Stove Problems

This is ridiculous, I've used wood stoves my entire adult life; the only difference is that with a wood cookstove there are places you can't actually see. There could be a mechanical failure and I'd miss it. There is no repairman, I have to figure this out. Installed a new inside single-wall stovepipe, cleaned the triple-wall through the ceiling and out the outside, knocked creosote from the spark-arrestor cap, cleaned the smoke-chase which heats the oven. It might be the wood, the Wrack Show just might not want to burn, it is mostly poplar, old, light poplar, and it might not burn hot enough, at first, to establish a good draw. The problem is in the draw of smoke out the chimney. Following Sherlock's lead, eliminating possibilities, I'm down to the wood or a curse someone has put on me. I never burned a show before and maybe I should have considered the consequences of that. A young fire needs to be hot, to get the flue up to temperature. I'm leaning toward that being the problem, and I can test that solution tomorrow with some excellent oak starter sticks I just split out of some shelving that I replaced. There's an easy fix to this, I just haven't found it yet. Fucking smoke in the house, man, I feel like a dufus. Another possibility, I shudder to mention, is that the wood, floating in the Ohio, has picked up a lot of shit, oil and pcps and xyzs. I'm probably breathing air, right now, that is so contaminated, that if I didn't smoke, would probably kill me. I think I'm on to something here, because vented the house, opened all the doors and windows, then built a fire using a Danish Modern, ash, chair, I'd found in a dumpster, bone dry, but hard and solid. A perfect fire. I haven't lost my touch, the problem is flue temperature, I can deal with that. The poplar is bone-dry, but punky, and doesn't generate the BTU's. I hadn't realized there could be fires that weren't hot enough. I should have known that. And the solution is at hand, because last year, at the bone yard, I found a beautiful pine pre-cut, and brought a couple of rounds home, to dry for a year, resinous, fat, as we say in the south, you could start a fire in a rainstorm. Guy Birchard has some great poems in a recent publication from Long House, you should buy one of these, or two, so you can send one to someone else. Wonderful poems, the Canadian Basho, poems like Bly might have written, if he'd lived there. Poetry is such a touch, I went to the longer line, prose, because it was easier; if I give you more words, I'm more transparent. I think of myself as more transparent. It's just not hot enough, which I certainly am not, to strike a lasting fire. We evolve in a world that is evolving. The Polar Bears are gone, except for the few we hold in captivity, god bless us we should be granted such grace. To decide. I'm looking at very small worms, inside oak galls, right now, and they're trapped, they convert starch to sugar, but there is no way out. Phone out again. Short day at the museum, in order to get home and cut something other than wrack. Park at the bottom of the hill and hike up with extra booze and tobacco in case the snow is more than expected, also some hot Italian sausages, an orange and a red bell pepper, because I have an idea for a meal. A lot of the Sycamore, much Oak, and some Osage Orange is quite dry. I cut a few sticks by hand, by way of experiment. I traditionally cut firewood all day Thanksgiving. Need to work in the woodshed, arranging piles, so I can get dry wood under a roof. I dry it through the summer in ricks stacked in the open. The Osage Orange is so heavy, like Live Oak, 59 lbs a cubic foot. An interesting number to keep track of, one winter not this one, though I might crunch some preliminary numbers, is the conversion of pounds of particular woods into BTU's. Since my life depends on it, some information would be handy. I know this information is out there, I might get Carma to find it for me, but will get a scale and weigh a few things myself. I'm an empirical guy, and I've certainly come across a lot of bad information. This whole acorn thing. Don't any archaeology people cook? You always add spices and herbs, they couldn't possibly think those not-so-simple Indians ate such an insipid gruel? I tend to trust the cooks, but I'm Southern, and maybe it's a regional thing. When I came back from lunch, there were a bunch of the Circus girls buzzing about. Working on their winter programs. Dancers, whatever their age, in rehearsal togs, are a fucking hoot. It can be really sexy and it can be really funny; they worry over their bodies, the various parts, address them with various leggings and ACE bandages. I like the way they look, like an army of dancers coming back from the front. I love that image. Both of my wives were dancers, mostly I ever dated dancers, for a while I thought I might end up doing technical work in Dance, because I could, and it was there; but I couldn't be around that all the time, not the great bodies and incredible hang-time, but the fact that everybody bickered all the time, who had what office, what were the views, what filters were you going to use on the lights. Here's a great quote, Milan Kundera: "Chance, and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its messages, much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup." Read more...

