any creek, fist sized rock in a matrix of clay, to mound my egress. But, Jesus, it happens tomorrow. It's like a moon-launch. If it actually happens, I'll be amazed. You plan these things, but whether or not something happens is a matter of chance. I have no control over anything. I used to think it mattered, what I thought, now I know it doesn't. Everything is contingent on the weather. Scott and his brothers are building one of the new bridges down on Mackletree, so we'll get it done, in the next few days. B suggested I walk over and compose an Eulogy for the frogs, and it is closing a chapter in my life: I won't have the frogs to talk about anymore.

Bull frogs singing
in the dead of night
have been a mainstay
in the soundscape
I call home for a
great many years.

Longer than I've ever
lived anywhere, though
I'm not sure duration
is a test for anything.

Frogs are one thing,
actually getting to the house
is another. What about
the driveway?
Read more...

Transgressions

Only the Wittgenstein Plumber would be concerned about transgressions. Boring health-care crap is a product of life. My feet are killing me. I've broken so many toes that my feet look like fiddle-sticks, and I can't take a hike anymore, That hot sand between my toes is a distant dream. I got to town early enough (going down the creek road, and for the second straight day I didn't pass a car in the 7.5 miles) and stopped at Market Street for a protein / fruit smoothie. I hadn't been there for a while, and they were so happy to see me, that they wouldn't let me pay for it. I put several dollars in the tip jar. Great way to start the day. Word from M and C that they would be back, with the African art, sometime after noon (which means five minutes to five, which is precisely when they showed up) and that we needed to clean out some extra space because they were bringing more than expected. The collection is from a black university in New Orleans, and they were thrilled, the university, that the work was leaving, because the storage space hadn't been cleaned since Katrina. Cleaning out more space, here, meant moving stuff from one place to another. The space is finite, you can only cram so many yolks into a given omelet. TR was so fucking cool today, we were on the third floor, with Pegi, looking at a pile of boxes, and the one that we were looking at was labeled 'Box 8', and both Pegi and I knew, right away, that meant there were seven other boxes, and we weren't sure eight was the end of the line. TR pointed to it, in his offhand way, and said "8". I laughed until I nearly choked to death. The most brilliant mind, except for mine, is dying in a motel in Georgia, and I can't do anything about it. Think about that. Read more...

Less Likely

I'm less likely to trip over my own two feet if I post a sign that reminds me to watch where I put them. I still trip, occasionally, it's not a sure thing, just walking from one place to another. I'm so easily distracted. But if I leave a note, it might steer me away from disaster. Speaking of which, backed-up floor drain in the basement. Had to call a plumber for that, then had to clean up. Took it pretty easy, as M and C get back with the African Show tomorrow, which means about fifty trips to the third floor. Supposed to rain Thursday, which might put a damper on re-building the driveway, I should know tomorrow night, to see if I go in to work. The big ODC show comes down next week, then we're installing the Renaissance painting show, then the big fund-raiser, then the girls for Thanksgiving. A lecture in there somewhere. And I have my own work to get along with, which is taking a fair amount of my energy right now, because I'm going to be presented in public, and I wonder what the hell I'll say. I'm liable to say almost anything., right? I'm not him. I'm the guy who talks about him, from at least one remove. It's a merry dance. I was eating sushi, earlier, with too much wasabi, and the tears were running down my cheeks, and I was laughing, because if anyone had seen me, at that moment, they would have thought I was despondent, and I was actually quite happy, having eliminated a semi-colon and two commas. I had left two notes on my keyboard, which were two quite different inflexions of exactly the same phrase, punctuated differently. I went off to take a nap, rolling out my foam pad on the living room floor, because it was brutally hot and colder air sinks; hours later I got up to pee and turned on my desk lamp, to reread the notes, and it was very clear that they said different things. I'm on this like a Black-Mouth cur, a Blue-Tick hound, a beagle, rooting for the scent. Why is meaning so completely transformed by punctuation? Even in this word-rich language, it's difficult to say what you mean. Read more...

