Alignment

Way too many things to do. Got my usual priority list. Noticed in the paper an ad for 6 foot folding tables, good price ($35), so TR and I went and bought three of them. Back at the museum we got Trish and Pegi to test them, went back to Big Lots and bought six more. Got the truck to the shop. A huge number of labels to manufacture and we no longer get free off-cuts of the matte board so went to Tom Russell Glass for some full sheets. After lunch I painted the second coat of Outside Red on the entry wall, better, but not good enough, and I'm out of paint, which means buying another gallon, for $46, of which I will use one fifth and the rest of it will go to waste or be given away. We never use the same color on the two signage walls. The guy calls from the auto shop and he says everything is good and he can align it first thing tomorrow morning. Home tomorrow night. Start carrying in supplies. Giving Justin a cooking lesson Sunday. Good chance to give The Sauce a boil, I generally keep it under a layer of fat or oil through the winter. Sauce confit. I think we'll do the tenderloin medallions on refried grits with the sauce, and roast some vegetables, maybe make the kale chips. TR's girl will be out of town, maybe he'll come out and eat with us. I'd have to clean off the table, the piles of printed matter, and a growing stack of very good images, pictures or reproductions, people send me things, I separate them out. End up with a lot of piles. Sometimes I go through one of them, they're good piles, keepers, I shred everything else. I shred almost everything. I was thinking about that today, how much of the record I destroy. I don't feel good about it, but when the piles reach a certain height, they fall. My advice, if they're slick magazines, is step over the pile and clean up in the morning. Your ability to re-stack slick magazines will be better in the morning. Trust me on this. Read more...

Water Colors

I'm looking at these earliest water colors Still in his teens, Carter was trying to catch the atmosphere, the hills and hollows, the seasons. Some of them are quite good, a few blow me away. Truck worries, they can't take it in the shop until tomorrow, so I walked around used car lots down on Second Street. Looking at vehicles. Instructive, and boring, at the same time. Went to the pub for lunch, Shepherd"s Pie and a draft, then read Mary's letters for a couple of hours. In the afternoon I walked beneath the flood-wall and found a stump that was a perfect piece of post-modern sculpture. This one was large, wet and heavy. I only thought briefly about taking it home. How many stumps do you need, to make a point? Maybe there's more to it than that, maybe there's a connection between the way you feel and what happens. Of course there is. Despite all odds, when push comes to shove (it's always a bifurcation, listen to those blues songs), the balls of a brass monkey are indeed cold, whoever might make that examination. I seem to be within the bounds of control, Not acting out, or anything, but I didn't post last night, then remembered what had happened. I was reading Mary's letters, and she mentioned a painting I know, so I dug out the earliest Carter water colors, there was a logic involved, but it escapes me now. And I looked at them the rest of the evening. Noodling in art appreciation. Like I had an opinion, which of course I do, you can't handle this stuff and not have an opinion. Another red wall. This is difficult painting project: prep, tape, and first coat on the entry. It looks like shit. But it's only the first coat, and I know it will get better with additional layers. Take something through the bad into the better. Cool transition from one thing to another. I'm at the pub, later. having a beer, and the owners come in, and want me to sit sit at a table with them, talk about doing Shakespeare as a lark. We, actually, could do that. Read more...

Trapped

Stayed in town to listen to some live music at the pub, Jack Vetter, a guitarist I like very much and a couple of his friends. Up too late drinking with TR, but the music was fine. Slept well, went out for breakfast, headed home. Got a couple of miles out of town and the truck made a horrible rumbling sound. I pulled over and the noise stopped, so I turned around, going slowly, limped back to town, got to a parking lot. Maybe I can limp to a repair shop tomorrow. Bummed, I walked below the flood-wall and examined detritus. Found a spot in the lee of the world's ugliest jetty. Since I had dressed for the hike up the driveway I was comfortable enough to stay for a while despite cold temps and a biting wind. Ice, anchored to the bottom of the jetty was filled with river trash (I know the spot is an back-eddy from previous visits), and a muskrat worked the unfrozen edge for anything edible. As the ground was frozen, I could wander into the copse of trees that fill the first terrace. It's a wonderland of river tossed sticks that always tickles my imagination. Walked all the way down to where there's the rusting hulk of a barge with trees growing up through where the bottom used to be. By then I was cold, and I headed for the museum, to use my computer there, to write. I stupidly write in an AOL file, I've been meaning to change the way I work, but in the meantime it does allow me to access posts I've sent, and the Apple is about 50 times faster than my PC at home. Walked over to Kroger and got an avocado, a small can of crab meat, and a piece of English double-cheddar. Made a very good tarter sauce with leftover odds and ends from the kitchen and stuffed the avocado. There are always packets of crackers kicking around the upstairs common space, the excellent cheese, an idle hour watching a soccer match on Hulu, and I feel I can deal with my probably dying truck. A sequence of steps: get it to a shop, find the problem, estimate the expense, make a decision. Decision-trees are how we end up where we are. At every bifurcation you have to decide. You choose. It happens on a more-than-daily basis. You decide you can live with something, or you can't; the rock and drill might be more than you can handle, or you might be able to calm a horse with the touch of your hand. Mostly we're stuffed into casings based on a kind of profiling. I view any time I can add or subtract a comma as a positive situation. Un-needed notes. Fuck a bunch of scribbles, what I send is the best I can do right then. Read more...

