Traces

I miss-represent myself. I don't wear a coon-skin hat, I've never scalped anyone, I just walk slowly and stumble on small purple flowers, miniature violets that probably have a specific name. Even though Latin is my other language, I don't know the name. I hide in my embarrassment. Another day, another performance, you become whatever is necessary. I have to think about this, whatever is necessary. Some yard work, some reading, eat breakfast several times, collect a nice bag of morels, 18 of them, half fairly large. Three meals. Once on toast, once in an omelet, and once in herbed butter with a small steak. One-third leafed out. The Black Walnut trees are budded. They are the most careful: limits their growing season to six months at this latitude. I repair a dead chair with a miniature Spanish Windless. I like the old chair but it was to thin and multi-repaired to drill out and replace rungs, and the middle bottom stretcher was busted. I have a nice collection of bits of rope, found a piece of quarter-inch hemp and whipped the ends with a needle and linen thread, dipped them in binding glue. Used a stout little split of Osage Orange, to twist the loop tight, caught the tensioned end of the stick under the back stretcher and tied it off with a piece of twine. A dynamic system, under tension, caught in time. I looked at it for a while, it's a frozen event, with a large amount of stored kinetic energy. Chair as battery. When I was doing my Post Doc, writing my second book "The Janitor IS History", and shivering through a winter on Hokkaido, there was interesting professor, Applied Physics, Mr.Muti, small, trim man that exuded an aura of confidence. He had bungee-corded the tree-tops together and there was a weight involved, a big rock with a ring-bolt, and somehow, with a system of pulleys, this drove a belt, and the belt turned a cogged gear that engaged another cogged gear, and this huge fucking millstone starts turning. It's twelve feet in diameter, two feet thick, covered with these runes that predate anything that's that's ever been uncovered. Turned an alternator, charged some batteries. Since then, I've always been interested in very large fly-wheels. Not a very efficient system, energy loss everywhere, but it doesn't have to be efficient. All of my printing presses were powered by a foot-treadle turning (often elegant) cast iron fly-wheels. I always thought that system rather elegant. Between rounds of cutting brush today, I looked at some really beautiful letter-press books, they were a joy to the hand and eye. On my breaks from working outside, I listen to mid-day news shows on NPR until I get moderately depressed, and go out looking for morels. New green growth makes the hunting more difficult, but you learn to notice the cod-piece bulges beneath soft young leaves. I find enough to smother a small piece of meat, cooked an artichoke mid-afternoon, just steamed it, so I could eat it cold at dinner. Reading, at a meal like this, is a challenge; I have to clean my hands many times. I manage, because I'm experienced at this, reading at every opportunity. I carry a book in my back pocket because I might be caught in an elevator. I change this book every month, I don't even look, I have a pile of things, I don't want to know. I like to be surprised. Read more...

Considering

I don't think of myself as laid-back, I think I'm almost manic. It's almost tomorrow and I haven't finished yesterday. Whip-o-wills clamoring, a faint light in the east, I must admit to another day. Birds drive me crazy, the concept of song. Bach gets it right, the fugue state; Miles Davis, "Kind Of Blue", Greg Brown may be our best current song writer; and this time of year, you'd be a fool to not listen to new leaves in the wind. Up at four, Little Sister had treed a coon, I had to walk her down the driveway, to give the coon a chance to escape, then feed her an extra meal so she would forget about the whole thing and go back to sleep. Knowing there is no chance of further sleep for myself, I read a while, then reread and edit myself. Several things make me laugh out loud. I've laughed a lot in the last 24 hours: being with Liz and D, then laughing at myself. The bad humors are migrating north, where they can suffer the black flies and mosquitos that grow to the size of small birds. In the glooming I find a wonderful sense of centeredness, the me, sitting in this chair, that is experiencing this dawn. I mull it over, with a bowl of cheese grits, and a first cup of coffee, spiked with a shot of whiskey, to make the transition from night into day. The issue of solitude came up with Liz, she wondered was I lonely. The easy answer is no, I don't miss the ten thousand compromises that compose a relationship. I've always been eccentric, and it's getting worse. I live in a narrow world, in many ways, but it allows me to open out (Olson) which feeds me what I need. The mandate, from early on, was to tighten the loop, eliminate everything possible. Still, there is compromise; working full time, in town, no place to pee but the urinal in the Men's Room, I'm using more water, because I have to flush. I hate flushing. A waste of resource. Almost sunset, the wind sprung up from the west, and the saplings danced; you had to be there, but it was just me, and a dog that wondered what I was watching. Brisk wind in early spring and the new leaves look like satin, glistening in patterns. A shimmer. The last couple of miles, into my place, was so intense, I had to stop several times and clean the windshield: the world explodes, and you're doing what exactly? Nothing means more than the natural world. What you see is what you get. Read more...