Cross Purposes

All levels could and should mix. That might be Duke Ellington. Might as well be Bill Evans, or even early Miles. What cool jazz makes you do, is think a different way. Not unlike the first time I heard the Cello Suites all the way through. I was listening to the Cantatas, one a week, opening Robert J's show on WGBH, there must be like 152 of them, and I was aware of the huge organ pieces, because the house organ at FSU was just behind the wall of my shop there. But I don't think I heard Rostropovich until 1995, and I still consider that the correct order: 1,4,5; 2,3,6. I think that's just a matter of familiarity. I've listened to them now by a great many people, in any number of orders, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The fifth is difficult and the sixth is always profound. The sixth is almost always last. When a genius is working at the top of their form, you don't interject criticism, you just lean back and listen. Bach is god.. As close as we mere mortals are likely to be. The fifth and sixth Cello Suites are transcendent; I often hold my breath until I pass out. I only want the things that matter. I parked in a new place, down nearer to the print shop, because I noticed a snag that looked a little delicate, where I usually parked. After Thursday, this will all be mute, but the snag was large enough (essentially, half a grown oak tree) to take the Jeep right out, and I thought the better part of valor was not to tempt fate. I need to access both the front and rear doors on the driver's side (I stash purchases on the seat behind me) and I had picked a place where the driveway was wider but I hadn't noticed a bull-vine tendril, what I think they call green-briar locally, and I ripped my arm pretty badly. It's not a big deal, I flush it with water, then a sodium chloride irrigation liquid, but it's one of those difficult wounds to bandage. I figure I needed to keep it covered for two nights, while the new tissue firms up, and I realized the sleeve off a dead but clean tee-shirt would be perfect: slip it on, take a fold, and secure it in place with surgical tape. I might as well have said I was slashed by a black bear, but it was actually just green-briar. Read more...

Hard Copy

I don't have a word for it, the way things interact. It's probably a German word, though I'd hope for something French, to lubricate, from the Old English concerning lanolin. Don't go there. Bestially is seldom attractive. It's morning, I can tell because it keeps getting lighter, and I vow to take the sling-blade to the path, on my morning walk to the outhouse. It occurs to me that I've never had an outhouse with a door. I've always lived in the woods, and a door was always unnecessary. I don't read anything serious in the outhouse anymore, since the incident with the snake. I do take junk mail out there, and the Parade section of the Sunday paper, though I'm always several weeks behind, because I don't actually get the paper and generally retrieve the Parade section from someone else's trash. I don't know who any of these people are. I picked up a nice folding canvas seated bench, I'm sure they have a name, and it's great, for instance, for watching salamanders. I've always done this. I built a bleacher, once, just for watching the sunset; it's probably still there, overgrown, looking out across the terminal moraine. And now that I think of it, I've usually lived just south of the terminal moraine. Kettle ponds and kames: those little hillocks of debris deposited by retreating ice-sheets. A glacier picks up a pile of shit on it's leading edge. All that organic matter. Joel went on about how he didn't think anyone, much less me, could have written "The Cistern" and I had to agree, I don't know how I wrote it. I do remember the physical act, but I didn't know I could reveal myself so completely, and not be shamed into silence. It was just something that needed to be said, and right then, I could say it. Frankly, when I read parts of it now, it scares me. Flirting with the edge. But I had to, then, explore that delicate ground, between sane and not. Sometimes it's best to back off the greater questions and just concentrate on where you're putting your next foot, but occasionally you have to ask yourself why you're climbing that mountain in the first place. I don't pretend to know. When things get difficult I tend to sort hardware. Commas, for god's sake, or 'J' hooks for a very heavy painting. It's interesting, isn't it? the way we become enmeshed in a world..Justice will not be served. Look at past history, wallow as you will, it's never just two points we're trying to draw a line between. It's always more complex than that. Read more...