Lost Pages

I hate it when I lose a page, no excuse, except that I work on an Apple at work and a PC at home, the formats are just different enough that some lines slip beneath the ether. The cold is a referent. Maybe I hit the wrong key. Nothing if not flexible. A teacher impressed on me once, fifth year Latin, we were translating Ovid, that language was slippery, and it was difficult to nail down exactly what was said. Which is certainly true. Left to my own devices is the way I prefer things, juggling my several lists. So first thing, I head to the paint store, because I can see that the two signage walls are going to take some time. I have about six balls in the air, and I need to finish something. A color for the signage walls would be good. Not even remotely impossible, and far from depressing, I actually enjoy the process. So I go to the paint store and the kid there calls Ron out of the back room because he's unsure about scanning a match from the announcement card. Ron looks at the color, looks at me, and laughs. Trust me, you don't want your paint guy to laugh at you. He snorted I'd be lucky to get a smooth finish in four coats. I'm thinking three, if I'm careful. A large about of solids in this color and it will tend toward streaky. I have strategies. The main problem is around the perimeter, where you use a brush to cut in the edges, everything else is rolled, and the textures are different. The signature, the stroke, they are completely different, so on the third pass I focus closely on getting the roller as close to the edge as possible. At that point, texture is everything. A complication right now, at this change-over, is that the gallery signage wall merges into the old bank structure, and someone, correctly, chalked that joint, and did a handsome job, running a finger down the entire length to create a very nice inside curve. But because there isn't an actual corner, when I tape it, to paint another color on the signage wall, the color tends to migrate out. Eventually, the entire gallery would be whatever that color was. To halt the spread, every once in a while I have to tape the wall off in reverse (we call this back-painting, I don't know what anyone else calls it) and bring Gallery White back into where we might imagine a corner to be. To tape very straight lines is difficult. I'm borderline mental about this. The whole idea of mental is an interesting subject. Me, today, for instance, all I could think about was getting home and working in 10 point Arial. I was already thinking about punctuation marks I'd be using. I love the way punctuation factors interpretation. I'm more honest now than I've ever been. And clear, I think I'm clear. Actually it's a muddy mess, there's nothing clear about it. How do you deal with longing? Cold night at home and I just wear my writing outfit into work, no one says anything and I never do shave or clean up. We just set right to the tasks at hand, painting brick red over medium blue; take off the tape from the back-painting, re-tape the new Gallery White edge, get on a first coat before noon. After a hasty lunch, we bring up pedestals from the basement, refocus lights in all the galleries upstairs, get a second coat on the signage wall. Another busy day tomorrow, so I stay in town, it's snowing at a pretty good clip by four-o-clock. At five, after I close up, I go over to the pub for a draft, and it's dead, that early, in a snow storm, which is fine by me, I just want a beer; then I walk over to Kroger, in a blinding, tear-gathering, blast of frozen rain to get an avocado. Spare me, I just wanted one, with lime juice and a little black pepper. Read more...