Preemptive Strike

Stayed in town for a couple of beers with D and Liz, haven't done that in almost a year, but Liz worked at the museum years ago and comes back to visit. Serious laughter. I told a couple of dog stories. Liz howled at my fixing roadkill with polenta for the dog. We talked about floods, graduate school, working in Chicago, the museum dynamic, everyone's health, everyone's children, The Wrack Show. A couple of beers and I had to go, fairly heavy rain so I knew I was going to park at the bottom of the hill and avoid the sleigh-ride tomorrow morning. Going in to do laundry, check with D about the membership brochure and various other things, resupply liquids. Yard work in the evening. I dream of a yard that is concrete, painted green, or, if I lived near Kim, would be completely bricked. This rain will accelerate the leafing, and is good for the morels. Excellent timing. Bonus at the grocery store, an 8 ounce smoked brie for just $2.99, remaindered, 'old', but hey, old cheese is good. I invent a finger-food that is to die for: cook sliced morels in butter, let them set, so that the butter re-solidifies, a spoonful on the cracker of your choice (I use saltines for everything), top with a spread of smoked brie that is out of date, run under the broiler. These will have you weeping. It's spring, excess sap, everything is leaking. I'm labile in the spring because I made it through another winter. And besides, it's beautiful, the return of color. Late February is so black-and-white. Stark. Then this, where everything explodes in a fucking rampage of color. D posits an interesting question about dying. Graduate students. He's taking a course in Buddhism, I hold my tongue, but the idea is enough to get me wondering. If there is no mind, and no body, what comes back? It's a shell game, and that's why fakirs run the show. Promises. Ass-holes doing their 'we pay too much taxes' are full of it; what we have is what we're given. Everything else is chaff. If I make some money, I pay taxes. I think we should all be taxed the same. No pork-barrel. Wrong phrase, but you know what I mean. There's so much we need to deconstruct. I did park at the bottom of the hill, popped an umbrella, did my Mary Poppins imitation, a little song-and-dance. Swirling spring rain in gusting wind, leaf litter caught in dust devils, all the pliable new growth bending to the cause. Liz called us, this place, the museum, laid-back, compared to Chicago, and I had to think about that, what it meant. Priorities, smell the roses. I move more slowly because I broke a toe, it only becomes a philosophical stand in hindsight. I tend toward slowing down because I'm older, an added benefit is that I notice things. It's not rocket science. The aging janitor, stooped from his years of service, moving slowly, notices a particular, very small, purple flower. The flower has always been there, but the haste of youth, and the speed of the world has always precluded looking down and walking slowly in the rain. It's not too awful, arriving home damp, a dog bouncing for its feed. Alone at last, I dismiss Little Sister with a sizable chunk of squirrel and polenta; an aspect, no, an aspic, from the real, no, the natural world. D intimates to Liz that I sleep with the dog, but that's not true. She has fleas. I never did a dog with fleas, after that one time with a lady bull-dog, I'd been drinking and I thought you said frog. Later, in the Emergency Room, I made up a story about a bear. I'm not sure they believed me. It doesn't matter. Read more...

At Odds

Sun dogs. I take them as a good omen. Lovely drive in this morning. Closer to town, 800 feet lower than my house, the slopes are vested in that soft green peculiar to spring. I'll walk in tomorrow, I think, and look for morels. My largest of the season today, six inches tall, an inch-and-a-half in diameter, plus several other smaller ones. I grill a brined pork chop, then cover it with mushrooms cooked gently in butter. Cooked an artichoke, but could only get through the leaves, save the heart for tomorrow. I'm thinking an artichoke heart and morel omelet. James wants to doctor my computer while I'm gone. I made another batch of crock-pot grits, plain, just grits and water, a serving for four, which I dot with butter, salt and pepper, and microwave of a morning. On weekends I might put a coddled egg on top. Incredibly good. Logan Turnpike Mill, Old-Fashioned Speckled Yellow Grits, 3485 Gainesville Hwy, Blairsville, Ga. 30512, www.loganturnpikemill.com, they ship. You really need to try these. Four to one, cooked overnight in the crock-pot on low. You'll think of things to add, any dried fruit is good, maple syrup is excellent, but I eat them mostly with just butter, salt and pepper. They always stick, scrape the sides down and mix the crust in, it's a delightful change in texture. I could live on this, the occasional pot of beans, some dandelion greens. The Vegetarian Tom. In which regard, the truck ahead of me clipped a squirrel, on the way home up Mackletree, I stopped and threw it in the back of the truck, dressed it out at home and put it on to cook for Little Sister, she was wining at the back door, so I quickly thickened the boiling mass with some generic dried mashed potatoes and ladled out a third for her dinner. She was so excited she went straight up in the air, all four feet off the ground. She's dumber than a stick of wood, but she can actually levitate, for a few micro-seconds, like an NBA star. I had butchered the squirrel into six pieces, two front quarters, two squirrely hams, and split the torso in two pieces; maybe two quarts of water, and four servings of mashed potatoes. Gotta be meals for three nights or I don't want to bother. Cooking for my fucking dog. Me and your Grandmother. I think I can get Bear's daughter, Cara, to feed the dog; I'll want to bribe her just so. Her Dad Or Mom will have to drive her up, but it's only seven miles. If Bear drove her up, I wouldn't worry so much about being robbed. Nobody fucks with Bear. He scares me and I consider him a friend. He once poked me in the chest, to make a point, and I fell over. The strongest human being I've ever actually known. He picked up the back of my truck once, when I was hopelessly mired, and set me on firm ground. I occasionally work small miracles, but I've never lifted a truck. I hang paintings, I'm a simple guy. James doesn't smoke, but I'd asked him down while I did, and we were talking about Antigone, not a neutral subject, when Valerie, the lawyer, walked by. I made a point, she paused, she doesn't even know my name. I really can't have a relationship because it would threaten whatever trip I currently imagined. I'm a loser. A quick look at the track record is enough, he never could run the 440. Nor the 220 or the 110,;I was always was a step off. The best coach I ever had said I started slow, and I never could improve. I'm still as bad as I ever was. I throw a wicked side-arm curve and a change-up that hovers at the plate, but my fast ball is barely eighty miles-an-hour. I fall short of anyone judging anything. Even my dog is suspect. I watch some tadpoles swim around in a glass dish and actually feel that I've done something. I watched. Now, I can't even rub my eyes without remembering.. A bad day at Black Rock. Nothing you could say would make any difference. Having lost the most important race of your life, what do you do? I've done a survey, as you might imagine, of losers. They comprise a huge section of the demographic. I'm not saying, don't quote me, but nonetheless.

