What's Missed

Expecting symmetry I was confused. Had to measure again. A grand piano is not bi-laterally symmetrical, therefore it follows that the legs are not equidistance apart. There's the issue of equipoise, even distribution of weight. All three distances between legs are different. All pianos are different, the brands; our new one, the upstairs grand, is a Young Chang, which the music guy says is a fine instrument. This one weighs right at 1,000 pounds. The new dolly arrived today, in three heavy boxes, requiring assembly, 14 pieces, 22 bolts. Dollies for grands come in several sizes, all adjustable in a certain range. You have to assemble it finger-tight, lift the piano, take off the little useless casters, hold it in the air while someone adjusts the three arms of the dolly, set it down, tighten the nuts, take the piano off, really torque the nuts, then lift the damned thing on again. What fun, need some guys from the pub, they always joke about wanting to help (Jim said he could hang a show quickly, with a nail gun). This the way I always moved printing presses, bet a couple of large guys that they can't lift something, buy them a beer at Happy Hour. An assembly like this dolly, what I do is lay everything out, bolts next to their holes (the bolts are all different sizes), look at the diagram until I understand it, then start fitting pieces, goes perfectly, each arm gets a caster and a cup to hold the piano leg, top and bottom center plates that bolt to three sleeves, the arms go into the sleeves with a large bolt set-screw to hold them in place, assembled upside down so the nuts and lock-washers are on the bottom (easy to get confused here, but all goes well, I turn the thing over. There are two adjustments possible on each arm: the sleeve pivots on a single half-inch bolt, and the arm goes in and out, maximum "in" is snug against the caster. Killer casters, 5", swivel, with bearings and a grease fitting. The arms dip down, in an "L" so that the piano isn't five inches too high, clever bastards. I lock everything at the fullest "in" position and measure the arms, thinking to get them close to where they need to be, measure the piano again, then measure the dolly. I don't think it's the correct dolly. Despite the fact that I've measured everything so many times, had D call the toll-free number, despite the fact that there was only one dolly (in the online catalog) for Young Chang, stood next to D when he was making the call, verified all information twice. I'm confused. End of the day I realize I could maybe turn the casters the other way, the wrong way, but they are slotted and will fit that way, and the load bearing is the same, gain maybe the few inches it seems to me we need. I built a very interesting studio for a guy once, who could actually do the math that would tell me whether or not moving the arms "in" one inch would be enough to allow a fit. Tomorrow I need to rebolt the casters, I can't do the math. I could make a cardboard model, if I needed to, if it was important, but it's not. Rebolt. Howe and I, the most lucrative stair-job of all time, in Telluride, got called into a Condo job, where the stairs were log stringers with half-log steps, four sets of stairs for four condos. The concrete pour had been off, and the landings weren't perfect, they couldn't figure out what to do. We made a jig, extendable at both ends, turned it into a piece of cake, took us a day to make the jig and install the first set of steps, but we had them all done in a week and paid a flat $300 per set. I bought a 1st, Hard, "Gravity's Rainbow" and a case of Ridge Zinfandel. The back-up plan is that we just carry the fucking piano where it needs to be, in the main gallery, for tuning, and playing at the event. We can do that, it's not even a problem, but I wonder why we have the wrong dolly, we could not have been more clear. I occurs to me that those people on the phone, they've never actually moved a piano, they were flipping pages in a book or something, we really weren't on the same world. I don't flatter myself, I don't need to, I fuck up, I'm wrong often enough that it doesn't seem unnatural, but I can measure; unless the legs were realigned in transport, this dolly won't work for that piano. If you had to turn the casters sideways there should have been a note. I'd do that, if I was shipping them out, -hey, by the way, buddy, if I was doing this I'd turn the casters sideways- but I wouldn't be working there, so that's mute. I wonder what the co-efficient is. It's a complex equation, two unknowns, like most marriages. My gut feeling is we gain enough, if we turn the casters around, still, I hate the fact that it isn't correct, this is an expensive dolly, and I expected it to be correct. Fuckers. I find I'm disappointed in almost everyone's attention to detail, Kim gets it, but almost no one else, so maybe those of us that get it are wrong, certainly possible, too tightly focused, I've thought about this; what you thought you'd learned, what you thought you'd heard, what you thought you'd seen, I came away from this neutral, I didn't believe or disbelieve anything, I just watch.
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The Wind