Up and Up

A great conversation with the Wittgenstein Plumber, still in decent sprit, and still makes me laugh, though he's suffering kidney failure. That conversation leads me to calling Diane, a mutual friend, and we spend a half-hour, catching up. The consensus is that I can read from a lap-top computer while sitting. Suits me, because it's more of a story-teller mode, and I, essentially, just tell stories. Took me years to realize that. Nothing arcane about it. I cross my legs, take a sip of bourbon, and mention something that might have happened. Old Tom and the two green mules, or that time the hogs got loose in the garden. Chickens are the worst, they destroy evidence, with their silly prancing, and geese are actually dangerous. Remind me to tell you about the incident with the swan. It's not my fault some things can't fly. I can't fly. The swan, the girl, and the honey. No: The Fox, The Girl, And The Honey. I prefer the fox, swans always seem artificial. Talking with Joel, and I remembered something Wittgenstein had said, took me several hours to find it, Zettel, 393. "It is easy to imagine and work out in full detail events which, if they actually came about, would throw us out in all our judgments." Seems about right. Minor-epiphanies, like what color huddie, or do you stand in the rain. Six of one, you know. Whether to ford the creek or turn back, whether to face the demons or not. I often get a wee dram and roll a smoke, it doesn't matter what time of day or night, and fix breakfast, potatoes, sausage, eggs, toast, I glance at the clock, because I'm up and about, but I don't know if that 7:24 is morning or night. It's easy enough to orient yourself, turn on the radio, or you can just monitor whether it's getting darker or lighter. I remind myself to pay attention. I write very slowly, but all the time, in the last 36 hours I wrote 42 lines, and I don't know whether it's day or night. That's what you have to give up. Read more...

Errands

One of the last three trips in and out on the goat trail before the driveway is rebuilt. I brought in quite a load of supplies, drinking water, booze, sausage, eggs, potatoes, juice. I'm set (the longest definition in the OED). Did my laundry, and while it was washing, went to Big Lots, right around the corner, and bought candles (it's the cheapest place to buy candles) as I use a few dozen every winter. Stopped at the pub, for a draft and a bowl of chili, then went to the museum, where I was not on duty, and researched Carter for a couple of hours. Mackletree is going to be closed for at least a month while the road department rebuilds a couple of bridges, so starting Tuesday I'll be driving one of the two long ways around. A change in scenery. Great conversation at lunch with a minister and his wife. They had overheard a student from the university asking me about reading for the Chinese students, and asking what I was going to be reading at Chautauqua, and when he left (their table was right behind where I sit at the bar) and I had turned around, to say good-bye, so I was facing the couple. The minister asked me what were the circumstances of me reading at Chautauqua and I explained to them. They both said they'd like to read some of my writing, I told them just to google me, and that I wasn't that drummer in Texas. We talked about access for a few minutes. How easy it was to find out about a person or a thing or a word. When I was leaving, the minister stopped me with a raised hand, and said that I had made their day, that I was the most casually erudite person he'd ever run into. It was a nice compliment. During the afternoon, reading Mary's letters, I'd occasionally fade into the middle distance, and remember the chance encounter. That 'casually' that he mentioned is something that I've consciously worked toward. It's very difficult, which is strange, to get the written word to read as the spoken voice. The train of thought. Doing my walk-around, looking out the various windows, they all frame a slightly different picture of the world, but I'm partial to the view out the nine lights in the top half of the back door. The top middle panel frames the woodshed, which is about forty feet away (I know that because I use a fifty foot extension cord to run the electric chainsaw when I'm working on small stuff there) and I see something moving. There's a bear in my woodshed. A small bear, but a bear nonetheless. It's maybe 4 feet tall, and I don't do well estimating weight, but maybe between 150 and 200 pounds. I don't know the specific gravity of black bears, but they're remarkably tubular from their shoulders right down through their torso. A bear's claws are not retractable. This is almost certainly a young male. Young males, at two years old, have to find their own territory or Daddy will kill them. I watch him for fifteen minutes, the window AC is on, and it acts as white noise to mask my shuffling around. We both hear a pack of dogs, they're running something and headed this way, so he ambles off down the ill-defined path toward the graveyard. The dogs get here, a few minutes later, and immediately go to the woodshed and start sniffing around; then, whimpering the while, they tucked their tails between their legs and headed back the way the way they had come. Read more...