Tom

Three crows
keeping time,
everything else
is easy.
Read more...

The Past

The rich man claims his chattel. We could enter a war of words. In a fit of pique I'd take the side of the oppressed, on principle, without knowledge of the specific case, even though I might know I'm on the wrong side. Sometimes it's hard to hold your tongue, even if it gets you hurt. I have a tongue that might be likened to a stiletto but I rarely use it as a weapon. I often say things under my breath that I'd never say out loud. We all act out, occasionally say things we might regret later. Harbor resentments. I'd really like to unload against a couple of former friends, but it would be a waste of effort. I entertain the idea, because it could be quite funny, and humors drive the world. In an attempt at self-medication I spill some juice and find myself, early this morning, on my hands and knees, cleaning after myself, with a spray bottle and paper towels. The poor man accepts the yoke. Historical fact.

Poplar buds a
soft green that
open into spring.

I meant what I said, whatever it was, under my breath, or out loud in the woods, that I hate the way someone would chide me for a debt they imagined. Fucking system doesn't work.

Redbud and dogwood
are resplendent, a
clash of color.

I'm angry, actually, the whole system is a farce. Sarah Palin is a joke. Saturday Night Live, Tina Fay, is closer to the truth, but I don't know what that means. I was early to town, again, and I went down to the river; when all else fails I look to hydrology. Hydraulics never fail without reason. A blown gasket, something tangible. I melt a pat of butter to fry an egg. It means nothing, but it looks like it means something. I'm confused. I try and apply meaning, but it's a lost cause. Nothing means anything. Not that that's important. It just struck me. An egg on toast is just an egg on toast. It doesn't really mean anything.

A small flower,
purple in the litter,
makes the point.

There was a back-water that took my attention, a counter-intuitive drift. A standing wave that stood in the wrong direction. Usually, when I watch things closely, I have no idea what they mean.

Tom
Read more...

Being Surrounded

The varieties of green seem to be endless. The wall between me and the world has started filling in. Down through the hollow, color from leaf and bud, soften the angular and gnomic tree-trunks. A glossing over. Consider the way solar energy, water, and trace minerals can do such a thing. I watch it so closely, it will tear a chunk out of my heart to miss two weeks of vital spring. I know, I know, I can see it other places, I could use a change of scene, be good to see old friends. But I am not a nomad, despite my nomadic life. I only function well, as a writer, in my airy and well-lighted cell, remembering at the end of a day. I take notes, in the field, but I can rarely remember what I'm referring to. Meaning is my favorite thought-line, and I follow it, several times a day, into cul-de-sacs or amazing vistas; I can reconstruct lines of reasoning, sometimes, for up to twelve hours. Beyond that, everything is fiction. Nothing makes any sense. Power cutting in and out. Air Conditioner use? Lost two pages. Need to change over to writing in a file that continually SAVES and SEND from that. One page was a rhapsody for Crock-Pot grits. I made an over-night batch of cheese grits with morels that was really quite amazingly good. Maybe not so amazingly when using the best stone ground grits I ever tasted, a double cheddar, butter, and just a few drops of Crazy Andy's Hot Sauce, a goodly pinch of kosher salt and many squeezes of fresh black pepper. I had a small Porterhouse steak, grilled rare, with an herb butter. I go through the lunch garbage from the ladies upstairs, taking stuff home for the dog and sometimes me. Had a couple of nice hard rolls from the trash that I turned into Texas Toast. Probably the best meal of the year so far, but I've not been grilling much yet, and I haven't cooked Baby Back Ribs which some argue is my very best meal. I'm not so sure, except when eating that meal; the sauce IS extraordinary, coming up on its ninth birthday now and reflecting a decade of my life and what I've eaten. It has absorbed sea-changes in styles of marinades. I keep a jar, in the fridge, in which I keep the dregs and cleanings, a little potato or pasta water, whatever marinades might be left-over. Not as much as you might think. because I usually reduce a marinade and use it as a sauce. But I also use The Sauce on slices of pork tenderloin, and I think this is my favorite cut of any meat. I had a small group of thwarted polymaths over for dinner and conversation, this was years ago, and if you've never attended such a convocation, it probably wouldn't mean anything. The conversations were reaching a crescendo, arguments, histrionic presentations, a broken glass or two, and I served dinner, buffet style, four people could sit at the table, everyone else perched on the stairs or sinking into the sofa, and it was deathly quiet, for 12 or 10 minutes, you know; and this squirrel of a guy, a professor of mine from Janitor College, who retired to Ohio for the birds, looked up and said: "God-damn this is good." A pregnant pause. I'm not quite hermetic, I have a job, talk to people at lunch, have social skills, can docent a group through any show. Found myself in a strange position today. A call for Sara or Darren but neither of them were available, and a call got funneled to me. Strange enough because I don't have an office or a phone, but I recognized the name as a lender for the Circus Show, and I explain some things to him; he's in Princeton, and there's a Carter painting I want to see, at Rutgers, he dines with the president. No one else is available, I might as well do this. I don't know who this guy is, I remember the name, he collects art, so I shoot the shit for a few minutes. I've made so much up, I don't know what I've eaten. Me and Alice. I may be going to New Jersey. I need to see this painting at first hand. I'm interested in the model. There's a painting in Naples Florida that I want to see. A nude, that I think is the same model. Very soon, I will know more about this than anyone on the face of the earth, I just process information, my mandate is very narrow. The Public Option should have been there all along. What kind of country do you consider yourself? Read more...