Remnants of Ike, strong winds all day, increasing in the afternoon, 30 to 50 mph. Still mostly in leaf, the forest takes a beating. Brown-outs and black-outs and finally losing power for good about 5 in the afternoon, cold supper, a can of beans, then rereading essays by Carl Sauer, by candle-light as the day darkens. Early morning there is still no power and debris everywhere, finally, at 10 o'clock, electricity again and I can have a cup of coffee, some breakfast, take stock. Rain mostly missed, off to the north and west and the temps are 25 degrees cooler. I hike far enough down the driveway, clipping as I go, to see that the large lodged hickory tree on the uphill side of the driveway didn't fall; one large dead chestnut oak came down, but parallel to the driveway, and brought down with it a tangle of fox grape vine, not quite ripe grapes everywhere. Strong enough wind to knock down acorns, which litter the ground. At peak of storm yesterday afternoon, because the leaves were sails, the trees were bending through 60 degrees of arc, sometimes a bit more. I had taped my drafting protractor to a window and noticed there was a pattern to the wind-bursts, like waves (maybe the same pattern): 8 to 12 minutes sequences that would go from almost calm to rage and back to almost calm. Loki with a bellows, Aeolus breathing in and out. The house shuddered, a winter phenomenon . Remembering some winter walks on Cape Cod, stir-crazy in the print-shop, Ted and I would suit-up, do a loop down through Crow Pasture, around on the beach, and back up through Sesuit Harbor, tears streaming down our faces, freezing in out beards, barely able to stand, being pushed sideways by huge winds, mammoth blocks of sea ice jumbled like broken glass, salt spray turning our clothing white. About half-way around, high on the beach, there was a cluster of large glacial erratics, we'd stop in the lee, to get out of the wind, take a hit from the flask, maybe a toke, roll a smoke if either of our fingers worked well enough, calmly discussing the design of a book we might be printing, or whether either of us might get laid the following week-end. Thinking about this, I was thinking about this last night, when people talk about the best days of their lives, christ, I'm still having them. I listen to Greg Brown, "The Poet's Game", then get an early drink, I hardly drank at all last night, because I knew I couldn't write (also I wanted to remain lucid in case something happened, you know, tree on the roof, or branch through a window) and I knew I'd start writing early today, because I didn't write last night, couldn't write, because I need the keyboard, I can't do longhand anymore, just can't, I love the screen and this thing that happens for me, when I reach what I think of as 'terminal mass' and the paragraph simply takes over. I'm not superstitious and subscribe to no bullshit, but there is a zone. Purely neuronal, probably. But most writers I know do keep a bauble or two around, house-hold gods, something to fondle or sniff. What would have been perfect, last night, would have been a laptop and a couple of batteries, I could have written by candle-light. If I could have written last night, I could have placed you in the middle of my experience of what was happening, I can't do that now, I can only do a kind of reportage, not the thing itself. Clearly have to think about that, because I'm going to be off-line, getting the Wrack Show together, and I wonder where I am, in that, me. Skip, that bastard, has got me cutting out all of the connective tissue, and I can hardly follow myself. Look at his cuts, they're cinema-graphic. Not a single clue. Those that can't do read. Something like that. -Do you have Prince Albert in a can?- What my concerns are. Right now? I see patterns. Kim was talking about a decorative course, but higher, where he could see it, where we could see it, and I agree, love your tucking, do it. The shadow of your smile. Listen, before I go, I have to say, you smelled great, something between a mushroom and a lily, and the music started, fucking music, noise is more like it, whatever that hip-hop thing is. Maybe we should get together, my guys will be in touch with your guys. Hey.
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Hearing Voices

Not a good sign. Hot again, with ice and the fan to cool my computer, and some harmonic in the fan's motor creates the sound of men's voices outside. I can almost make out the words. Strange. Camping and fishing way up the Little Cimarron in Colorado, pretty high up, maybe 11,000 feet, just below snow-melt, where the stream was quite wild (cut-throat trout above the beaver ponds, native, and rainbows below, introduced), pebbles and small rocks, rolling in the stream sounded like voices in the night. Spring fishing there was extraordinary, 17 miles off a paved road so not much pressure and the fish were starved. A native cut-throat, caught in 34 degree water, is the firmest, finest eating fish I've ever tasted. We'd take in some bacon fat and a couple of lemons, some cornmeal for johnny-cake, a couple of skillets, eat fish three meals a day. Took my parents in, before they were so feeble, and Dad still tells stories about catching a trout on every cast and throwing them on a snow-bank. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, headwaters of a lovely stream, the very beginning of an extensive drainage, 12 and 13,000 foot peaks on three sides, virgin Englemann Spruce thick as fur on a dog's back, and at night the stars were thicker than the spruce. I went up alone one time, after the divorce, considering just disappearing, hiked to a ridge top by moonlight, and the Northern Lights sheeted and shimmered; it was August, and the last of the snow was melting in the northern lee of the rocks, there were hundreds of drips, and they sounded like voices, saying -maybe not love, but at least truth and beauty-, and I spent a really uncomfortable night wrapped in a space blanket with no dinner. My camp looked like heaven when I came down, fire-pit, fridge rack cooking surface, coffee pot, made a pot of coffee, caught a couple of fish, got on with my life. Sometimes the wind, when I'm carrying wood in winter, will be absolutely conversational. Sometimes I talk out loud when I'm alone and hear myself, reply, start a rant. Interesting experiment, don't know why I did it, but I needed to go to town, library, liquor store, laundry, and some other supplies. Once every two weeks I have to do this, make a trip to town, other than working days, normal working day I can pick up a few things but I will not stay in town and do a major thing after work. Desperately need home. Maybe an occasional function, but I've ducks to watch, crows to see, I completely ignored a very large spider today, because I was in a hurry, and that's just wrong. So what I did is the whole town run without ever saying a word, not a word, I nodded and gestured, but I said nothing: it wasn't actually necessary to say anything. And I did a lot of things. I listened to a lot of other people say things, most of it unnecessary, but maybe not, maybe necessary, for, you know, normal interaction. Fact is, I do all of the stuff I needed to do, buy the things I needed to buy, and I never say a word. I'm impressed by this experiment but I don't know what the result means. On my way home I was giving myself hell about hearing voices, went below the floodwall, walked down, across that first terrace, to the river bank, The Ohio, ditched as it may be, channelized, dammed, controlled, is still a significant thing. I watched for an hour, if I'd had some jerky, I might have stayed all night. Had to get home and eat. Milk was on sale so I bought a half-gallon and thought about the cured loin, milk is a great marinade for cured pork, I don't know why, lactic acid? bought a dozen organic eggs, not for their organic properties, they're just better packed, thinking I'll be eating breakfast a lot in the near future. If Wittgenstein came to visit, I'd feed him breakfast, easily reproducible. They went away. Advile.
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Minor Flooding