Fall Sign

A crew had been out, to take that tree off of the phone line. They were good, I stopped to watch them. They wore hard-hats, goggles, and space-age chaps (to protect against kick--back (a chainsaw is a fearsome thing)), and proceeded cautiously. As well they should. A large tree, wedged up in one way or another, is a dynamic threat. There's a huge amount of kinetic energy, and the saw tends to bind. A few leaves are falling, when the wind blows hard, but the sure indicator that the seasons are changing is when the parking-lot birds play in the pampas grass. It only happens for a few weeks every year, that the small brown birds that work the parking lot over at Kroger, migrate a few hundred yards south to ride the waving stalks in the traffic island behind the bank. They may have an agenda. I find it amusing to watch them, but I've never found anyone else that found it interesting. I'd mostly rather be alone anyway. I don't know what drove me to that state, habituation, probably, what becomes comfortable. I don't wear rings or watches or name tags, because the first lesson you learn in theater, is that you don't want to wear things that can snag. Same with art work. Brutal dirty day at work. TR and I spent hours in the basement, moving stuff, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. We got a good bit of it done, and at the end of day we both looked like coal-miners. I have to go to town tomorrow, to do my laundry and some shopping, and when I got home I just undressed into the laundry basket while I heated water for a sponge bath. If I'd known I was going to get so dirty, I would have just booked a room at a motel. God bless running hot water. I heard B's yodel, as he approached my place. We both give fair notice when approaching, it's a country habit. The good news was that Scott would be here next Thursday, and that I needed to be here, to supervise the work on draining the puddles, and then B and I would drive up and down the driveway fifty times, so I needed to have a full tank of gas. Means just three more round-trips, which I can just about muster, on the goat trail. Means I can finally cook that damned rabbit and have TR and Meagan up here for dinner. Means I can finally drive up to my house and haul away some trash. Means I can buy a load of firewood. So I will take Thursday off, to watch it all happen, the driveway, draining the ponds. B and I will have to spend an hour clearing brush and saplings from the ditch easement. This is one of the most exciting things that's happened to me in recent years. Beside myself, that it's actually happening, will be happening; lord knows, we have to get the tense correct, even if we hadn't known each other previously. This is now and nothing compares. I have a 'random events' calendar that includes almost everything. Read more...

Dirty Places

Talk about one thing leading to another. M and C left us with clear instructions to clean a section of the basement that has never been cleaned. A daunting task. Some things had to be moved, so a new home for those things had to be cleaned out. Everything was very dusty, and some of the things were heavy. Tomorrow we should be able to vacuum and mop, creating some new, usable, space for storing pedestals and their bonnets (called vitrines, in the trade) clearing out the front-hall closet, which is currently where we store the bonnets, for use as a coat closet when we have winter events. M and C are both very good vertical thinkers, most people think horizontally. A theater education trains you to think vertically, the Big Picture; and it's a more suited way of learning, to the way the world actually functions. I know when to seek help, but I can handle a great things on my own. I've reinvented the hinge so many times, that I wish, now, that there was a photographic record, but it was never done for that reason, it was always that I just needed a hinge. The driveway is so bad, I have to self-medicate, before I drive down in the morning. A shot of Irish and a smoke. Jesus, it's like an obstacle course, and then the driveway too... Life... as we know it, functions as a metaphor. I cop that completely from Emily. She probably understood the language better than anyone, Susan Howe, Skip, Steven, any feeble attempt I might make. You might notice that t's follows s's; I only mention that in passing, the great scrim of things is that nothing it what is seems. Read more...