Fragile Body

It's a good thing, once in a while, to push your body. A little muscle ache is fine, as long as you don't hurt yourself. I bleed more than I used to, so I wear old clothes when I'm cutting blackberry canes, and carry a hanky that's actually a square piece of tee-shirt. When I take a break, I wipe myself down with Witch Hazel and drink water. Fucking thorns will make a believer out of you, but they're minor damage and never fester. Little Sister doesn't see the point, her interest flags and she runs off after something she smells. Times in my life, I've done that too, so I'm sympathetic, and, besides, I need to be alone, so I can talk to myself, figure things out. No TV, no radio, no dog, just the soft green of early spring and the wind in the trees. I see a morel and stop dead in my tracks, look around carefully, spot three more, get the Kroger sack out of my back pocket, flip out my knife. In the field, you must be considerate of where you step. Few things are worse than stepping on a morel. I like to cut them right at ground level, leave to roots, the mycelium, to grow another day, like asparagus on fence-rows in Colorado, and I hate to wash mushrooms of any sort, because the flavor is diminished. I blot off dirt-specks with a piece of toilet paper, usually; sometimes I just eat the dirt, as a flavoring agent, salt of the earth. A little grit, once in a while, a mouth-full of clay or a charred stick, might be just what you need. Artichokes are suddenly cheap, the harvest at Castorville, and I'll eat one a day for the next couple of weeks. My favorite dipping sauce is mayonnaise with a touch of horse-radish. 4:44 in the morning, I had to pee, you're never far from my mind. Artichokes, go figure. Why we think the things we do. I'm still tending a couple of gashes that continue to bleed. My skin is thinner now and I bruise more easily, but it's not a big deal, I'm not going to die from blood loss. A car-wreck or a plane crash more likely, not that many people are killed by a falling tree, or a bee-sting, or some hypo-allergic reaction to maple syrup. Not death by blackberry cane. Usually we die of cancer, or some cardiac event, or blowing our brains across the sitting room floor; rarely do we freeze to death, or conspire to die oddly. Or maybe just disappear. You could just go away. For thirty years he whored in the barnyard then he disappeared. Slaughtering chickens is an ugly job. The stench is overwhelming. Nothing smells worse than a gutted chicken. Booby gave me one of his chickens, a roadkill, I brought it home and dressed it out, kept half the breast to grill with a Madeira sauce of my own invention. Madeira, butter, morels. And boiled the rest with potatoes for Little Sister. Another good day on the brush front. I'm two-thirds of the way around the house. Suffering the death of a thousand cuts, but otherwise in great spirits because of the hard work and wonderful food. Glad I waited to drop trees because several close by are standing dead, victims of the various ice-storms, and they will be perfect firewood for next year. Giddy with accomplishment, late afternoon, I grill my chicken breast and Little Sister goes crazy. She assumes all food is hers, I must stand guard at the fire, lest she steal my dinner. Farce is very precise. I feel almost German, guarding my chicken breast. Art is a lie, obviously, but if it plays real, it becomes more than that. A stout wind picks up, the leaves are swirling. I save this paragraph. I like the way it jumps. A Force 9 gale after a calm day. Whatever. Batten down the hatches, you know more than you might admit, a white whale might be a suspect subject. An albino rams a small ship. I questioned everything, ever the Doubting Thomas, but nothing was out of place, everything looked normal. Fuck a bunch of normal. Read more...