Talk about local events. No storm at my house but town (17 miles away) got hit with a thunder shower. Minor flooding in the basement at the museum. Mopping up (when a janitor marries above his station) I had the great good fortune to find a hidden corner in a dark room where one of the kids had pooped several times. It's lunch time before I get everything cleaned up. Ate at the Pub, joined by two profs from the college. Mike, the music guy, still wanting to do some music for the installation, catch up on college gossip. Mid-afternoon docenting a pair of ladies around the exhibits, one I know from several openings, the other, her friend Jodie, was darkly attractive and had great legs. I was glib and funny. You collect wonderful stories at an art museum, one does. The Deputy knew I was flirting, hated to interrupt my narrative, but something needed doing and she and I were alone as staff, it was my job to do whatever it was, didn't matter, because the ladies called me back over, to explain what a burl was, why so many of the wood turners liked to use them. I did the five-minute burl lecture, making up shit as I went along, stringing together fact and fiction, realized I was in the same mode that I write from, the middle-distance. They were asking good questions, very like the questions I ask myself, and I was answering the way I write, little essays, posts, notes. I brought back lunch for a couple of staff, sat with them for a few minutes, then Pegi wouldn't let me leave, giving me a raft of shit about being a recluse, anti-social. Very funny stuff. Bottom line, I don't have any free time, it looks like I should, but I don't, and if I did have more time, I'd spend it reading and writing. Staff room conversation today is all about the new generations of pests, resistant to the usual batch of insecticides, nits, mites, bed-bugs, crabs; motels are deathtraps and movie theaters harbor disease. I'm cleaning up human feces in the basement, to which I'm not even related (an important distinction when it comes to shit, the Deputy pointed out) and they're talking about nits, hell, you just rinse off with kerosene and take a bath, it's not rocket science. I only had body-lice once but got them from a famous lady and considered it an honor. Raining off and on all day, clearing a bit on the drive home, sun visible as a white disc, and there are two sun-dogs, just visible in the clouds, stop at the lake and roll a smoke, three crows cleaning up after a picnic. Must trim the driveway, it's gotten scary, looks like nobody lives there, here. Three crows a cleaning, two sun-dogs shining, and a recluse in a pine tree. Sorry, thinking forward to xmas, the girls want to come here, put that into the mix, the Wrack Show, right, right, prioritize. I need a really large calendar for November and December, with room for notes, I can't write when other people are around, I just can't, and I'll need a handle, something, because other people will be around, so I need to take notes, I might use them later. I might not. It's not fair to say never: twice, when other people were here, I wrote when other people were around. It was an experiment, no one could tell any difference in the resulting paragraph. I thought that telling. I could have written about it, I chose not to, I don't know why. Really, I'd rather talk about my failures, they're more interesting, success is easy, failure involves some thought, and is way more interesting. Listen, there was a rock song at Kroger's this morning, The Grateful Dead, doing "Ripple" and I was gone, buy whatever they wanted me to buy, yes, sure, whatever. I know I'm protected, I have a vest, I only hope you don't shoot me in the thigh, or the neck.
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Your Language

As in watch your language. That Brit has a dirty mouth but he speaks so well you hardly notice, in fact, it's charming. Read about a boat, D wants to build one, I have built one, but just one, the infamous pirogue that was a legend around the backwaters of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, she drafted just 2 inches and I could take her anywhere, raiding oyster beds of the rich and famous. Massachusetts law dictated ownership of certain waters, they went with the land, you had your house, and you had your oyster bed. Many changes of hands later, rich people end up with oyster beds they know nothing about, don't care about. I think it's true that I've never bought an oyster, can't remember ever, but I have eaten my weight many times over. The Vineyard, we were so poor there, our combined income wasn't enough to pay any taxes, but we lived like royalty. We were brewing beer and making wine, bartering the excess (most) for anything we needed, grew all our own food, bought wheat berries, green coffee beans, and sugar once a year, along with a 55 gallon drum of lamp oil, made the cash we needed for those items by selling oysters to restaurants. In three years there we published 18 books, hand-set letterpress mostly, but a couple of linotyped (and go back over to the mainland and linotype a couple of books in a day or two and bring them back), longer books, and the 'Leash Of Gaelic Tales" which was monotyped and the dude that did it for us brought the galleys over, we just had to put him up for a couple of nights and feed him, I've told the story, but I was remembering so clearly. Somebody would show up, and if you live on Martha's Vineyard people are always showing up, and we didn't have a phone, or electricity, for that matter, people just materialized out of the fog. In the extended summer is when this would happen, droves of people, night after night for weeks on end. We couldn't afford to feed them, not to buy stuff, so in the summer we'd feed them clam chowder, we'd gather the clams on the mandatory beach walk, I'd make the chowder, Marilyn would do something magic with vegetables, and always, strawberry shortcake for dessert, because we had a great strawberry patch and she could make such a nice shortcake. Later in the year, it was always oysters, lots of oysters, fixed a lot of different ways but usually roasted on a grill just until the shells opened. And for those other dishes, requiring raw oysters, I still bear scars. Now we were really popular, the food was amazing, we either had to open a restaurant or leave. We left, moved to Missip to cut down on the guests. And it worked. We were more than self-sufficient, we produced a surplus in everything we did for ourselves, make three pounds of butter, sell two, bottle three cases of beer and trade two, kill a grass-fed steer, sell half, make sausage to order. We were a well-oiled machine. Oh, the boat, right, it was a Guide Boat, which is a white-water boat you stand up in to row, fishing for trout, and there were pictures, it was lovely, and the article said that it was "only incidentally beautiful": what the builder was going for, directed toward, was beauty and function, it was hardly incidental. Watch your language. The Brit, I've noticed, asks a lot of questions for which he always has the answers; often, too, he'll roll off the end of a sentence with a kind of half-question, half-statement. I like listening to him. It's confusing. The emphasis. Also with Mary, who hasn't finished High School, is 19, dropped out of school to live with an abusive goth, the State should pay me for listening. I could dress it up and get a grant. Listen, you want to know the truth? Dreyfuss was correct. I went into the basement bathroom with some trepidation, you don't want to know. A pink elephant, my living room, I don't want to know. I'm still wondering what you said behind my back. No one treats me the same anymore, I'm like a janitor with contacts. The docent of choice. The go-to person for definition. It's tough to create the right image, I don't want to wear a cape, but I need to convince D he needs to come in and do a few things, while he's on vacation. I think I might be able to do this, I'll have to call in some markers, it's an iffy thing. I hate politics.
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Dirty Jobs