Woodpecker

In scene. The weight and height of anything. Some people pass, they're talking. Once in a while something someone says makes sense, otherwise it's gibberish. Look out kid, it's something you did. We were smoking, at the loading dock, and D mentioned one of the other Golden Boys (we call them Bronze) was Serbian, I mentioned that I had a Serbian dictionary, Sara said "of course you do", and I brought it in so he could learn some stupid idiomatic phrase: "your shoes can barely walk", or "hit me in the head with a wrench", and thereby confuse relations even more. It's telling, that would be the first thing I thought, but maybe not serious, I might just be making a joke. I often don't know what I'm saying, but words have meaning, so anything you say should, therefore. Meaning accrues. Just because you're not looking doesn't mean nothing happened. Think about Heraclitus, drainage; in Aurignachian it's easy to draw a river. You can more easily depict than you can say, water, for instance, or fire, a couple of strokes and you know what I mean. I should think about some other medium, because writing is so hard. I could make music, or whip physical things into shape, plastic things, but language interests me, materials being merely what they are, a kind of raw fodder. The stove is acting up. I really should do something, but I don't have a clue. The world, it seems, operates in a track, if you don't catch the rail you miss the point. I only have clues, but I'd guess you're a mixed breed, don't fit, easily, into any category. I might be talking about one thing and mean another. Another problem with language is you rarely know what's being said. If you pour a bracket in cast iron, it's real, there it is, we have it as an actual item, if you only imagine it, making the mold, pouring, it becomes fiction. What's the difference? You could argue that you might hold the piece in your hand, but I'd question that, what you thought you were doing. It might merely look like you were holding something. An optical delusion. When it comes right down to it, I'm a theoretical kind of guy, I don't even believe what I see. What's real? What's red? Is that really a chair? After falling on my ass several times, I no longer sit on holograms. You can always tell, they sparkle, that new generation of vampires, in the daytime. Talk about a love-hate relationship, the crows were back, I thought they were talking bullshit, then one of them said something that caught my attention. I don't speak much crow, but I'm pretty sure he was referring to my mother. Music is confusing. Steady drumming, first Pileated Woodpecker of the season, I always forget how large they are, parks on a nearby hickory tree. Beautiful creature. Familiar behavior. I've watched them so much, over the years, this one isn't really hungry, kind of slash-dash. I love it when they cock their heads to listen closely and hear if any bugs crawl beneath the bark they've pounded. Just enough left-over mashed potatoes to make crab cakes, so I do, just crab and scallion, salt and pepper. The mashed potatoes had butter and cream. Left-over mashed potatoes are a great thing, just fry them, or use them as a binder, so versatile. These were wonderful cakes, golden, fluffy; made a nice sauce from mayo, a dab of Dijon mustard, some sweet relish. Excellent, but a summer supper. I need to get some corn-meal mush, I need to make some acorn-meal mush too, come to think of it. Straight corn-meal mush is almost as bland as acorn meal, but I love the way it can dressed; I've eaten grits my whole life, in one form or another, it's all in what you add. I won't bore you with a list, but when it comes to mush, I've tried a lot of toppings. A red onion jam I make that is killer, anchovies, various cheeses, a long list of pepper and onion combos, a vinaigrette that would offend many of my friends, based on bacon fat, but I'm not going to start a list. I don't want to go down that road. I always hear voices in the night, having heard voices once, you always hear voices. This is a spiral, and all down-hill. I just want to go home, I'm a fucking hermit, for god's sake. Read more...

Pie Are

Pies are round, of course. I actually do have a square skillet I use for cornbread, but I've never seen another. The rumor that I eat cats and dogs is greatly exaggerated. Just that once and I was really hungry. Small dogs and cats are very stringy. If you listen to enough bluegrass your mind turns to mush. Too much history. I want to be free, but there is no way I can be, from my past. I remember too much. Someone singing a Jean Richie song, "Blue Diamond Mine", it sounds like opera. It is. Half the fun is just covering songs, the other half is where it takes you. I can't help but think I could have turned out differently, if my parents had just beat me. Does vibrato have meaning? What is meaning? Does one thing mean something else? I'm confused when it comes to meaning. I do ok with installing a complex show, but when it comes to feeding crackers to geese, I get confused. Who is that singing? Her voice is like a knife. Kiri. I can hardly stand it. I don't even like Mozart, too tinny for my ear, but god, what a voice. Later, I'm listening to some South American brass band, and it's really hot, I don't even like this, but it's good, then a Nigerian singer, with a slack guitar. What is the meaning of music? How do we make sense? What sense do words make? Maybe an isolated mandolin, a clarinet in the dark, meaning is difficult. Sometimes something in the natural world makes sense, the way a branch grows, a particular fork. Meaning might be what emerges from the alembic of personal experience. Susanne Langer is good on music. She quotes an essay by Basil de Selincourt, "Music and Duration", which I manage to find, that argues strongly that music is a form of duration. I use paintings in two west windows, to block the afternoon winter sun. Do they cease being paintings when I use them this way? Then there's context, then there's text. Truth is the nature of the true. Heidegger, I think. The Greek word aletheia, which means the unconcealedness of being, naked truth, in a word. To mistake an artwork for a real object is no great feat when an artwork is the real object one mistakes it for, something like that, Arthur Danto in "Transfiguration of the Commonplace". I'm reading these essays between rounds of cutting firewood and the contrast is extreme. Finish the afternoon with Mikhail Bakhtin, who is wonderfully lucid in "Discourse in the Novel". If D takes another course in Aesthetics I'm going to shoot him. Good fuel for a day like this is a large bowl with a lower layer of mashed potatoes, topped with chili. Excellent staying power. First chance of snow the end of the week, so I examine my situation closely, to see if I'm forgetting anything. I need to start eating more, noticed that today, change to the winter diet, more meat, more fats, more beans and rice; need 10 lbs of rice and a gallon of olive oil but waiting until we take the Circus Show to Columbus, as both are so much cheaper at the ethnic markets there. If someone on the west coast would send me a pound of acorns from one of those isolated white oaks, and someone in Florida would send me a pound from a Live Oak I would greatly appreciate it. This winter I want to learn how to make a curd using acorns, that I could then fry or dry and use in other ways. Next year, I'm thinking, I can get Pegi to bring out a fleet of nubile Cirque girls, they can collect all the acorns I need in a single day, I'll feed them dinner as payment. They could wear costumes, maybe boots. Seriously, a day in the country with Mad Tom has its moments, and the meals are no small part of it. I cured and smoked meat for so many years, that I always forget, now, that I need to keep some smoked jowls or something on hand, for cooking pots of beans. I should pick up a slab of bacon, no, I'll cure a whole pork loin, I haven't done one in a while, and they're cheap right now. Breakfast meat and a welcome addition to any pot of whatever. Lightly cured and smoked, cut into 6 or 8 pieces and frozen. Two weeks of a sugar/salt cure and twelve hours of smoking isn't enough to really preserve meat, but it has all the qualities I want, isn't quite so toxic, and keeps fine in the freezer for a year. If I'm going to crank-up the smoker, I might as well smoke something else, some fish or something, some acorn curd. Smoked acorn curd, what a great concept, someplace between pemmican and jerky, a trail food for the truly informed. It would keep forever. They're digging out Shackleton's whiskey, cutting it free of the ice, is nothing sacred? Bleak is the word of the day, gray and barren. Prospects don't look promising. Thinking about Thanksgiving, I buy an acorn squash and a pound of ground pork; I make several sausages, but I make a chorizo that I know will marry perfectly with the squash, and will stuff the other half with berries and jam. Menu decided, I'll drink a Ridge Zin, recommended by experts, and a personal favorite. I have one left in my cellar. What time better than the present? I'm scheduled to return to earth sometime soon. Where, as Democrats, we try to keep 60 frogs in a wheelbarrow. Read more...