What Is

Cognitively recognizing things that happen. Nothing could make me doubt what I actually saw. Certain things are locked in concrete. What you said. I defend your right to say whatever it was. The mystery zone, where, without thinking, you channel Emily: "To shut our eyes is Travel." Sleep is hardly respite, a dreamscape, where the young bull walks down and fucks all the fine young heifers. Everything he says is a line from a song, a voice like John Lee Hooker, "King Snake" against the backdrop of a lonely guitar. Catch the night train. What happened in the harsh shadow of the ghost light may have meant nothing. Meaning is a slippery slope, generally a fabrication, suited to a specific situation. Nothing's fair in love and war. Little Sister is so excited about spoiled lunch meat she practically bowls me over. You gotta like a dog that digs the blues. Fur is flying, she whaps her tail on the back porch, the blues for sure. The real deal: a lonesome train in Kentucky and a bird-dog beating time. Finally got back to sleep, then back up and off to the museum. Return a wood-stove, borrowed for the "Ghosts Of Business Past", then set-to with a vengeance. Hang the entire high school show without a single miss-step. Small wonders. There is so much math involved that we generally have to re-hang one or two pieces. The numbers are flying. D calls them out and I do the calculations. Measure the wall, add up the width of all the pieces for that wall, subtract, divide the remainder by the number of spaces (pieces plus one), gets you the space between. Add that number to half the width of the first piece and you have the center line. Measure the length of the piece, divide by 2, subtract the distance from the top of the piece to the hanging wire or d-rings, add the answer to 57, which is the horizontal center-line. Do this fifty times without a mistake. We're on a roll, so we light the show, then do the vinyl signage. Enough, already, for one day. All that remains is making and mounting labels and cleaning up the gallery. Excellent day. It's a pretty good show, one we need to do, to get the kids and their families into the museum; and it's good for the kids, to see their work taken seriously. Seriously hung, and lit, and labeled. First time most of them would ever have their work handled professionally (is that a conditional pluperfect?), there's a reception and an opening, the whole nine-yards. Should be a nice trip for them. And it is a juried show, a lot of awards, some cash too. Some of it is for sale, I've often bought a piece, but the only two I like enough to buy are NFS. Tastes differ. A good friend, Lane, juried the competition. Lane is probably the best water-colorist currently alive. Which point came up recently, because a Tennessee gallery is currently doing a show of photographs that depict small frozen pools. As it happens, Lane has been doing paintings of small frozen pools. His paintings are more real than the photographs. This strikes me like a bolt of lightning. Reality turned on its ear. That wasn't my point, though. His "Best In Show" was my number three pick. D and I would get into a bidding war for another piece, both of our favorite piece, but NFS; and another piece, a water-color, that I would buy in a heart-beat, also NFS. Not for sale is killing me here, I want to support artists, I like looking at interesting things, and it is a buyer's market. I talk with John and can spend my last night in Colorado with he and Kay. Things are falling into place. I can't SEND, high winds must have dropped the phone line on Mackletree. Up in the cool morning, I clip brush until my arms are sore, working in hour stretches, then drinking coffee and reading. New fiction about Emily. I usually don't read books like this, but he's a decent writer, Jerome Charyn, and he uses all the source material well, and I actually get through the whole book without throwing it across the room. Some modest headway with the brush. Sweaty and rather dirty, I just wash off at the kitchen sink, planing to spend tomorrow in much the same fashion. For a late lunch I have a huge omelet with morels, toast and bacon. I nearly swoon, it's such a fine meal. No one coming forward to stay in the house and feed the dog, don't know what I'll do. Committed to the trip now, though I know my house will be robbed while I'm gone. When unemployment hits 20%, in rural areas like this, robbing houses gets out of control. I'll take my tools into the museum, my manuscripts, maybe another box of books. I'll thumb-tack a couple of twenty dollar bills to the central tree-post, with a note: "Take This, Please Leave The Computer." There isn't much left to steal, my collection of cast iron cooking vessels, but they're heavy, and I can understand not stealing them. Books. All the light stuff has been taken. What does one pauper steal from another? That's not a joke. Operational relevance. Eventually the witness tells a story. What do you believe?I don't even believe primary sources. Doubting everything, a Thomas for sure. Read more...

Attachment Again

That old black magic, hang them straight, centered at 57 inches. Got the high school show arranged, all the wall pieces sitting on the floor, roughly where they go, pedestals all set and the 3 dimensional pieces where they want to be. D and I working together again all day tomorrow and we should be able to get it hung and lit. Maybe 50 pieces. Do the labels, touch-up the peds, and clean on Tuesday, oh, right, and signage; open the show on Wednesday, reception and awards on Thursday. I love hanging shows, getting to touch everything, and smelling the effort. Both of us today, D and I, on our high horses about how one of the first art classes you should take would be on actually finishing a piece, whatever medium, and considering its installation: it needs to be moved, it must be handled, it must be balanced, it must be rigged for hanging or whatever. You can't expect an installer to be precise if you're sloppy. Although it's true D and I could actually install an impossible show, but we'd only do it if we liked the work AND the artist, and it engaged our attention. The green is coming on, it's everywhere, and the new leaves are so young and so flexible and so strong, to weather the spring winds. The red maple leaves roll into cones so that the wind doesn't blow them away. I can no longer roll into a cone. I used to, but no more. Now I wedge a prop against my back and stand up to the wind, I like that image, because I'm tired of getting up and down. Stay up, suffer the winds of change. It's a fall-back position. Besides, it's a beautiful evening, severe clear, cool, a brisk wind, 10 to 20 knots. This could be it. What constitutes a perfect day? I've had so many I'm not a good judge. I folded today's morels into a cream sauce on pasta, shells, it was very good; better than that, it was one of the best things I'd ever tasted. Morels, I think, engage an earlier brain, where taste was really important. I do nothing but listen, now, but half the time I don't even do that. What I find is that no one is paying any attention. Right, right, the sub-text. Read more...