There's That

Nothing is a possibility. Everything built on a hedge. Phrases running through my head, while TR and I re-hang some Carters. Great work if you can get it. I love going to the vault and pulling out some paintings I haven't seen in a while. We hang one painting, "River Boat Pilot", an oil, that has a high value, but when we get to the watercolor bay, I let TR do the math and make the marks, we hang together, because I want a hand on the work, but the only way to learn is to do. He's deliberate and delicate: it works, for this business. Even those watercolors, now, have a history with me: I know from Mary's letters, exactly when one of them was painted, the very day. For a show in Cleveland. I think I probably tend to over-think things. One of these pieces, a drawing, had never been displayed before, kind of a treat to hang that. First time, and all. TR is fixated on 'level' and I'm not, so I let him level everything, he's better at it than me. Server went out so I had to stop writing. Snow coming down was lovely in the pools of streetlight. I went for a walk. Ended up at the pub. A comic morning, snow, so no receptionist, and TR ends up at the desk. He's emailed Darren about the confusion we're having getting a color nailed down for the signage walls. Same color as the background in the catalog, a kind of brick red. We all have the document, on our computers, but every one of them prints out in a different shade. D calls and gives us two names 'Thiondagaid Red' (what?) and 'Warm Red Oxide', both of which are awful names for a color, and neither of which we can find in any swatch-book we own. Fortunately, the post card announcement for the show came in, and it uses the same color (as dictated and printed from D's machine) and Ron, at the Porter Paint Store, can scan from that. I'll get a gallon of semi-gloss tomorrow and get started. It might cover in two coats. Red is the most difficult color to paint a wall. I touch up most of the Carter walls, but I need to repaint two of them. Blue painter's tape, which we use to hold up the labels, now marks the walls, it never did before. They've clearly changed the glue. I'm having some trust issues with the tape industry right now. I use a lot of tape, and I have my criteria. Goddamn executives, that ain't never tried to tape a box shut, should keep their hands out of the glue pot. There's residue now, that I have to sand off, what's that about? What are they making this shit from? used kitty litter and spent transmission fluid? Actually, probably, yes, something like that. The traditional light source is upper left, I'm not sure why that is, maybe it's simply a convention, but it might mean something. Like a diminished chord might, or just a touch of red on her lips. Means I face the sunrise, as I look at the geometry, which is usually true, also that the full moon rises over my left shoulder. Always, I'm a stickler for this. It's a long history of everyone sacrificing everything for the commonweal. Give me a full-moon over my left shoulder and I'll go the extra mile. Read more...

Suspected Branchings

I just hold my place. No claim to do better. The pace the world out there moves is way beyond anything I could muster. My speed is bringing a magnifying glass into focus. With crabbed feet and broken toes, I no longer walk for sport. Not a complaint, exactly, but maybe a comment on the human condition. At a certain place, you're on your own, a monad of uncertainty. Not to draw too fine a point. Dance, what the fuck, a little shuffle. Pretend all you want. Still, I see what I see, tadpoles turning into frogs, stay with me here, and the order of the day is that there is progress, a movement forward. The future becomes the present. Bifurcation was the word I was looking for, the way thought branches. If I have the day off I often end up mired in a definition or readings Mary's letters or just looking at a reproduction of one of Modigliani's last nudes. I'd argue that the "Reclining Nude" at the Met is one of the great paintings ever, a short list, a Vermeer, a Picasso, a Velazquez. You know, if you had your choice. Read more...

Something Said

A single act of patience. Waiting for the fish to hit. When, exactly, is the moon full? Drum-roll, several spatters on the roof below, I have to laugh, what I thought you were watching, the moon is almost clear. Over my left-shoulder, waxing toward full. A triumph, beyond my mere imaging. Bi-lateral symmetry. A balance that's created when the second half exactly balances the first. Most leaves, for instance, almost anything you find naturally. Cleave a billet cleanly and the two sides look just the same; take an Exacto knife to the stem of any roadside plant, symmetry is the order of the day. "Last refuge of the simple-minded." Herbert used to say, yet he used forced symmetry, as a kind of bench-mark, toward the end. A list of things and things to do that I really need to get out of the way before the push that starts tomorrow. Land taxes are due, and I have to file for my agricultural exemption (I'm a tree farm), so a trip to the courthouse; need tobacco and papers; cream for my coffee and frog legs for dinner, with mashed potatoes. I stopped at the museum, to shave and wash my hair and I'm glad I did because it was chilly inside. I'd killed the boilers several days before (in February!) so I turned them back on, went to lunch, and came back to check them. It was down to 62 degrees, and we're supposed to keep the temp between 68 and 70, with humidity at 40 to 50%. Harder than it might seem, in an old, un-insulated, thick-walled, stone and brick structure. Nice lunch at the pub, stew and a draft, chatted with Astra and Justin. Justin wants to come out to the house and take some cooking lessons, which sounds like fun; he's a droll guy, and sharp, fast on the uptake, and I suspect he's a stoner. Clouds moving in just as the moon was set to rise. Damn. But she was beautiful last night, take it when you can. I'm a failed astronomer, among a great many failed things. I won't bother you with a list, it's appalling. I've failed at significantly more things than I've succeeded at. That's badly said. 'I fail more often that not' might be better, at least there's not that repetition of 'at', but sometimes repetition is fine, meaning is the point, but what is meaning, exactly? Read more...