Aesthetic Theory

Glorious huge blue fall day, temps in the 50's. Drive to town requires many stops, with the leaves gone you see so much more deeply into the surrounding country. Below the floodwall, several people walking their dogs, remember me and the Wrack Show. And a new reader who really likes my work. Life is an Amish Folly. It's interesting to talk with people about they read me, all part of the process. Where I write from is almost a fugue state, white noise and focus, I usually listen to the refrigerator. Lunch with D and we talk about problems in crating the Circus Show, then I do my fairly large shop at Kroger, and head home. There are a lot of stale crackers, from recent events, and I take a large bag to the lake, feed a flotilla of geese, bless them on their way. The driveway is terrible, but fitting, I'm oddly proud it's so bad. Chatting with D today, and Barbara, at the pup, where we lunched, I realize I'm becoming more eccentric. A product of living alone, other people become checks and balances. If you live alone, you develop patterns, I, for instance, keep a juice glass in the fridge, a big, heavy glass, 16 ounces, weighted bottom, a serious glass, and I keep it full of a blend of juices. I drink beyond my means. But something is always on sale. Plato and all that. I'd rather be a reptile, really, just find a well-drained hole. Heaven knows what you might dream while you slumber. I merely channel shit, that seems to be my job. That's ok, defining me that way, but it doesn't address what I actually said, but that might not matter. What was actually said. Marbles are round, cornbread are square. I always have problems with sophisticated people. They expect more, an explanation, but there isn't one, another myth. I slip into the mop closet, and pull the door shut. Read more...

Critical Mass

I can't stand this any longer, that our Office Manager would have an assistant, who would replace me as janitor, and can't tell dirt from a shadow. I'm all for equal opportunity but I don't do child-care as a part of my job. I like Penny fine, she's a bright girl, but her dufus boyfriend and winy kid are driving me crazy. I hate to talk about standards for fear of slings about profiling, but Jesus Christ. When did it become necessary to adopt a welfare family? Do I have to buy them Christmas presents? Get a job, flip burgers. I'm at wit's end here. This issue threatens my tenure at the museum, I don't want to deal with it, I very well might quit, rather than deal with it. I'm upset. Realize I can vent to you what I can't vent to my colleges. Strange. Ashley is inducing a child. The world goes on. That child looks nothing like me, we're not even the same color, but I have a soft spot for young animals. The recession is good for global warming. Go figure. I'd live on the moon, if I could. I hate dealing with people, they're so fickle. Read more...

