Phone Calls

I'd been off the phone grid for two weeks, and everyone was afraid I was dead. A legitimate concern, considering my lifestyle. I could be dead in the woods and it could be weeks before anyone found me. But I'm happily alive. Never been better. Late music, Blind Faith, "Can't Find My Way Back Home", and later, it's just Clapton, playing the blues. After dark it starts raining, and the staccato beat on the metal roof sends me into a reverie. I just stared into the middle distance for several hours, remembering fragments of my life; what rises to the top is not necessarily what we expect. Sandra walking in the sun, and that Catholic girl that tanned like someone from a Caravaggio painting. Not quite exactly in the service of the crown. Willie Nelson, not a day goes by. I'm just saying. Was that Judy Collins, I Once Loved a Sailor, some great soprano. Then Miles Davis, from Bitch's Brew. I'm excited about working, later today (it's Monday already) because I want to get another ten or so pieces hung, so that we'll all know the show will be fully installed by Friday. I'm not trying to please Mark and Charlotte, as much as I just want to get it done for Sara and myself. This is a very hard show to install, the hardware is a nightmare, and just lifting the pieces has already required that I go next door, to the bar, and ask for help twice. They're happy to help, I loan them things, tables and chairs and tablecloths, so there's a balance of payment thing going on, and Chris is particularly competent. One painting is very heavy, maybe a hundred pounds; I explain to him that TR and I can hold the weight, and what he needs to do is hook one side of the wire them scoot around to the other side and hook it. It takes maybe thirty seconds, and it goes perfectly. Sara's watching, and she's amazed that I knew Chris could do what needed to be done. My first choice would be Kim or Glenn, but I knew Chris could do it, and there was a great sense of satisfaction when we got that piece on the wall. Four plastic anchors in concrete, two J-hooks, and this painting is secure against anything other than a drone attack. By far the most difficult thing to hang in the show is a triple layer of small silver-point drawings. The math escapes me. I assume I'll be able to figure it tomorrow, no, wait, later today. It's just numbers, after all. Knuckle down and run the numbers. Got to the bottom of the hill this morning and there were three phone company trucks. It seems that the reconnect on Saturday was just temporary. There's no telling how much this repair cost. They joked about it, asked the usual questions about my lifestyle. One of the guys had been in my house, and he was telling the others about my staircase, which he defined as "about fifty walnut gun stocks". One of the other guys wanted to see it (he makes muzzle-loaders) and I was early, so I drove him up to have a look. He was floored, said they were the most beautiful stairs he had ever seen. I told him how Froggy Taylor had sold me the wood as Poplar, and he couldn't believe it. He looked around a little bit and remarked that he had never seen so many books in his life and he asked, of course, if I had read them all, and I told that yes I had, except for the pile on top of the dead aquarium, which were the books waiting to be read. He was a pretty sharp guy, Bob, and on the way back down he asked me what I did, and I told I read, and wrote, and installed shows in an art museum. He said that sounded cool, but he knew that it must be a hard life. He loved the cookstove, asked how many cords of wood I burned a year. I had to go, I had a show to hang. I wanted to get at least 10 hung, and I got fifteen. Still managed to get there early, and had the place opened up when Sara arrived. We went over the small changes, she had made with TR after I left on Saturday. There's a narrative to the show now. The most striking thing, though, as the pieces go up on the wall, is just the absolute beauty of so many of the paintings. I don't think I ever done such a beautiful show. Sara went over to lunch with me, at the pub, and we sat at a table instead of the bar; Drew joined us, and talked about the history of the Scioto Valley, it was a great lunch. In the afternoon I just continued hanging difficult pieces. It's one of those chores that is totally engaging. When I burned out on the math, around four o'clock, I just left.You can't do a damned thing if you can't do the math.