General Stowage

Redbud Day. A spring flourish. The color, after a brutal winter, is a treat for the eye. The Shad is in full-bloom. And the white petals from the Oriental Pear, blown off by high winds, look like snow. The drive to town was a very slow affair, with many stops. Early enough to town to grocery shop and there's a weird dude ahead of me in the check-out line. My guess is Tardive Dyskinesia, a twitching, especially of facial muscles, usually a late side-effect of prolonged treatment with anti-psychotic drugs. Maybe it's Targive. I read about it somewhere. Two red lights, one over the other, on a boat at night, is the signal for Not-Under-Control, which usually means the boat is single-handed and the skipper is below decks, probably sleeping. Statistics is not my cup of tea, but I was reading an interesting book recently "Statistics of a Stationary Random Process" (I was intrigued by the title) which is essentially a study of wave dynamics. A section considers Cape Horn, which is unusual in several ways. At the very bottom the Horn is at 56 degrees south, wind is deflected there by the Andes, we're talking the roaring forties AND the furious fifties, Force 9 gales one day in four in the spring. Really bad weather. And the current is swept through a sort of funnel between the South Shetlands and the body of South America, the water moving at 10 mph or more, and when the wind and water are moving in different directions, the chop is infamous. Statistically, in a 40 foot sea, one wave in a hundred thousand might be 120 feet. You might be able to just ride over that, in a small boat, a rubber raft might be best. My Dad tells a story, he was a Navy nurse in WWII, on a North Atlantic convoy. The North Atlantic is no light-weight when it comes to waves. He was on a hospital ship destined to moor permanently in the Thames. It was a really rough afternoon, the waves were huge, but a hospital ship is a barge, it doesn't ride waves, it just plows through them, and after mess, a bunch of them were gathered on deck, wondering if they were going to die. The sheep-dog in these convoys was the Destroyer Escort, a small ship, that steamed circles around their perimeter, looking for German submarines. The interval between the waves was such that one of these escorts was caught completely suspended, broke in the middle, and sank within seconds. All lives lost. Pegi and Tammy were working all day at coming up with a concept for the "Cream Of The Crop" opening. I didn't say anything, I had some business to attend, nothing really important, but I was busy enough that I couldn't focus my attention. Hours later I thought of something that might be funny, not as an actual idea, but as a kind of interlude in the process. Pegi was off the phone and I'd come upstairs for something, I caught her eye and said just "Homecoming" by which I meant it was a local show; and went on that we could have cheerleaders and maybe I could have some input on the costumes. Some of those Circus girls are really cute. Sex sells everything. Even a staid museum is sold on sex. Consider the miniature flowers of the median. I seem to be making a point, but I don't want to be held to that, mostly I just think about things. Spend a lot of time in the dark. Too much time in the fog, I never know exactly where I am. Everyone lies. Everyone. The world you assume. I tend to duck, and cover my face. I'm wanted in several states. Fuck a bunch of carrots. Read more...

Sounds Exciting

Five morels this evening. Cook them in butter and have them on toast. Having just read Chichester, I have beans on toast as well. James assures me it is a proper English breakfast. Surprisingly good. Francis ate them all the time, on his trip around the world. One of the indexes, indicies, is a list of everything in the boat and where it is. Fascinating. Every article of food for four months, which tub it was stored in, and where the tub was. An important list. He was vegetarian for that trip, but eating fish. Fresh food kept better on the second leg, from Sydney back to Plymouth, arrived home with a few potatoes left, and a lemon. Most everything else tinned, beans, soup, butter, tuna, fruit. I love a good list and this one goes on for several pages. He baked his own bread, learned and perfected his technique the year before he set sail. Took about 50 pounds of whole-wheat flour, broken into smaller units, double-sealed, and stashed everywhere, which was good, because he did capsize (the boat was self-righting) and took on water constantly, especially down in the roaring forties. Small chores at the museum. Trying to create some space to store all the pedestals, most of which will be coming out of the two main galleries at the next turn-around. All storage space is currently filled with the crates for the "Relief In Wood" show. Juggling, looking at the calendar. One more show to install upstairs, then the trip, then the big turn-around. "The Cream Of The Crop", biennial juried local (within 85 miles (eliminates Columbus and Cincy)) show is installed in all three galleries, and that starts the day I get back. Take down "Relief" and whatever is still upstairs, patch and repair all of the galleries, and install a huge show. Sounds exciting and it will be a lot of fun, in addition to serious work and constant attention. Back in that same old role, stage managing and arranging logistics. A comfortable pair of shoes and I can do this. Sometimes I need a stop-watch. Parked at the bottom of the hill because they're calling for severe thunder storms later, needed to assure an early arrival at work tomorrow, because the museum list is growing by leaps and bounds. Walked up. The change, on the color meter, is striking. Now there is a little green everywhere I look. The poplar buds are leafing, the blackberry canes are leafing, the sassafras is outrageous. There's a clear view of the opposite hollow wall, where I can see, a tree fell, on my side, and cleared a line-of-sight. That slope, over there, is greening too, and I can no longer see the ground, even with my glasses. Owning a drainage is special, you get to see everything. I transplant some watercress. If you've never had watercress and butter sandwiches, on white bread with no crusts, you wouldn't have a clue what I meant. How important it could be. Stick your head outside the roof rack and drive with your feet. Read more...