Bird Book

Can't find my damned bird book. High point of the day, we watched a Peregrine Falcon eat a pigeon. Excellent daytime drama. The bird lives in town, probably Covert Furniture's roof. City bird. Now we know why we don't have a pigeon problem (droppings on the front stoop) anymore. He was on the ground for at least half-an-hour, in one of those raised- bed curbs they plant with flowers, mulch heavily, that indicate an upscale parking area. People walking by, cars coming and going, D and I got within 10 feet, to make a positive identification. Duck Hawk, for sure, Falco Peregrinus. I've always loved the word peregrination, it sounds so nice. Peregrine, as an adjective, means alien, more of less, which fits. A beautiful bird. I have the correct edition of Frederick The Second's book on falconry, worth a good bit of money I imagine, a lovely large format thing, that the crew at The Cape Playhouse gave me when I was tending an orphan Sparrow Hawk. Smart birds, but I didn't want a pet, returned her to the wild. My history with relationships, or is that attachments? I wore out a mouse pad, and I wanted to make one or find one, so I went below the floodwall, right down on the lowest terrace, where the river laps. I take the kitchen shears (amazing tool, no home should be without them) because I want a piece of inner-tube, but I only want a piece, I don't want the whole tube, and I know the shears will cut rubber like butter. A square piece of inner-tube, tacked down with 4 small brass brads, is a wonderful mouse pad. Between the keyboard rock, and the inner-tube mouse pad, I'm giddy with accomplishment. I look forward to the weekend, what was I supposed to do? Read a book, chop wood, haul water. Right, right, I remember now. Load the pantry because winter is imminent and the wolves are circling. There is a sense in which I'm the most isolated I've ever been, no support, live by your wits. Not true, of course, even for me, I could call B's brother and he'd be here in a heart-beat. But I am alone here, and I think about that, being alone. Sometimes it is lonely, maybe I'll get a dog. I felt nasty all day, just say what comes natural. Oh, I just remembered, I wanted to tell you, Sneed thought grabbing asses was part of the job description. This was right at the crux of the feminist movement and he was fired, for good reason. He got a great severance package, but died soon after, killed by a bull shark, while surfing a standing wave in Chicago. Even if I were writing fiction, I'd just reconstruct events. It's easier that way, I don't have to lie. My stove is not acting well, I know the problem, and the solution is to lean out an upstairs window and beat the spark-arrestor stove-cap with a bamboo pole. It's not pretty, there's a lot of cursing involved. There's a door I can open, and insert a folded paper plate, that catches most of the flammable crap. Sometimes I beat the stove-pipe like a dervish, knocking down the creosote. I have a broken aluminum broom-stick I use for this. It's a merry rhythm, I do a kind of jig. I wouldn't call it dancing, much more spastic than that, a kind of hopping, as though my feet were burning. I was talking with Tammy about therapy, one of those "where's the audio cam?" moments, and I think we agreed that everyone is fucked up. Not to put words in even my mouth. Much less her mouth, which I can't imagine. Thank god I made a pot of chili. I must have been in a drunken haze last night, but this morning there is this magnificent pot of chili. I have a scoop on a fried egg, with a piece of toast to sop everything, and it's the best breakfast in forever. The crows are back. We're moving into winter. Read more...

Burning Wrack

I keep coming across pieces of the show that I specifically remember, where they were, what they were doing. A few pieces I pulled from the burn pile because they are just too interesting: the forked stick with the elastic waist band from a pair of underwear that looks like a giant slingshot, a small piece of unknown wood that is completely peppered with small holes of unknown origin, a contoured slab that is so polished it looks like ceramic or metal. So far. I think I'll hang them high on the front wall, above the three sets of patio doors that comprise the front wall. Paid a thousand dollars for all of them and 6 Pella windows at Ohio Builder's Surplus. Most of their stuff, I think, slips away from large construction sites. Cash means no tax if the boss is there. It's how I built my (unfinished) house for $25,000, including 2 grand for the cookstove, and another grand for the composting toilet, 19 dollars a square foot; my first cabin cost $4200, 13 dollars a square foot, which I built in the driveway of a rental house, took apart, ferried to the island (another 2 dollars a foot in Ferry charges (Bill Of Lading); never really knew how much I spent on the Colorado place. The house in Missip cost around $20,000 to build. Out buildings I've often built for free. In Missip I tied down a bunch of uniform young pines, let them grow for a couple of years tied, then harvested them for a wonderful bowed roof on a shed. Indigenous architecture is an interesting thing, dictated by need, cost, and local materials. I stop and admire tobacco barns. Around here there's one on every farm, and the ones that are taken care of are lovely things, representi, the most usable space for the money. Often think about remodeling one as a house, converting function. In Colorado I always wanted to convert a potato house into a home. They were lovely and weird, a kind of dug-out, half underground, with a dirt roof over vigas and planks. Would need some skylights and a couple of dirt dormer windows. Adobe clay is wonderful stuff, protected from the weather, will last just short of forever. These potato store-rooms were usually built into a slight slope, and drained, outside, with a simple ditch. No moisture to speak of, so no problem. One of those here would dissolve in a couple of years; I walked through some, out there, that were a hundred years old. Those original Mormons were great, not to say the modern ones aren't, I don't have an opinion about that, it's one of those things I don't think about, but they settled Paradox Valley because they saw that if they could irrigate this loess, they could grow anything. What you can to grow, is what you can hold back. In my private practice, fuck me, in their private practice, if you could hold your product for six months, it would be worth a whole lot more. New shoes for everybody. A chicken in every pot. So these Mormons, not up to Roman Aqueducts, construct a wooden trough, and I still don't understand their method of attachment, they hung it on a sandstone wall. I might do it one way, but I could be wrong. I often am. I bat maybe .250, but I'm a great fielder. Had a great arm. I lost interest in sports when the coaches became histrionic. I can't stand that shit, someone telling me what I can and can't do. I have my own agenda. Since I was quite young. I've always occupied my own space, as far back as I can remember, evidently it makes me hard to live with. Currently I live alone. It's the easiest solution. I go with easy more often now, that might be a change. Read more...