Loud noise outside, I was curious, might as well get up and pee; at first I can't see a thing, flooding the dark with light, then notice that the grill is turned over, something afoot. Not a fool, I get the .22 and the big flashlight. Don't know where I'm going with this but I had cleaned up, a full bath in the sheep-watering trough and unguents to heal the sundry bites and rashes, some Gold Bond Powder, and I'm kind of crouched, outside, waiting for the next thing, an alien or a secret agent, it's a feral cat, a tri-color, she shows herself. I don't want a cat, I'm clear on this, I don't do litter, clean up after, any of that, but a wild cat might be acceptable, like the fox, we might be neighbors. I toss her a piece of pizza and go back inside. Her court. Nothing is what it seems. That Wedding Chapel on Rt.125 is a joke, eventually there will be a punch line, an Emu goes in to a bar, something. Always difficult to get back to sleep when I go outside in the night. I think I thought I saw, and, as Cage pointed out, it's real hard to hear nothing. Credit Bob and Jana, I don't have to wait until the weekend to read up on Shelley's death and disposal. Cremated in the presence of Trelawny and Hunt, the heart simply did not burn, so Trelawny wrapped it up and took it to Mary, it was finally buried with the body of Shelley's son, Florence, 1889, 67 years late. Recent article posits something called 'progressively calcifying heart', which must have something to do with writing you heart out. Finished Skip's book again, will read it twice again in a couple of weeks. Back at the museum, D is off for several days, building furniture, I set Mary (is the girl's name) to work on my usual chores, start bagging mulch, breaking that task into doable units by putting away things or throwing them away, from the downstairs hall, where the kids waited to do their bit. A really big mess. The Brit was very strict with them, each had a chair with their name on it and the "Moms From Hell" who kept them seated, but they could play with anything that didn't make noise; also, it was dark, because two doors open onto the stage and they were kept open for the frequent entrances and exits. Classroom also totaled, an unbelievable 55 gallons of garbage. Cleaning clears the mind. That was the sign over the door of Dufus Dreyfuss's classroom, "Zen, and The Art of Mopping", "Shit Is Just Shit", "Loose Change Is Everywhere". His courses were well attended. He was a dapper little Irish dude, knee-pants and funny socks, awful vests that often had a pocket with his smoldering pipe sometimes emitting the occasional puff of smoke when he got energizied and pumped his arms. He had an affected manner, lecturing, that was much imitated, and he knew his shit. Used a cane, and pointed with it, when we were in the field; I was there when he died, we were examining a treatment plant, and he got excited about a perfect 'v' of geese flying overhead, pointed them out, did a little twirl, and tumbled into the sewage. Heart attack. It was just too much, the treatment plant, the geese. Dead calm on my way home and no one at the lake so I stop to watch the ducks swimming. When It's dead calm and the lake surface is a mirror, the intersecting v's are a delicate pattern on the surface, it looked like it carried meaning; five ducks, and somebody must have just fed them because they don't care if I'm a food source or not, which means they just ate big time, and they are swimming away from me, across the lake, and all their little wakes are interacting. I roll and smoke two cigarets, seek higher ground, they finally reach the other shore, and half the lake is engaged in the ripple-effect of their passage. An ephemeral piece, that fades back to mirror surface, I can almost hear a cello, you might never actually see the ducks, just a pattern on the surface of the water. You could slow it down, if you wanted to, add music, but it was beautiful, just the way it was. A perfect mediation between work and home, reintegration into the natural world, which is where there is no light pollution and not a sound that isn't natural, that's all I require. I forgive my fridge on a regular basis, I need it, and my computer makes noise, which I quell, with ice, and a fan that makes noise, but you know what I mean, mostly what I hear is bugs. My windows are open, I don't have AC, I live by the wind, whatever breeze, -brother, could you spare a dime- D off working, during his vacation, to make ends meet, everybody, it seems, with new kids, fucking vectors for disease because they have no immune system. My kids were healthy because they drank raw goat's milk. Fuck your antibiotics, I believe in pre-treating with biotics, poison ivy, right, no problem, if you drink the milk from a goat that ate it you'll never get it, Trust me, the homeopathic thing is very real, I just don't understand it yet, but if the squirrel runs across your roof does it mean anything?
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Later

I'm a creature of habit, completely dismissible, look at my record, in every category I failed, if you were putting together a dream team you wouldn't include me, somewhat less than nothing, I am nothing less than a dust-ball, a balled-up spider web, cat-fur in the corner. Love your eyeliner. Read more...