Public Relations

Out in the woods, cutting paths to trees I want to drop. The green is coming on everywhere. A beautiful day, clear light, and I walked around for several hours, with nothing in mind. Looking at buds, smelling things. Officially morel season, as I found a couple, two weeks earlier than last year, but I didn't think to look this early last year, so the record is suspect. First two small morels, and what do you do with them? I stuffed them with Ricotta cheese, put a dab of butter on top, salt and pepper, ran them through the toaster-oven, ate them in small bites with a plain omelet and toast. Excellent meal. There will be many variations in the weeks to come. Lost a page last night to a sudden power outage, now, the next afternoon, a line of squalls. I'd taken the truck down earlier in the day, so I wouldn't have to slide down tomorrow morning, and also so I could look at the various species of very small flowers that punctuate the median and the verge. Nothing in my pack but the foam pad and magnifying glass. I only know a few dozen flowers, and I know nothing about these miniature varieties, but they are very beautiful. I was down at the bottom of the driveway, kneeling, bent over with the glass, when the local Deputy Sheriff drove by and saw me. Of course, he had to stop, to see what I was doing. He's stopped several times, over the years, to see what I was doing. I stop to observe drainage events, I stop to observe life and death, I drag animals off the road, I pick up trash. I'm rarely in a hurry, coming home or on my days off. I'll stop for a butterfly, or a leaf that looks like a butterfly. At the wood dump, one day last week, I stopped because some branches caught my eye. They were orange at the cuts, but they weren't Osage Orange, rather, some kind of fruit wood, and I don't know what they are. Dense, heavy fruit-wood is all I know, and I get a small load for either just burning, or smoking something, a cured pork loin or a turkey breast. When I got home (I'm still parking on the far side of the frog puddles) I carried in what groceries I had, fed the dog, took a hatchet and hammer back over to the truck, so I could split a piece and have a smell. Smelled wet and nutty, overtones of apricot. A good smell, earthy and masculine: the first wave, like some hickory nuts run over by a truck; then a wafting fruit smell, like blossoms on the wind. Lost loves are like that, a scent. We should talk about need. Big thunder storm, have to go. Terrific light show last night. Lost power and just sat in the dark, watched and listened. A good soaking rain, great for morel hunting. Good to see that the humidity in the museum this morning was a perfect 50%. Most art work likes 45-55% and temps between 68 and 70 degrees. Easier to maintain now that the boilers are shut down. Three flocks of turkeys on the way to work. It's hard to count large numbers of turkeys on the ground, they're always moving, but at least 75 birds. I was out early, such a beautiful morning, so I stopped and watched the flock that was in the State Forest, in the Mackletree burn area (from last year's fire), and they were easy to follow with field glasses. Doesn't take long to discern a pecking order. Still way early for work, so I do a small grocery shop, then stand around the parking lot at the museum, looking closely at the Oriental Pear trees. The blossoms are multiple small flowers in an umbel, and today the soft green (lovely color) leaves were beginning to break out behind and through the separate stalks that form the flower head. Nice. After the storm last night, the power still out, I moved a stump over to the end of the sofa, where my head is if I'm prone. I can read comfortably there now, in a black-out, with just the single oil lamp that has a brass frame behind to which I affixed a mirror. I could just see beyond the carpenter chest coffee table and something stuck its head out. A large skink but it frightened me and I threw a rubber ball at it, just to make it go away. Forgive me Father for I have sinned, I killed a Blue-tail Skink with A Barbie Ball. A lucky head-shot, a little blood, pooling from the mouth, I cleaned it up with a tissue and put the carcass and paper in a baggie. With an indelible marker, I drew a teardrop below Barbie's picture on the ball. Prison tattoo for a kill. On the way out this morning, I stopped and gave the skink to a crow. I didn't want Dog to eat it, and I usually just throw small dead things out in the yard, mice and such, but my experience is that dogs always throw-up after eating a lizard. They eat them anyway, but they always throw-up, great learning curve. First night that I have to put a bowl of ice (actually a re-usable freezer pack) under a fan next to my computer. The seasonal clothing saga. It was 85 degrees when I started writing, and I'll need to add some layers soon, but I started the evening out wearing thin moccasins, some boxer shorts and a wife-beater tee-shirt, all from Goodwill. The perfect model of a modern Major-general. The moccasins are duct-taped together. There's a picture, abstract, small, of three sails, on the shirt, which is purple. The boxer shorts are printed with hearts. If, for some reason, the medics had to come and get me now, I would die while they were laughing. But I live alone and it's a comfortable outfit, exactly correct for the specific environment. Direct TV calls, and they want to install a system. I'm sick of these calls, this one is from India, and I finally tell her fine, send the guys out. I know that I'm what the package delivery services call an "undeliverable address", I get packages tied to bushes on the driveway, no one gets to the top. If the Direct TV guys make it, I'll watch the Movie Channel, and the Cooking Channel, and the History Channel and stop writing. Verizon, all the rest of them, have only claimed 97%, and I've always lived in that remaining factor. However small it gets, that ratio between the rabbit and the snail, I'm fine with that. I can jump with the best of them, find my place, and who among them ever killed a skink with a Barbie ball? Read more...