Dreary Day

The first one of the those gray and drizzling days with leaves off the trees. Where, if you're depressive, you start thinking about getting depressed. I sweep and mop the floor in the main gallery, as projected. I don't mop so much as to be mopping, as to just get the goddamn floor clean. I need a special rock to keep my keyboard from moving away, I know right where to find it and make a note. This winter, sometime, I'm going to put up a message board next to the back door, to better remind myself what I thought I should do. I seemed to have burned my thumb, I don't remember that. It hurts, sharp pain. I got a little pissed today, at the caviler way Penny brings in her dufus boyfriend with her beautiful child. I'm conflicted, because I love beautiful children, but it's a museum, after all. AND Sara and I were having a last cigaret of the day together, and had to listen to a hunting story (badly told) when we really just wanted to talk about the museum, the staff meeting today, what needed to be done and in what order. My book rock from the island would be a perfect keyboard rock, but then I'd have to get another book rock. Remember I have some rocks, under the coat-tree, there's a nice piece of sandstone, with a bunch of vegetative fossils. It's perfect, much better than the pile of paid bills I'd rubber-banded together (thinking the rubber would provide some friction, but underestimating the foot-pounds I hammer with two fingers). This is great, I feel like an idiot, but I'm not chasing my keyboard all over the desk. A fucking rock, I mean come on, how simple is that. Even tool-challenged people learn to use a rock to keep the door open. Nine days from Sunday, I hadn't realized this was a big deal, but it is. Suddenly my keyboard is stable, and I make fewer mistakes, and I sit better, make a formal appeal. I might write a novel, invent something. Wow. On the other hand, I do enjoy walking in the woods and telling you what I see. Learning words, researching items. What I actually saw. Local singer/song-writer of some note was doing a gig at the museum, we were talking about the spring Mackletree fire, and it turns out he's my neighbor. Around here, if you live in the same drainage you're connected, almost family, operating from the same referent, so we chat about local politics. He asks about his audience for this session, how old they might be, and I hold a hand up, in that universal symbol for height, say I don't know age very well but they're about 48 inches high. Another volute on the twisted path we weave. How we make sense. Coming back in, today, going home, that sense of serious weather on the horizon. The lake could freeze tomorrow, some of the drizzle was not quite drops, wanted to be flakes, but the ground temperature was too high, snow that couldn't happen. Volute within volute. Adumbration. Prepare your bed, soon you will sleep in it. I don't trust anyone with a thermostat because they ignore the natural world. I notice that clothing changes to match the season, I rummage through several piles to find a long-sleeve tee-shirt. The last train to Boston. I'll be waiting at the station. My idea of preparation is to have several cans of tomato soup on hand. Some chicken broth. You might have guessed, another fucking tree down over the phone line. Our connection is tenuous. You assume some things about me, I assume some things about you, the nature of things. I'm not really a hermit, but I read as one, an isolate, a monad, but I'm actually just a normal guy, responding to stimulus, boots, short skirts, particular scents, the way you paint your mouth, or the various implants. I ain't a man of constant sorrow, I've looked at this from every direction, and I'm just not. Sometimes I want to be. But it's not a train, you don't just buy a ticket and ride. Often I wonder how other people navigate. It's difficult for me, and I'm good at it. Wittgenstein. Merely a game. Here's to the Pope I didn't meet. It's a really large world and I miss the point, if money is the object. I watched some wild turkeys, grazing, today, and it was all the mystery I needed.
Read more...