We Could

Funny conversation with D today, we were coming back from getting the metal roofing, his truck, me riding shotgun, and there were three or four things being discussed, a kind of shotgun approach to communication. One thing we were talking about was trimming the purlins on the shed, but the talk was veering into the Wrack Show, because we had gone below the floodwall, I needed to put his mind to rest on the availability of certain sticks, had shown him one of the two main areas where wrack collects, not sure about the mechanics involved, which we were also discussing. He said -we could...- and I said -I know.- and that was the end of it. From that (a great Skip title) exchange, I knew that he meant that when we stopped at the museum, to get my truck, and pick up the hammer-drill, which he needed to set some window jams in concrete, we should also get the cordless mini-skill-saw because it would be perfect for trimming the purlins. Not an object exchanged, but we both knew what we were talking about. We work so well together because we understand what the other is going to say, often we don't even bother saying anything. This drives other people crazy, which drives me crazy, because it's what I expect. If I'm wiring the shop with B and I need a certain screwdriver, I assume he'll hand to me before I ask for it, like a surgery nurse in the operating suite. I assume that level of understanding. What I most enjoy is when the next move is anticipated. I'm a great helper, easy to work with, because I anticipate. It's not a big deal, if you're the helper, you spend a lot of time standing around, watching, and after a few cycles you know what's needed next. Kim is bricking the Carage and I wish I was there, I could be his hoddy, I can mix mortar, I can carry bricks, I only don't know how to lay them. As Skip is the best writer I know, Kim is the very best layer of bricks, self-taught, fucking auto-didacts always cloud the stew. Why am I burdened with all of these people who are so fucking good at what they do? I got a pizza and a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock on the way home. D wanted to nail the roofing down but I wanted to talk about the Wrack Show, so we talked, I wanted to see if we thought the same way about what we were going to do. Everyone's conception of what's going on is different, nothing is ever the same, you know what I mean, but D and I seemed to be close: there's this poplar burl that's going to be a wall-hanging in the show, and it's leaning against the print-shop, I tell D we have to install this show before it rots, and we're both picking at the burl, peeling off the bark, exposing amazing grain, maybe you had to have been there, but it was a magic moment. We talked about the show, then we talked about it again; what we're looking for, we agree, is merely a stunning installation, we agree we can do that, just let the materials speak. So much is made, incorrectly, of our ability to intercede, we can do nothing, our claim to fame, like various small monkeys. Never put all your assets in a tea cup. I won't go further than that. My main interest is feet, from the ankle down, I'm interested in footings with a sidebar on high-heels and the definition of certain muscles, I'm not dead yet. There's this young lady who smokes, and we see her, because we smoke to, and she presents rearward, and her rearward is a thing I might have talked about. Killer thighs.
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The Perks

My goodness. An e-mail from Skip and he says to send him your snail-mail address and he'll send you the book, he's wxf8424@louisiana.edu on my list. Do it. Might as well read the best. I finished it today, and started rereading it. Working on the Wrack Show tomorrow, at least some serious talk and hauling the metal for the shed roof, also metal for back porch roof, force my own hand, so to speak. First orange, a sumac frond. Lovely but scary. Need to walk the driveway tomorrow morning and cut away some brush, using D's truck to haul metal and he'll bitch about the metal scratching tunnel the driveway has become. Those folk that walked up the other day were sure the place was abandoned, -it is-, I said, -I live in an abandoned house-. Thinking about voices. Got up to pee at 3 and flipped on PBS, as I often do, when I know I can't get right back to sleep; often strange things on the air then, and it was a documentary about STAX Records, got to listen to a little Otis Reading and Skip mentions John Lee Hooker's voice, so I go down stairs and listen to a little John Lee, lord have mercy, maybe the great voice of all time, and remember that Miles Davis once said of James Taylor he sounded like a blind black man. John Lee sounds like black velvet, smoke and whiskey. He's often just a little ahead or a little behind the beat, makes it real, and when he's playing "Black Snake", there isn't much doubt what he's talking about. His voice is hot, sexy, effortless. In a woman's voice it's always a contralto for me, that carries that load of promised sex, and precise pronunciation. John Lee does it with a low baritone, some mumbles, and just the right tone. Boys and girls are different. It took a long time for me to learn that. My life as a wrack line, a sequence of failures, the two mile trough the "Bismark" carved when it was sliding to it's final resting place, let's face it, a hole in the ground. Could be a gopher. I could blame it on someone else, or I could, as I do, just accept responsibility, my fuck-up, I'll fix it, don't bother yourself. Aloneness is the issue, would you rather be bothered by someone else, or be alone? Most people would rather be in company, who could blame them, another warm body, as good as McCarthy's can of peaches in "The Road". I salivated, but I would rather be alone. I like being alone, I can project things, imagine what might be said, sometimes I almost dance, the space is completely open. Defining space is an option. What he said. What you said. I have no idea.
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Losing Leaves