Condensate

I get this drip, from the overhang of the second roof onto the first, that is not without a certain rhythm. Irregular enough that there isn't a specific pattern but regular enough to catch my attention. As if you had scored a piece of music that relied on the random call of bullfrogs. I put an empty pickle bucket on the back deck, to harvest water, and think that's a good use of my time: five gallons of water is not a joke, it weighs forty pounds, carry that up a hill. I get testy, when anyone calls my aptitude into question I do what I do pretty well. Not perfect, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could do it better. I actually have an address book with the names of people who do specific things better than me. I'm not the best at anything, no matter how hard I try, but I limp along. Wallow in self-pity long enough, and you might find something on the other side. Something non-standard, that fits. Maybe a tattoo, or some minor scarification. Just prove that you love me. I've been there, I don't want to go there again. I'd rather be alone forever. Just saying. I'll leave this to tomorrow, where it rightly resolves. I'm pretty sure the drip means something. Back to sleep. A dream about maps, then awakened by the light at around eight (I know by the pattern of light, there isn't a clock in my bedroom), dress warmly in layers with the fleece bathrobe on top, and mutter around, making coffee and breakfast. Soon I have the sofa covered in periodicals and books. I use the reading glasses for dictionaries and my small-print 11th Britannica and they give me a headache. Several new perfumes, little sample vials, arrived in the mail yesterday; so I stretched out on the floor on my mummy bag with a damp warm cloth over my eyes, and smelled them. 'Odalisque' is wonderful, floral and briny, in the dry down: like where the wild roses grow close to the bay on Cape Cod. I have a bare scant amount of 'Dzing!' left, which breaks my heart. I need to stop at that perfume warehouse in North Carolina (I think) that Turin talks about. Maybe I could find a bottle. Join a 'Super Bowl' party. Never again vote on anything, voting is bullshit, it's all manipulated, money buys position; stance, however awkward, reveals information. Have you ever worn a bow-tie? I gave up white shirts when I realized my life was going to be dirty, I can't afford the dry-cleaning and I don't bathe often enough to completely eliminate that ring around my collar. It's a dirty world. My shoes are a testament. I scrape several pounds of mud off, on the back stoop, and ditch them, just inside the back door, for a pair of slippers. Fuck a bunch of muddy shoes. Read more...

Geography of Memory

Gray day with drizzle. I spend most of it at the museum, watching D finish the catalog. It's a lovely thing, good work by all involved, and a pile of credit to D. I can't wait to install the show, but I want to re-hang the Carters first. A long list of things I need to do. I have to stop reading Mary's letters for a month or so, and read some literature about outsider art so I can docent that show without sounding like an idiot. Left work at four and came the long way home, up the creek, where fog was filling the hollows and everything was slightly surreal. Went through the ford, to clean the mud out of my wheel-wells. It had gotten so thick it was affecting the alignment. The creek, at the ford, is about thirty feet wide, on smooth sandstone and you have to gauge the depth from landmarks. To clean the wheel-wells well requires five or six repetitions, back and forth, forward and reverse. Some times, in the Spring, there's a small line of pick-up trucks, waiting to wash their underbellies. Walked up the hill with an umbrella, so I could stop and watch the ground fog or mist, or whatever it was, curtail vision at maybe 100 yards. Off-beat staccato pattern of raindrops on the umbrella and also the sound of light rain on leaves. I'm struck, again, by the mediation the walk-in provides; even after you achieve the top of the hill (not quite, you still need to gain 80 feet) there's still 200 yards to the house. Makes my eye water to think about it. Mid-winter, when the wind is blowing: it's a bastard shot from hell. But in the house, there is relative comfort, a place you kick back, probably in multiple layers, a fire to tend, what was not said earlier, what you might have said: that's it, what you might have said, what it comes down to. I can't believe the way I string myself along. In my lucid moments, when I think coherently about life and death, I'm pretty good, utter some last words and pass into compost. That's my plan. Deal with the signage. I have to go to bed. Read more...