Betraying Emotion

Heat of the moment. Needed to do some house-cleaning and to do that I needed to dump and clean the shop-vac. This is a dirty job and a hell of a way to start any day. There's a point in the process where you beat the canvas cover (covers the foam filter) against a tree. The wind always shifts, you always get a face full of serious dust. I wear a little mask when I do this, but next time I'll wear a old tee-shirt over my head. Cut a little firewood, vacuumed a few corners, clean up myself, read some essays (Montaigne), walk the logging road out to the last ridge, overlooking Low Gap Pass, sat there a while, watching the non-traffic. I have to clear my throat before I can talk to myself, haven't spoken a word in 24 hours, then, before I can speak, two crows come squawking into my soundscape. Crows are actually smart enough to be rude. So the first sound out of my mouth in 24 hours is a Bronx Cheer. Makes me laugh out loud and that seems to piss-off the crows, who chime in and worry me back to the house. Before I put books away, I take a final glance at marked passages, make a few notes, stack the bookmarks in their places. A stab at order, a cartoon if you think about it, but an actual operating system in any event. Look at all the things I don't say, don't talk about, what about them? We know he does this and probably does that, but he never mentions them, what's that all about? Linda sent me an Emily letter, that left no doubt, she knew the pleasures of the flesh, they may have been rare, and orchestrated, but they were there. I think it needs to be a major sub-text. Shit. One text bleeds into another. If I had a really big screen, like Pegi, I could do them both at once. What I was thinking, and what I was doing. For instance I just went and got a drink, turned on the radio, rolling a smoke, it's Dylan And The Dead playing "All Along The Watchtower" and I spill tobacco everywhere. Hypnotized, mesmerized. I'm simply an aging hippy, there's no mystery. Natalie, I think I love you. Nothing is what it seems. Which I consider for a long period of time. I'm too soft when it comes to thinking, I can think about anything. When Bela plays the banjo, reality disappears. Some really haunting stuff. Phone's out again. Will happen many times this winter, as the dead trees on Mackletree fall. So I won't really stop this piece until tomorrow night. Back at the museum today and it is still a shambles, despite the four hours D and I put in on Saturday. Hard at it, bright and early, then pull the extra hardware we used to hang auction stuff on the front wall. Re-hung the front wall. Added a beautiful watercolor. Probably explained how we got it, but here's another version. Sara had lined up the painting for the show, from Berea. Berea doesn't have a gallery space, and their work just hung in stair wells and offices. Bad economy, they sell their paintings, but I friend of Sara's bought it, and had another of these Keller watercolors of the circus, he sent both. The other one now hangs behind the receptionist's desk, I say other one, because we could only squeeze one into the show, and that barely, re-hung eight pieces to fit it in. The one behind the desk required a hammer-drill and mollys, number nine. The main gallery floor is toast. There's a Janitor College story here that I'll get back to. Maybe I can get to the floor tomorrow. I'm uncertain about tomorrow, as one should be. Had to re-label everything, and by then the day was gone. Actually, I left a few minutes early because of the rain clouds to the west. Big grocery shop (for me) and really needed to drive to the top. The timing was perfect, I get unloaded as the first drops crackle on the leaves. Except I don't want to drive down and walk back up in the rain, blow that off, which means I might have to wait for the damned thing to dry out a bit tomorrow. I need to do a very large buy at Kroger, payday this week, so probably come in Saturday to check on The Golden Boy and buy a bunch of stuff. Forecast is good for then, good enough to drive in. Need to get a new set of crampons, and maybe a guest set. Another janitor story, but I have to tell it now, before I lose track. There was a Professor Sneed, who taught Hydraulics, a great guy, lived way out in the boonies, had to hike in and out in winter, and that was most of the time. He'd done some important work on the flow patterns of liquids and solids at various pitches, he's the one that gave us the 'Quarter-Inch Per Foot' rule. Other Hydraulics guys would stop by, on their way to conferences. Sneed had to print up a sheet of directions and instructions, and one of the items said "If you visit in winter, bring your crampons" and that worked fine, until the new airport restrictions. He had to drive to Milwaukee, mid-winter, in a snowstorm, to bail out a Finnish colleague, who spoke just enough English to get into serious trouble when he tried to board with crampons in his carry-on. We gathered at his place, every couple of weeks, year round, talked drainage. In the winter we played an odd game, sitting outside, around a bonfire, on lawn-chairs; all dressed in insulated bibs, with parkas and gloves and face-masks and scarves and hats, and you'd roll a small solid snowball, call someone's name, and throw it at them. We were all armed with ping-pong paddles. And we'd sit there for hours, drinking hot toddies, and batting away snowballs. Talking about Claude Levi-Strauss. Sneed knew him, they've eaten together at the Harvard Club several times, always the mutton stew. I've let this run away from me, I don't know what I was talking about. Oh, right, fucking crampons. I never owned any crampons before I moved to Ohio. Mostly, in Colorado, because of sublimation, the snow became vapor, and so, away. The mesquite snatches a drink, I know it does, I've watched it, the bark gets damp and the tree sucks moisture from that. The tree's need creates a certain pressure, in this case an osmotic thing; and I know I don't know enough to alter anything. The piss pile we've landed in. It all depends on what you mean. I come back to that. The other janitor story, cleaning the floor, at Janitor College there were no janitors, we cleaned up our own mess; there were professors and aspiring janitors, and the aspiring janitors did the actual work. Occasionally Sneed, or someone, would appear, pointing out those spots where wine had gotten into the grout. I'm a professional, show me what you want to fry, and I'll fry it. And they were always right, correct, they marked the spot. I question this red-maple they call as a point? It was a bad call. We all do this. Read more...

Field Reporting

The sand erodes. Ancient forests are exposed, then the ice melts and mountain tops become islands. A cycle with little regard to humanity: a cow farts, a butterfly dies. Ever so. You can see it coming, a black cloud that makes the Dust Bowl look tame. What Cormac McCarthy was saying in "The Road", a Faulkner of the future rather than the past. It doesn't take a prophet to see, all you need are eyes and sometimes a magnifying glass. My carbon footprint is suspect precisely because I'm burning the Wrack Show, all that residual crap the Ohio carries, that collects, adheres, to wood. Trying to stay warm, I do more harm than good. Don't let anyone tell you they know what they're doing, no one does. It's not so much a depressing thought as it is a fact of life, we jiggle around like puppets, then we die. Look at the record. In my cups, I always turn existential, a saving grace, then I usually split kindling, because it's mindless and I need some, to start the next fire, light the cave I consider my life. Blackbird singing in the dead of night. An abnormal year, if the basis is number of dead squirrels per mile; maybe relates to the quantity of nuts per acre, but I don't know, maybe squirrels are the inland lemmings. Another urban myth. I collect roadkill, cut out the loins, throw the carcass on top of the outhouse for the crows. I do this as a matter of course. Not that there's a plan. A bisque is a thick cream soup, you could make one with a shoe, thickened with nuts, I choose acorns, available naturally, treated the usual way. I'm after a soup, here, that is both hearty and tasty. The shrimp were a gift. Great blues when I turn the radio back on, Mississippi John Hurt and his pallet on the floor, a song that always makes me weep. I probably need to think about that. I'm not particularly sentimental, but I do remember things. Suddenly everyone is making books, well, not everyone, but D is making a book for some class and we were talking about methods of binding, and I just got a call from an art teacher wanting a mini-tutorial in bookbinding. I need to do some binding this winter, as some of the old press books have gotten quite pricey and I have unbound copies. Cottage industry for my dotage or a windfall for my daughters. A couple of the last books, because of the break-up and divorce, were scarcely circulated and are wildly expensive. I'm holding. Cleaned out the fridge and buried the dumpings into the compost pile. The fox was there within an hour, dug up the pile, took a few bites and started shaking her head, took a few more bites, more shaking of the head. Then she heads over to the nearest mud puddle (my 'driveway') and gets a drink. I owe this show, I'm sure, to the remnants of a very hot chili that I forgotten about. Poor thing. It was really hot. She'll have a couple of uncomfortable days. The shrimp are very large, so I take off the tails, and cut them up, cook in butter, add a couple of caramelized onions, some chicken stock, some of the marinade they were in (lots of garlic, red and orange peppers, lots of lemon) and let it all slow cook together for a while, I was reading, I don't know how long, a riveting read, Maxwell on thermodynamics. I found it while putting away another book. Net effect, zero, but it is a smaller book, so the pile isn't quite as high, so maybe there is a small net-effect. Then into the blender, after cooling; heated back up, and added maybe a pint of half-and-half. Got it quite hot but careful not to boil as I suspect this would curdle like a bastard. I stole, from D's office, a bag of oyster crackers from last year's wine tasting; they're stale, but that doesn't affect their ability to soak up two or three times their weight in bisque. I develop a technique whereby I keep a bowl, on the island, of replenished hot bisque, with a layer of crackers on top; every time I walk by, and I make special trips, I turn them over with the back of a spoon, and eat a few. Grazing. This is a very good soup. And the stale, saturated, oyster crackers, are the perfect medium. I'm a born-again freestyle whatever. They dip you in the Ohio, and if you live, you're a member. I can digest horseshoes, you should know that about me, I'd probably be the last man standing. It's probably nothing, but a heads up, what I was thinking, I needed to play closer attention. Tom Bridwell, reporting from the field. Any mistakes are covered, right? we have insurance? Read more...