Up half the night reading this dense new book of Skip Fox. Bk 3 of a projected 9. I hold manuscripts. Great writing maintains. Heavy, funny, sexy. Get it. "For To". I was in it all day, wading, rereading, laughing. The man makes me proud of Hunan beans. Huge breakfast at brunch and a bottle of beer. Zipped to town to check on Pegi and The Brit, everything fine, opening went well, Pegi said the show is wonderful. Home, I resume reading, then fix a package of chorizo and eat them as hot dogs, with various toppings. Yum, I say to you. I actually make a better chorizo, but it messes up the kitchen something awful, and this is pretty good. Need to mention to B's brother that I need some lard, and, next pig they kill, some fatback. Tomorrow I'm going to grill a boneless chop I cut off the curing loin. Wash off the cure and soak in papaya nectar. Mesquite wood. I'd love to share this meal with my huge friend in Missip, from whom I learned so much about curing meat, and life in general. I was his first white friend and we were very close, he was my best friend in Missip, bar none, Big Roy. After 10 years in Missip, it was 10 years in western Colorado, and I'd like to show Roy what all those western peppers do to a cure, he'd be on it. I got to get my Roy stories in a folder, I can scan them from copy, I think, maybe dump them in here too, for safe keeping. Odd feeling, reading along in the Fox book and there's a quote from me, from a text/manuscript that was stolen in the one robbery of my life so far, remembered me to that project, three years and 1500 pages of raw text. Skip once related the tale, he gets up early, tokes with his coffee, writes in the morning, often before the sun rises, we exchange work, and I'd sent him a chunk of the text "Text Toward Building A House", and first thing whatever morning, he picked up my manuscript and started working on it as if it was his own work. I see this as high praise. In that survey? He's number 1, in the: white, living, male, category. I had wondered what the hell I was going to do with a whole cured loin, I could slice it and freeze some, probably will, but I can spread it around, too. Little baggies with instructions and a can of papaya nectar. I had the thought, I may have mentioned before, sometimes I find myself with too much of something, I live alone after all. If I make a pate, the smallest I can make is 3 pounds, that's my terminal shut-off point, it doesn't taste right less than that, so I suddenly have a lot of pate, and I give it away, there's a list. They either eat it or throw it away, feed it to a raccoon, I don't know. What I'm going to do is check out next day shipping, find a supply of dry-ice, and send something to one you, once in a while, there are only 39 of you, it's better than the lottery, you stand a chance. Haven't decided how to make the cut. I have enough stones from a GO game to carve initials with a dremel tool, I have a basket, I think I can do this; he doesn't need me (swimmingly, I'm almost absolutely necessary), hey, I been reading Skip all day, what the hell you expect? Myself, the reader, is slipping away, and every time, Skip shocks me, motherfucker hits me up the side of the head with a wet sock or something, and I'm reeling; that someone could do that to me, I generally try to stay on top, you know, so I can watch the horizon. Fall is too soon and nothing done.

Tom

What I think he's saying is that he doesn't have enough firewood. I'll get back to you later, I don't trust myself, I'm the weak link, wait, that glow, the setting sun, makes it, the dappled light, yes, a cartoon, our character, a dead woodchuck, arising from the roadbed, Lazarus in the Chip-And Seal. I saw him, he was there, my agent advised to not comment on what I had thought I had seen. Fucking agents.
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Nose, Grindstone

Try and get a handle on the day. We started, we worked very hard, we stopped. Not many breaks. Sensing deadlines, D and I had done a tentative arrangement for the show and Sara didn't change it much, we started hanging well before lunch, certainly a record. Also, late yesterday, noticed that fully half of the photographs didn't have the artist's name or the name of said piece on the back. Yikes. We managed to tag them all, using the catalog as reference, but the catalog only showed one piece per eleven photographers, then we had the price sheet, which listed titles. Just plain dumb omission. And not packed very well either. Argh. Sara looked at what we had done, changed just a few things, and I could understand the little changes she made, they did make it better, then everyone left us alone, so we could attempt to hang the show in one day, which we did, finishing just at four o'clock. I convinced D that he might as well do the lighting as most of the correct lights were hanging, he started, I went up and got Sara, she was thrilled. I had to get some janitor stuff done, the garbage out, stock the bathrooms, and when I got back they were nearly done. This is a good show, the lights reveal, really just one weak link, and we put him in the worst spot; I think museums must always have worst spots, and conversely, best spots, the nature of the beast. Dress rehearsal for the play tonight, and before we left we carefully educated The Brit on what to turn off and unplug. Whipped, but I had to go to the Library and Liquor Store or my evening would be meaningless. The Raven Haired Beauty was at the library reference desk and I talked with her a few minutes, describing the Wrack Show (D was her computer design teacher), and she liked the idea, smiled brightly and cheered me immensely. I got a new book on black holes. Stupid damned grouse camped out on the driveway and runs up ahead of me the last four days, I tried to hit the fucker tonight, grouse is good. I mentioned them today and Sara asked how the bird, grouse, became "to complain". I don't know, will look it up this weekend unless one of you know, and, of course, the gorse, you know what I mean, heather or various legumes lining a Links Course. So beat I just stopped and got a footer on the way home, some jalapeno poppers, be still my heart. Started the black holes book seated at the island, working on my cholesterol. I could make an argument but it would be bullshit. If I hadn't bought a hot dog I wouldn't have eaten, simple as that, what I really wanted was a drink. Actually, to be completely honest, I brought the dog and poppers home, and had a drink before I ate them, a cocktail, and what's that word all about? What would be really useful would be one of those ipod things that had the OED on it, the dictionary for joggers or picture hangers, I don't listen to music so much anymore, but I'd wear one of those things around my neck. Maybe a small earpiece and one of those almost invisible mikes, and I could just ask my voice-actuated OED -grouse (to complain), origin- and it would come back to me, very quickly, and I would turn, and say whatever it told me, to whomever had asked me that question. Weird. I just saw a short movie in my head, I went to get a drink and rolled a smoke at the island, doing my rounds, and thought about two or three characters, going about their business with these OED ipods, and the information, is, literally flying. This could be quite funny or very serious, maybe both, certainly sexy, we could go whatever way. Make a note we need to make a movie. A stressful day at the museum, there was so much going on just below the surface, I call back to my earlier comments about the combined arts, it's hard to work together, everyone has a different picture of exactly what's going on. It's always priorities, my experience, it all comes down to portioning time, exactly what are you going to do; my ego is not involved (it's in a storm shelter someplace in Iowa) but if I was us I'd dig a hole, bury garbage, wipe everything clean, stay clear as much as possible. Hey, listen, if I wasn't watching, I wouldn't see.
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The Space