Up To Speed

D brought in equipage from the tech lab at OU, $15,000 worth of camera and tripod. The images actually look better than the pieces. We set up a photo booth in the rear of the main gallery, where the ceilings are just over eight feet and we could reach the lights to adjust them. I brought the pieces over and D shot them, if they were covered with glass or plexi, I'd hold a piece of muslin, to break the glare, and he'd shoot from an angle, so that he wasn't in the reflection. He can easily correct the parallax before he inserts the pictures in the catalog. This is a big deal for us, 44 pages, full color, but it's our show and it needs a catalog. Because of the other venues, it should turn a profit. I spend some time studying the chronology of the individual works, because Sara wants to see them in that order. Do have to put up some additional panels as there's a lot of linear feet in this show. Several of the pieces have never been hung, so we'll have to invent some attachments, which is always interesting. Spent some time in the vault, sorting Carters. Met TR and the Music Guy, along with B, at the pub for a beer. There was a couple at the next table, from out of town, that I docented through the Carters this afternoon, and had shown them the vault. I talked with them for a few minutes, they were effusive about the museum. They'd never been given a tour like I gave them, one on one, and were impressed that I knew so much about the collection. I get an hour, next week, with a group of out-of-town art students, to talk about Carter, am I'm looking forward to it. Introduced TR to that stage of working together where actual language isn't necessary. We'd loaded the elevator and taken it downstairs, but it was loaded in a kind of reverse order, large crates first and then then smaller stuff, and we had unloaded some of the smaller boxes, but we were going to have to get the larger crates out and stashed. I waited for him to get this, and he started, right on time, "I think we should..." and I cut him out with a "yes we should" knowing exactly what he meant. I've always worked like that. When I'm working with D I usually know what he needs before he asks for it. Routine. Certain procedures. It's not difficult to project the next step when you've done something a hundred times. Knit one, pearl two. Whatever. D rattles off some numbers at me, I do some calculations, and rattle some numbers back at him. We're usually correct within fairly strict tolerances, though maybe four times out of a hundred, one of us makes a mistake. It's a lot of numbers. Mistakes are the bed-rock of faith, and fairly common. I got a phone call this afternoon from a gallery in Clear Water, Florida, how they got my name I'll never know, asking me if I could give them a price on rehanging some paintings in a gallery where (I guess) they'd been miss-hung. I was highly recommended. They'd cover all expenses and pay well for my time. Six paintings, it can't be more of my time than a single day, and they don't want to send one of their people because it would involve two days of travel. Clearly I'm the guy I tell them six hundred dollars, because I know they can't do it cheaper than that. I become the shipper of choice. Read more...

Further Logistics

Big push starting tomorrow, despite the fact that the folk art show doesn't open for a month. Ten thousand things to do. Brought up some pedestals and organized the rest so that I could get to the ones I need and still have room to store all the boxes that the show came in. Then TR and I loaded the elevator completely full, and I mean completely full, floor to ceiling, and got them all to the basement, and stacked them all there, in their designated slot. I've got a little Girl Scout show to install in the smallest gallery next month, and I hate having to move things more times than absolutely necessary. A good phone call from Sara, about arranging the folk art show (which is called "Outsiders In Ohio"), after I'd spent some time in the (literal) vault, where we keep the permanent collection, digging out some of Carter's work. Re-hanging those galleries maybe tomorrow or Saturday, because I have to clear some things off my plate. I come home to chili on toast with a fried egg on top, such a great meal, it has that whole 'trencher' thing going for it, where the bread soaks up all the liquid and becomes delectable. Ever since reading Chichester's "Voyage of the Gypsy Moth" and especially after Tim Roth's great TV series (did they cancel it?) "Lie To Me" I've been a big fan of eating things on toast. I've always eaten some things on toast, notably certain mushrooms and a wide variety of sea foods, but now I'll eat anything on toast. Fried bananas over a melted layer of peanut butter is very good, a can of sardines with a topping of stinky cheese, the meat pulled from Chinese frog-legs with garlic butter, chipped beef in gravy, even plain with maybe an exotic jam. I could recommend a hedge fond. Water-cress with a white balsamic. Lunched with a great guitarist today, he's going to play at the pub February 11th and he wanted me to be there. I love to hear him play, so I'll probably stay in town that night. He's loose, and free-form, makes some mistakes; it's my favorite kind of music. The major way you learn is from mistakes, success only teaches you to expect shelled pistachios in a bowl, roasted squash seeds with a side of goat cheese. I was so comfortable in the shirt I wore today, that I'm going to wear the exact same thing tomorrow, dirty socks and all, to see if the next day could possibly come out the same. Walking up the driveway with a light pack, a waxing half-moon over my shoulder, knowing the chili-toast thing is going to happen. The second of February and I don't need a fire, unbelievable, as usually, this night of the year, I'd be burning the stove as hot as it could go. I'm fine on firewood even if-when we get a serious bout of cold weather; it's not difficult to keep from dying, as long as you're reasonably mobile. Walking in, this afternoon, I was struck extremely by the mediation that layer of insulation provided me, how walking in allowed me to decompress. 2/2/22, the publication of "Ulysses" and that probably doesn't mean anything. Just throwing it into the mix. Read more...