Working Late

What might be meant, by over-extending yourself, might be as simple as a couple of hours of lost sleep. It might be more than that, but I was looking to establish a lower limit, maybe you lose some sleep, what the hell. Blow it off. What we learn to expect is what we never would. I shot the shit and talked with a lot of people, sold a lot of expensive wine. I had a great crew, moms from the Cirque. I don't like the way cash money is handled at the museum, and I divorce myself from it, I'll pour wine, but I will not handle money. Still, another successful event, and I'm exhausted. Tomorrow I want to rehang the opening sequence of the Circus Show, where you, the spectator, that's not right, you, the what? I'm having trouble here.The other part of me. And right now I have to go to bed. Awake to light bouncing around the bed, dust motes from my stirring and pure hard light coming in aslant. I guess it is around seven, dress quickly in there chill, make my bed, which I always do, go downstairs, it's 6:57, late for me, but I needed to rest. Start a small hot fire, make coffee, read the 11th edition Britannica article on Gutenberg. I'm almost sorry I never did cast type. I knew how. I did cast some, a Linotype casts a line, so does a Ludlow, and I've used them both extensively, but never individual letters. Read Gill, but I never felt moved to design a face. Always more interested in the words. Had to go turn off the radio, the music was diverting me. I enjoy diversion, but when I'm writing I have to sound out what I'm hearing/saying, I need a blank space, white-noise. Then I can hear the cadence, keep my place, remember what I was writing about. My needs. Living alone, the patterns are more apparent. Mine might be described as a loose plan with a lot of bifurcation. When Sara came into the museum today, I was the receptionist, nobody in that slot, but I was there, so I could put my finger in the dike. Sara said she had two golden boys, but one of them was low-maintenance, and thank god. First event I've ever attended in which there were left-over shrimp. The Sesame Beef Tenderloin cubes were great, and the pot-stickers, a deep-fat fried object, were terrific, heart-stopping, I must have eaten a dozen. So there were shrimp left-over, and Sara mentioned a bisque. I'm all over that, bring home several pounds of shrimp, and the other ingredients I'll need for a killer Cream Of Shrimp soup. Put the new blender to the test. I have a vague idea of what I expect. A speculative soup. Not mimesis. More a playing field. An aside: looking up something recently, probably mimesis, I stumbled on 'meiioration', which seems to be the way a word changes over time, or maybe the print was too small and I was misreading. You reach a point in life. A Rabbi and a Monk go into a bar together. I don't, exactly understand the relationship between what I think I'm saying and what you read. I have very little control, many ways, I feel I merely report. Fox in the compost pile, crows in the trees, another descent into winter. But it is the natural world, as close as I can come, that contains the mystery, everything else is mimesis. May I never mention Plato again. Nine days from Sunday. When is that, exactly? There might be a closing argument. You could argue point of view, I never photograph anything, I have a basic exception to everything, I didn't know I didn't know anything. That far removed from the group. Last thing I remember, the leaves were falling, I drew some conclusions. Fall, then winter, my mettle will be tested. Again. Read more...