Years ago, under the influence of some drug, before I'd seen Andy Goldworthy's work, I did a couple of outdoor installations, three maybe. One was just string, wrapped through an orchard, lines in space. The major piece I've described somewhere, tree-trunks cut slightly higher each one, in a perfectly straight, marching away from the window where I wrote at the time, with a lovely head-shaped glacial erratic sitting on each. The third was a series of photos, encased in plastic, thumb-tacked to trees along a path. I'm going to do Burma Shave signs coming up the driveway, that great poem of Harvey Albert's, "Seven tigers, / nothing unusual, / never mind." D and I for a few minutes today, in the Richard's gallery, where the Wrack Show is to be installed, talking very seriously about extremely ephemeral things. Did a bit of on-line searching for sand-blasting techniques. I've blasted wood before, several times, but I'm not too proud to learn. Being self-taught in so many different areas, I really don't know how to do certain things, I just do them. I learned book-binding completely from books, looking at pictures of the various steps, decades after I learned, and had bound hundreds of individual volumes, a woman visited the farm in Missip, Anselm Hollo's wife at the time, she was a restoration binder for Brigham Young University, and she was watching me bind a book, ask me where I'd learned, told me I was good enough to teach the subject but that I did everything wrong. Wrack Show. So we're standing in the space, the gallery, for an installation it is A SPACE, and D asks -where's the inside and where's the outside?- we discuss options, agree the outside needs be larger, a Sculpture Garden, the pergola, the suggestion of porch roof, then in the two eastern corners, two more small walls that seal off the corners, skeletal walls, a few sticks, with a window, and inside the space would be an object. These would be like the back of other buildings, at the edge of the outside, peeking in the neighbor's house kind of thing. Peeping Tom. Inside will be two rooms, again skeletal stick walls, doorway openings, maybe arches if we can find the right sticks, I'm sure we can, a bedroom and a sitting room. D is building a bed, end tables, and a lamp for the bedroom and we'll conspire together on the chair, one of the premier finds for the show. Outside we have the sand-blasted objects, on stump pedestals, at least four so far, a horse head, a cow, a blasted walnut stump, and the prolate sheroids, each, I think, on a separate stump, in a cluster, a Sara Grouping, different heights. And we have the balls, D asked, and I'm not sure how many, I don't count them, I just retrieve them, maybe 42, maybe more. The bowling ball. And there are wall mounted pieces, several frames, a magnificent burl that will be blasted and finished. Coming together. Show opens November 14 and we have three weeks to install. 100 hours of prep work and 100 hours to install, I think, is about right. I'm excited about doing this show even though I know there will be interruptions in my writing, but I'll be writing about it every chance I get. The Combined Arts, I've preached this sermon, require working with other people, and I'd rather be alone, but the chance to do this show, define that space, pulls me from my isolation, probably a good thing, I might do another play, a Pinter in the basement, I'm not anti-social as much as I'm tightly focused. I ignore almost everything. Increasingly I rely on D and the Deputy to keep me informed, though the Deputy came back at me today, for something last night I said about something Pegi had mentioned. Childbirth, god help me, this is a no-win. All I was saying was that if you had roofed a house in mid-summer, sliding backwards up the black tar-paper, nailing courses, and using short nails, you would hit your thumb, and then, because your thumb wasn't working exactly correctly, you'd hit it again, and several more times, and probably a blood blister below the nail and you'd have to drill it out. You worked eight hours, and then you dealt with the injuries, patching yourself up, not bleeding through, and finally the waves of pain are linked to your heartbeat, you get a couple of drinks, smoke some dope, whatever, pain is not a gender thing. Something D said I will not mention here, it was very funny but very incorrect. Oh course, Dear Deputy, I will defer to whatever. Count me in. As an indicator: when Palin's name came up, I lost electricity. She was disappeared. I lit a few candles and wrote longhand. What are you going to do? Deep into imagined responses I uncover what I imagine to be myself, someone like me, throw it up as a decoy, a clay pigeon, see what happens, have I ever advised you?
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New Show