Mulling Over

I had no idea what the noise was. It didn't register at all, like seeing a completely new color smeared against the sky. My personal sound library is fairly vast: a young rabbit being killed by a hawk, three crows fighting over one mouse, an alligator trying to spit out a fishing lure it had mistaken for a fish. I awoke instantly, used the very small LED light to find the LED headlamp and grabbed the cut-off shotgun from it's hidey-hole. I'm not particularly paranoid, but I do keep some firecrackers around, and I do have a sawed-off shotgun loaded with bird-shot. I flip on the outdoor light. It's a rabid coon, and three Black-Lab crosses. I throw some rocks and go back to bed. Not to diminish, I throw a good rock, shotgun shells have gotten expensive; and experience has shown that if I actually shoot the shotgun, it's difficult to get back to sleep. The noise lingers in my head. A beautiful day in paradise, fifteen degrees cooler, not a cloud in the sky. The driveway is as bad as it's ever been except when it was completely impassable for six weeks after the ice-storm of '04, and I creep down in 4-wheel low in first gear. Even then, the new wash-outs grab the tires and force you where they will. Coming up is a bad dream. I spent most of the day as a janitor, mindless, but my copy of "The Swerve" arrived and I did spend a little time with that. I ran errands, Pegi needed some documents taken over to a foundation that grants us some money, and I ended up with some people there, talking about the new directors. I told them right out, that I thought this change was great, that M and C were insightful and intelligent, and, that, if the money was there, we were good to go. I'm not a PR guy, but I meant what I said. I went back to the garbage, and the president of the board called and he needed some keys right then. So I had to drop what I was doing again. Run to the hardware store, get the keys, run by, by the president's office Then it was lunch-time. After lunch I hauled several loads of trash to the dumpster and then everyone was gone. When I'm there alone, I need to be in call of the front desk, so I usually hole up in my office, and read non-fiction. Read more...

Lost Love

Lost love and loneliness are reflections for another holiday alone. I read some Thoreau, some Hannah Arendt, and avoid calling anyone. I'd bought a couple of packages of stuffed shells, Bertolli, frozen, because I never make them for myself, and they were on sale. I made some garlic bread, from the left-over baguette from the board meeting. The acidity of certain foods bothers me more than it ever did before. It's weird, actually, because I've never had to watch what I ate, I always could, like the Great White Shark, digest anything from shoe-leather to plankton. I've always had great control over my gag-reflex, so that I could ingest things like peyote, and datura, back in the day. I once took a bag of roasted morning glory seeds, Pearly Gates, into an art movie house in Jacksonville, and sat through three showings of a film version of Joyce's "Ulysses". Stories I could tell. In the early 70's, when I was still working at The Cape Playhouse in the summer, and madly printing the rest of the year, 7 NEA grants in a 13 year period; a bunch of us would meet, summers, on Tuesday morning, at the print shop, drop acid, and do the four or five mile walk down through Crow Pasture, out and around the beach, then back up to the print shop. We only had Tuesday off during the day, and we had to be back at the theater that night, to run a show. Interestingly, we ran great shows, were notorious, on the circuit, for our technical proficiency. It's a matter of focus. I thought about the opera libretto all day, in the back of my mind; I was doing other stuff, leaching acorns, sweeping dust-bunnies from corners, but I was thinking about the fox, and how she is the girl and the honey. I figure I'll give TR a couple of thousand lines that he can choose from, for the fifty or sixty lines he might choose to use. I already told him he could use anything he wanted, in whatever form. It's just text. The power went out, just before seven, soon after that the phone rang, and it was Adams County Rural Electric, wondering if I had electricity, and I told the nice man, that, no, I didn't have power, as he well knew, because my meter reads remotely, and he said they'd probably have it restored before midnight. I ask him what time it was, as I don't have a clock when the power is out, and he said it was nearly nine. I asked him if they usually called a residence at that time of night, and he said no, not usually, but someone thought my place was probably a hunting camp, and if no one was there, they wouldn't send out a crew until in the morning. I told him it didn't matter, but they did send out a crew and I had power again by 11:30. I sat in the dark, for a couple of hours, reading by headlamp, and I was startled when the refrigerator and my two lights came back on, and the computer said "Please Wait". The power company must build a huge amount of slack into their operating budget. I cost them a fortune. I mean really. Two guys (they can't work alone) and a truck from West Union, which is more than an hour away, at night, on a holiday? What did it cost to send them out to manually trip a relay on my transformer? I've cost utility companies a fortune over the years. It seems I'm always at the end of the line. I'm proud of it, in one way, but I know it costs everyone else money. The phone, for instance, they can't send someone in with a dish, so that I could modernize, because I can barely achieve the ridge in 4-wheel low, and their installation vans would mire at the bottom of the hill. It's easier just to accept me as an added expense. No, listen, it is. I'm cheaper by the job than I am by the hour. Phone was out also, so I couldn't send last night or this morning. Debris everywhere on the roads and I could see the tree that took the phone out. When I got to town I found a Frontier truck and told the driver where it was. I'm taking some Doctor's wives (that's the way they were described to me) through the Carters tomorrow, so I worked on my Carter routine and polished some fine points. Spent a couple of hours reading about the Renaissance. There was an obnoxious child at the pub, when I went over for lunch, so I got mine to go and went down below the flood wall to eat in peace. I hate bleating goats and small children crying out their pain. It's just a reflex, it doesn't mean anything. Oh, but wait, it does. Rolling thunder and I have to go, you have my number, right? Read more...