Slow Rain

Not forecast, but we get this slow rain, with thunder, underneath the clouds. It's strange, mostly because of the thunder, I didn't expect a sonic effect. Not that I did or didn't expect anything, I was merely awake. Not expecting a package, a package delivered in the middle of the night. When I close down, that's usually the end of it, I don't expect shit showing up on my desk. I mostly run a clean ship by not accepting requests. In so far as I can be serious. D thought it might be more serious than that. We discussed killing co-workers. This economic downturn. There's a bevy of shit going down. The cool thing is I just go get in my truck in the morning, no fanfare, maybe a lulling of the creek behind, and head off to work. These things aren't staged. It would cost too much and seem unreal. A flag would you go up, we'd be alerted. You thought you could get away with that? I'm sensitive to shit like this, what I thought was meant. I'm hungry, so I have an egg on chili on toast. It's 4:50 in the morning and very quiet. The Stella coaster, leaning against the espresso maker reminds me to flip the breaker to turn on the fridge. I don't actually flip the breaker yet, because the quiet is so delightful, just remember what the Stella coaster means. The murky business of communication. I take a foam pad out to the back porch, to sit on, and roll a smoke, get a short drink, put on my bathrobe and Linda's hat. The quiet is almost oppressive with the humidity hanging at almost 100%. It's not actually raining, but water condenses on any surface that is still, knowing moisture condenses around a particle of amything, I go back inside and collect a sampling of dust. In an extremely controlled environment, I can actually make it rain, or snow Cool, good to know. I thought I was almost useless, now I can precipitate condensate. What does that say about anything. Droplets or flakes condense around a particle of something, just a hint is enough, and dust is ubiquitous. I always have some laying around, lying around, wait: posit a dimwit in a tree at a fork in the road. You can ask him anything, but his answer might be hard to understand. Not unlike that hole in the rock that seemed to breathe a kind of meaning. I have to go sleep a couple of hours. Read more...