The new show arrived early, unloaded before lunch. Did have time to paint the walls (we're very fast painters) and move the tables out of the theater. Cooking. After lunch (free, because Jim thought it took to long for us to get served) we brought out two of the sturdy six-foot tables and covered them with a blanket, ready for unwrapping. We sneak a smoke in the basement first, where it's cool and we can sit down, because it's hotter than hell outside, hottest day of the year, then unwrap 57 photographs. The smallest are tin-types, 6"x6", the largest are 3'x2', and everything between, can't tell much about them yet, won't be able to until they're hung and lighted. Several of the larger images are striking, the tin-types are wonderful, had no idea anyone still did them and need to read up on the process. D retires to his office, to nurse tired dogs and work on the newsletter, I make a half-hearted start on cleaning the theater. With a kid's show, there's going to be a mess, and the theater, the back hallway, and the classroom-used-as-dressing-room, are testament to clutter and trash: fast food wrappers, colored pencils, paper airplanes, feathers, bits of faux flowers, headbands, a cell phone, candy wrappers, pop cans, what seem to be crushed Cheerios, parts of scripts (in that final stage of deterioration that working scripts achieve), a rubber lizard, a plethora of various bobby-pins, one empty beer can (a parent I hope), bits of aluminum foil, and one origami stork. I might list the prop table for you because it's spectacular. Another day. Also, the Moms have covered the gate and frame in multiple layers of real and fake ivy, it's supposed to be hidden and EVERYONE brought stuff, huge garbage bags of ivy. It looks great, they've done a really nice job, but there is fucking ivy everywhere, and I'm talking large quantities here. I'll have to bag it up and take it home to compost, probably two of the 55 gallon bags we use in the large (49 gallon) trash-cans full. Grubby clothes to work one day, maybe tomorrow, because I need to get down on my knees and vacuum under the seats with the little shop-vac we bought for just that purpose. Last time I did this I found 57 cents. I often find rolled up baby diapers which is not as bad as it sounds. The new generation of disposable diapers roll into a tidy ball and seal well, so I use them as an opportunity to practice my jump shot. I bring one of the smaller trash cans into the theater when I'm cleaning beneath the seats, there are always a lot of those single pieces of candy with the paper rolled at the ends, and I can shoot them really well from about 20 feet. At Janitor College there was a course, "Walk Or Shoot", a four-hundred level philosophy course, where we actually shot diapers from the free-throw line and kept score. What it comes down to, is there are two kinds of people (I take no credit for this, I merely took the course): those that walk a piece of garbage to the can, and those that shoot. Distinctions are always so apparently sharp, knife-edge, I mean, they appear clear, and yet most things are gray, muddled. I was watching the ducks, on the way home this afternoon, I stopped and rolled a smoke, no one was there, way to hot to turn on my black Dell and write you, so I lingered, I looked at sticks and pine cones. Sometimes I think I'm crazy, because I'd rather look at sticks and pine-cones than look at anything else. Is Below The Spillway somehow similar enough to Below The Floodwall. I would need to ask my co-conspirators. There's some great stuff there. It's my show, I could cheat. Wanted you to know. We all lie. The Wrack Show is going to be pretty pure, but there will probably be some embedded lies. Even if we didn't intend them. Why do women shoot free-throws better than men? Pegi and the Deputy were 'talking loud' between offices and I was collecting trash, Pegi didn't know I was there, and she made some horrid sexist statement about males, something about childbirth, and the pain, I wondered if she'd ever smashed her thumb, nailing those impossibly small roofing nails. Yes.Yes.Sure. What I think I might be capable of thinking about.
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Hell Week

The ship hits the sand. Delivery tomorrow of the big photography show for the main gallery, probably late afternoon. Before it arrives really need to finish painting walls and get the theater cleaned up, some tables moved, and about a dozen other things done, on a list I left at the museum. Unpack the show on Wednesday, install it Thursday, lights and labels on Friday, it opens, play performance on Friday night, two shows on Saturday. Must ask The Brit about a program, I think everyone has forgotten that. D will need to get the newsletter out, probably design a program, but it will surely take both of us three days to unpack, install, light and label a major show. Also, dress rehearsal for the play on Thursday night but I probably don't have to be there for that. Should have fixed a big pot of something today, but I didn't feel like cooking. I do have the pork loin curing in the fridge, so I could just take slices cut off that, soak them in sweet milk (takes the salt out, from the cure) and fry in olive oil, steamed vegs and cous-cous, would get me through the week. Next weekend I really want to cook some baby-back ribs, fry up some fresh sweet corn with onions and chiles and a sweet red pepper, skillet fry some cornmeal johnny-cakes as I can't fire up the wood cookstove when it's as hot as this. Had to break out the three pound block of ice in the coffee can (plastic) to keep the computer cool, and put a fan on it, blowing into the back of the computer, works really well. Must buy the metal roofing for the Wrack Shed and for my back porch this week, can't afford it, but that's why God invented Visa. Got to step it up. Got to get below the floodwall and collect the missing pieces. 6-8 posts six feet to eight feet, with a crotch at the top, would be really good, also, I looked at the pile today, we need more rails, for suggesting walls, also we need a can of rusty nails, which we surely should be able to find in a section of dock, there are always two or three sections of dock down on the first terrace, below the access road, ripped from their mooring and trapped in the trees, note to take a crowbar, wait, I have one in the truck, D saw it last week and wondered if it was his. It's not, I've had that crowbar, forever, nearly, I know it's scars, could tell you when what happened, to gouge the hard metal so deeply on the prying end. It's my fucking crowbar, and I have several others, almost a full set, some of them horribly distressed. I tear a lot of things apart. Also, I realize, we could use very primitive pegs in many places, a hole and a stick whittled to fit. Maybe some monofilament to hold it in place, the trees are full of monofilament, fishermen generally drink, and you'd hardly see it. This is an installation, not a house, people aren't supposed to lean on it. I think they should be able to touch it, that should be part of the experience, but in the way that you touched your mother's good china, with care. Not lean on it. I can build a set of stairs but this isn't that. This is a construct. Thought about this a lot today. What this was. We cleave a space, by our actions and the materials, we divide into spaces, we fill those spaces, or maybe not fill but put something into them. It's hard to be coherent, everything works against it, for three solid years, working hard, every night, I've tried to be coherent, and it isn't easy. I'm not sure the Wrack Show says anything, it merely is, a collection of debris. That it would look like something is actually your problem, the reader, I don't envy your task, I just drink and smoke and write this shit, I really don't have a clue, you have to figure out what the hell I mean. I never think about that, I just Send and forget.

Tom

Of course I don't forget everything, some things carry over, like the need for salt. Certain grievances. Things I could never forgive. I was raised in such a functional family I had no idea everyone was so fucked up, I've been over this, it marked me, being almost normal. Find myself on the outside looking in.
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