Too Strange

Nothing surprises me anymore. The Pope was a Hitler Youth and now it seems half of Ireland was sexually abused by repressed priests looking for love in all the wrong places. The Vatican is suspect. The devil, it seems, was a destroying angel that took advantage of our children. You trust the collar, then discover Sister Mary doesn't wear underpants. A rude awaking. In confession, she tells you she's wet, you're bound by your vows, still, you'd like to touch her, to make certain something was real. Voice becomes vibrato, breathless. I can hang out a shingle, but it doesn't mean I'm a Doctor, it only means I have a shingle to hang out. I'm a perfect example, a failure in so many ways, sometimes at night I can hardly live with myself. I know, I live alone, what would seem the ultimate argument is just another form of denial. Silence says very little, often a dodge for what needs to be said. Fence posts in the dark, a duck that satisfies carnal knowledge. I don't know. Everything is called into question. Maybe I need a break, too much with the world; spring is such a shock. What does green mean? Warmth is always something dying. Maxwell's silver hammer. The second rule of thermodynamics. You can bounce balls until you're blue in the face, the fact remains: it's you against the universe. Doesn't matter if you have a great ass or a winning smile, can cook or not, well-heeled or down on your luck. Camus was correct, what it comes down to. Life is a mess, then you die. Not that that's a bad thing, just that that's the way it is. Writing earlier, thunderstorms tonight. Extra trip to town, cheerleading D on the important membership brochure, clam chowder and a small beer for lunch at the pub. Back at the museum, I change the day calendar (Sara got from the Met, a holder with each day being a photo of an object or painting from their collection) and today's image is of a bronze, Southern Netherlands, circa 1400, "Aristotle Being Ridden By Phyllis". A story, apocryphal or not, with which I was not familiar. Seems Aristotle had warned his pupil, Alexander the Great, that he, Alex, was spending too much time with (either his wife or mistress) Phyllis, but in due time, Aristotle also fell under her sway and she agreed to satisfy his lust if he'd get down on all fours, with a bit in his mouth, and she would ride him around her garden. There's also a 1510 woodcut by Hans Baldung Grien, much less elegant than the bronze but quite funny. D's doing a paper on the painter Veronese (1528-88) touching on the restoration of a large altarpiece. The technology is amazing. Reading several off-prints and watching a couple of short videos, I feel like I just woke up in another century. More questions than answers, because I don't understand how some of these things are done, but I can certainly appreciate the results. One sidebar is the making of archival copies, so that we have an accurate record at least starting now. Copies used to be flat drawings or photographs, straight forward. King Tut's tomb as an example. Like the caves in France, is being destroyed by the very presence of viewers. So why don't we make an exact copy of the original, EXACT, and let the great unwashed walk through that? Money is not an object, because a thousand people a day go through Tut's tomb. First you modify very sophisticated equipment to fit in the space. Maybe a million dollars worth of equipage. Then you filter out the actual image and 3D scan the sub-strate, then, using a computer driven cutter, you carve the exact field in a medium, archival, than can be hardened. The you photograph everything, 1 to 1, from six inches away. All of this is a huge amount of information, such a large amount, many hundreds of gigabites, or whatever they are. So large, it must be discreetly sliced into pieces and sewn back together, and we can do that: you match up the field and then lay on the image. I'm dumb-founded. It makes so much sense. Even paintings, almost two-dimensional, especially those artists that use thick paint and pallet knives, profit from attention to the ground. Dog is dumber than a sack of rocks. My off-again, on-again, relationship with the fox better suited me. I like to be alone outdoors. Pets are so needy. Probably not an issue anyway, because I'm pretty sure Little Sister is dying, I can't put any weight on her, she's got some several internal parasites. In his dotage he ran a hospice for animals. He produced results that have never been duplicated, so his conclusions are suspect; at the end, he was working on a large manuscript that would include everything. The perfect map, he often said, would indicate exactly where your foot would fall, an 'x' as it were, a mark on the page. I don't doodle, I don't draw anything, I can't, I don't know how. My wits are sorely tested. I draw a line through most things, eliminating possibilities. The Red Maples are leafing out, does that mean anything? Read more...

Flowering Pear

Portsmouth is an ugly city, but these are the days she looks pretty good, the Oriental non-fruiting flowering pear trees are lovely things. They are determinate, crowning beautifully with no trimming required, and survive the urban landscape. They are awash in white flowers. Yesterday morning, just buds, but by today, fully engulfed. I didn't write last night, a friend stopped by for conversation and a couple of drinks, and now yesterday is on the edge of memory. Barnhart did his April Fool music gig at the museum, extreme electronic music, some of his, some John Cage recreations, and it was wonderful. Music as transport, close your eyes and imagine. A combination of random, arbitrary sounds, and generated music that sounded much like Tibetan throat singing. Things in the museum were vibrating, adding overtones. Cage liked what the venue added to the composition, I met him once, we talked mushrooms, I was briefly dating a woman in Merce Cunningham's dance company, and I found myself standing at the back of a theater talking with him about interesting ways to cook puff-balls. Also yesterday I saw the crested pigeon again. James and I had seen it on Thursday. One of those weird birds, must have escaped from someone's cote, with a feathered crown and different coloration. Not your normal pigeon. Thank god there were two of us to see, otherwise it might be a figment of my imagination. A stunning bird. Consider the Pin Oak, as I have in recent days, those few trees that hold dead leaves, I was wrong about the mechanism, it's two separate events. But even my description would be flawed by interpretation, because several events, interconnected, might be considered one thing. What actually happens, and I looked at this closely today, with a magnifying glass, is that last year's leaf has a very strong stem, incredibly strong, and it's shredded by winter winds, freeze-thaw, winnowed to bare fiber. Right next to its attachment point, another bud, this year's branch or leaf. I can see what's happening but it doesn't answer my question. Why? There must be a fall-back position, where last year's bud, if it had to, could sprout again. In the growth form they are linked, I'll cover your ass if you'll cover mine. After Drew left, last night, I remembered the Santayana quote:"Fanaticism is described as redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." Life is a mine field, architectural cliches seem to say something. Public policy. Be careful what you believe. I'm, at best, a tainted source; all the sources I've examined closely are tainted, memory is a slippery slope. Was that just yesterday? The horse you came in on. I thought what you thought was one thing, but might be another. I wondered what we were talking about. I'd held back one loin of the woodchuck, in a marinade of red wine and herbs, seared it quickly on a very hot grill. Very good, and Dog seems pleased with her body parts, bones and all, stewed in chicken broth. Mississippi John Hurt, many fish bite if you've got good bait. My baby's going fishing too. Slack delta guitar. Yes, I'm going fishing too. Read more...