Let's Assume

Let's assume a potato. You might or not be Irish. First thing, in the morning, you grate a russet, skin and all; I prefer to brown it in butter, but there's an argument for peanut oil. Hey, I'm all about avoiding conflict. Top it with a perfect fried egg, add a piece of toast with a dense marmalade. Repeat as necessary. I had to start using the compost pile again, I just don't bury things anymore and there's a tacit agreement that everyone just takes what they want. Various venders, at the farmer's market, give me blemished produce, and there's substantial waste. On the other hand, it's free. I was explaining to Debbie, Lane's wife, about making polenta, and how I liked to use some acorn meal, and when I made a batch, I tended to eat it three times a day until it was gone. You can put anything on top of polenta. I like it with chipped beef and gravy, an egg, a sliced tomato, an avocado with mozzarella and balsamic, chorizo, anything left-over. You can always eat this with just a fork, and that leaves a hand free for turning pages. My idea of a good time. Eating and reading. Baked beans on polenta is always good. Let's assume you walked in late to this conversation, how would I key you into events? Baked beans is enough for me. Read more...

Side Bar

You stuff enough MFA's in a room, the level of poop will drown you. Theory follows theory unto nothingness. I can argue almost anything, rhetoric is my field, I spend hours a day talking to myself. And I don't mince words. But I do occasionally tear up, remembering something. The crows are pairing in even numbers, 2's and 4's, and I don't know what to make of it, I'm so used to three crows that it's a shock to my system. My system, we could laugh about that, I merely limp along. How many crows? What were we talking about? I went to town early to miss the rain. Read some in Mary's diaries, a beer at the pub for lunch; about 1 o'clock Sara and I moved Carters around, got some things out of the vault, and made a map of how she wants me to re-hang everything. Great fun. Then I had to restore to the old order. TR and I will install the new order next week. Lost track of time, and suddenly it was D's opening. D and Carma were late, everyone asking for them. Introduced several people to M and C, chit-chatted until it looked like it was going to rain again, TR agreed to lock up and I scooted for home. Scott couldn't do the driveway today because of the rain and I had to come up in 4-wheel low, first gear. No AC, the windows open, and I can just hear a train across the river in Kentucky. A lovely sound. It was fun, doing the Carters with Sara, then walking M and C through and checking my map. My entire Carter lecture will have to be altered, which is cool, new material is always good. M and C understand that Sara and I are the Carter Trust; it becomes very obvious when she and I are discussing a fine point of Carter scholarship and no one else has a clue what we're talking about. I could do a series of lectures on Carter, and we could tape those; I'll never get around to writing about him, I have too many projects of my own. I'm working on the libretto for an opera right now, editing a book, and keeping you informed , I don't have time for nonfeasance. simony, any of that. You in your basket, hanging in the square, Piazza Del San Marco. Or me. Conservative white guys are always chipping away at our rights. It's the nature of things. There's always going go be some asshole from Kansas or Nebraska that thinks he knows better. I don't feel like protesting anymore, though I occasionally do go out on the back deck, late at night, and pontificate, just for the hell of it. It never did rain again. I didn't think it would, but I needed an excuse to leave the festivities. I needed time alone. Funny, just before I left, TR and I were comparing ankles, it's a silly game we play, and I dared him to go lift Fatima's pant's leg, he didn't, of course, and we were left, wondering. Not, necessarily, a bad place to be. Sometimes not knowing is better. Read more...