Not Exactly

This for that, I see the cogs turning, but I blow everything off, to get closer to you, which might peg me, a mere janitor, looking for closure, as something I'm not. I'm not actually dangerous, unless you strike me at exactly the wrong moment. It could happen, but the odds are astronomical. More likely you'd be struck with a rock from Mars. Consider the odds. This times that times that uncertainty. I can't come up with a number, but it's certainly small, less than one, almost nothing, yet it plagues me. 2:13 the next morning I have a bowl of this chili-like substance, with an egg on top. It's really good. Heart-stoppingly good. I have to go to bed, zipped in my mummy bag, I'll probably roll off the bed, trying to relieve some discomfort; but I padded the area, where I might fall, with several layers of foam. Fuck a bunch of broken bones, I have a handle on this. I'm good, the projected snow is merely sleet, and sleet is merely a fact of life. Four-wheel low, out of the bottom, is what I do; soon as I hit the main drag, everything is clear. I kill the breaker for the fridge, less sound and more silence. Though, when you think about it, quiet is not a natural state. Maybe I should just get a good set of head-phones or ear-plugs or something. Listen to books. The wind has died down, just a susurration now, like an abandoned lamb sucking on a bottle. A last image of living with my daughters, is them bottle feeding abandoned lambs, in a pen we'd constructed of pallets, near the stove, in the kitchen of the house in the canyon, in Colorado. I can't be more specific than that. Lamb birthing season is a nightmare, blood and gore up to your elbows, and the agonizing sound of ewes screaming to high heaven. Less Steven Hawking than Dante. Which could be the point. What if what is apparently true is actually false? B came over with Josh, I didn't offer them a drink, I'm not sure whether that meant something or not. I forget how to be social, I have so few house guests. Furl your mainsails, take a reef in your jib, whatever; now that the wind has died down, you probably don't need to bother. It's tomorrow already. Rare for me, I got back to sleep and slept late. Chili and eggs for breakfast. By the time I gather up my clothes, and stop by the museum for dirty clothes there, it's after one. By the time I run a few errands, it's close to four, Happy Hour at the pub, so I kill a few minutes searching the web for more information about the Amazon Civilization (which I hope they'll end up calling by its real name if they ever figure out what that is, and lose the moniker Oz). Astra behind the bar, always a treat. A dude at the bar, now an archeologist, I've talked to a few times, comes over, he just got back from southern California, where a job outside San Diego netted him some time in a different clime. He talks, knowledgeably, about a great many things, with very little inflection in his voice. A baritone dulcimer. Being a southern boy, I tend to inflect. He remembers me from a reading a decade ago. Since then, as I think about it, I read my work in an increasingly flat way. It's just text. The reader (or listener) has to add the inflection to suit themselves. A band of clouds, down low on the western horizon, get lit from below in a magenta light that you'd never believe. It's fifty degrees, I'm outside in my shirtsleeves watching the sunset. The driveway, at the top, is a quagmire of mud. It'll refreeze, but right now the frost is coming out of the ground, and the wet-weather springs are flowing. I stuck a piece of cpvc into one of the springs and I can fill a gallon jug in just a few minutes. It's good: mineral rich sandstone water. I like to collect my water when I can, and this spring water is way better than boiled melted snow, which always has metallic overtones. I wonder about stainless steel. Read more...

Entropy

That post I sent around five this afternoon was actually Monday's post. I'd printed my copy and everything, but then forgot to send, maybe punched Send Later, or some other slight confusion. Stayed in town last night because of rain, and because the flooding was already extensive. Floods all the time here. The quarter-mile dirt track in the Scioto bottom, you could of raced boats; most years, this would all be frozen. I started reading some Walter Benjamin and some Derrida, and the next thing I knew it was two in the morning; an incident pops out at me here, and I have to go back and reread myself to see if I'd mentioned it. I don't think I did. I was coming out of the pub Monday after a quick Happy Hour draft; last thing I do, when leaving the bar is to roll a cigaret, for the walk back to the truck, and there's a biker dude, leathers, standing there, smoking. I decide to test my mixer skills in a situation that I would normally just walk away from. Truth is I'm bored with the conversation at work: Sara's not there, D's on half-time, and Kristi is someplace down in Kentucky. I miss talking seriously. Usually when this happens I just move, sometimes it's easier starting all over. For one thing, you can reinvent yourself as the person you now find yourself being. That can be a comfort, and comfort is not to be denied. This dude, after a brief discussion of the weather, how unseasonably warm, launched into a monolog about be kicked out of bars FOR LIFE. He'd been both stabbed and shot, and he'd much rather be shot. Not to put too fine a point. But two out of three are dead, and the last one is a liar, what do you do then? I'm actually, seriously, asking. Consider reaching for the fence, and just popping a ball into play: which difference is significant. Look on the slides Here and There, there's bound to be a connection. A slow-roller down the third base line. My guess is they met in the locker-room, and something happened. But I don't have any proof that anything actually happened. What I most hate about the combined arts, is that I would eventually have to ask you what you thought happened. Pretty sure I saw what happened. Slight of hand. But when you know what to look for, it's all fairly obvious, the feints, the dodges, the postures, and when I go for your knees with a mop-handle, you see I'm serious. It's a single man standing event, and I actually think I am last man standing. We'd have to go back over the record, but it seems pretty clear.

Knock some shit out of the attic. You present yourself to be me, a voice, really, i hear from left field, but I respect the implication. Read more...