OK

The resident wine guy, Dr. White, has assembled the wines for the premier wine tasting at the fund-raiser, but for personal reasons, he and Sandy must be away, and he defers to me as the next most knowledgeable. I hesitate, but decide to tell Pegi tomorrow that I'll handle the wine-tasting. It means I won't write that night, but I can live with not writing for one night. I've done worse things. There are some very good wines. Maybe Tammy's beau could pour the whites, I could pour the reds, we'd need someone to keep track. I refuse to do any bookkeeping. Would be all I could do to pour. Can't believe I would volunteer myself at this level, but I do love the museum, and the job I do there. Which, said description, is nebulous. Luminous is that quality of light, where the slanting sun strikes the shores of Kentucky. The word had evaded me and then I saw it everywhere. Not to make too much out of a natural ephemeral event, but it was luminous. What did Charlotte say? I'm just a spider, but I'm ok. OKEH is Choctow for everything is alright. I'm awash in information and most of it is incorrect. Really, how do you steer a path through this? I don't know, it's a long and rutty road. Path, trail, whatever, a way to get from here to there. After the fund-raiser, the mandate is clear, cut firewood and put away books. I've got to resurrect the sauce, clean out the fridge, vacuum dust bunnies, wash some linens. I heard a mouse trap go off last night, but couldn't find it this morning. I really need to find it, probably behind the stove, won't have a chance to look before Saturday. Today was a zoo, setting up for the big event, tomorrow promises more of the same, the punch-list, then doing the wine thing, getting home late, cold house, sore feet. A twelve hour day, minimum. Thinking now I'll take a week off in December, 5 vacation days could get me 11 days off, and do nothing but firewood and work on the Emily Project. In the winter I take off an hour early, to get home and get a fire started before dark, and that will use accumulated overtime and maybe another week, then 2 weeks in June to go west and watch my girls graduate high school and college. Use up my vacation time, as Pegi tells me I should. James came in today to set the bonnets with me. One of those delicate but fairly quick operations that requires teamwork and absolute attention. He passes the test with flying colors. I was awake for several hours last night, imagining the sequences, and he was right there, when we did them, today. You have to have total confidence in the other person, when a task involves 2 people and you're dealing with art. I'm paranoid, but that's my job. I do some prep so D and I can speed through the list. After we set the bonnets, I knew James should clean them, he's compulsive and that's a good thing, if you want something really clean. I vacillate, when it comes to reality but I know what I mean. You and some old-timer, talking on the stoop. Never deny anything, and always take the extra step. Then it becomes a fandango, and everyone is swept away. You and me, I'm not so sure, what's promised and what's delivered. Read more...

Another List

Today disappeared. I remember starting the day, driving to town, watching a huge 'V' of geese winging south, starting on the list from Saturday, and adding more things than I accomplished. Frustrating. Astraddle the ridge, I don't worry that much about what I get done, drift off into the middle-distance. I can't remember where we put the microscope we found in the basement at the museum. I need to bring it home, there are some things I want to look at more closely. I think about making a model of the last house, but it would be easier to just build the damned thing out of my head and call it the model. I'd need the one and two-faced logs from the bone yard at the veneer mill, critical structural elements, and maybe free for the hauling. Booby would haul them with his log-truck for a couple of hundred bucks. I could probably build the place for 5 grand, scrounging everything. Do the roof in car hoods. Maybe less windows, certainly less windows, I am a fool for windows, in this house they probably cost me a cord of wood a year. So, 900 square feet, 10 foot bays, 9 of them, no interior walls except for bookcases. Realistically, I'm not going to do this, but I like to have a purely mental project going, something to think about. I built this place, where I currently write, without ever drawing a set of plans, if there was a next one, the last house, I'd let the materials completely dictate what could be done. I've been doing that for twenty years, but never so completely as happened on the stairs here. Where the materials just took over: stand out of the way, buddy, we've got some work to do. Sometimes, when I'm clicking on all cylinders, language takes me there. Diana sent some Emily along, the Emily Project groweth, the Lord knoweth. Tonight the sunset was spectacular, orange and yellow and blue, god, it filled the sky. For 15 minutes I thought I was going die, systemic failure, too much beauty, this was off the scale. I rolled a smoke and took a drink out back, set on the steps (at least iconic) and watched the setting sun. Emily would strip everything bare, not quite a pole-dance, but Jesus, did she have to say that? And, of course, she did. Now I get it, what she meant. It's only taken 40 years. Hey, in own my defense, I was fencing and cross-fencing a very large piece of real estate at the time, I'm hardly accountable for my own actions, digging holes, stretching wire. I have a huge amount to do tomorrow. Suddenly everything. This may not be an accurate sampling, but what I've noticed is that everyone sits on their ass until the last minute. Christmas shopping, I don't know what they're doing, I don't give a shit, what I want is for my part of this to run smoothly. Annabelle Lee. John Lee Hooker. Leeward. A progression that gets us through. Call it what you want, I call it a fall-back position, when I have to call it anything, and I choose not to name it, nor call it's name out loud. We heretics have our standards. I, for instance, don't like clowns. Phone line down again and I can't Send. Think I'll go eat dinner again, these crab cakes are exceptional. Overcast at dawn with just a slice of sky at the horizon, six inches, with your arm held out at three feet, extreme shafts of orange. This phenomenon is oddly repeated at sunset, and something I've never seen before. I drive along the Ohio for 7 miles on the way home, and the slit of sky allows the shafts of light to hit the edge of Kentucky, the lower terrace, right down at river's edge. It's late in leaf season, but it's Kentucky, and protected by the river, there is a band of golden trees that stretch for miles. Intense orange-gold. I have to stop and watch, knowing these fall aspects of light are short-lived. For maybe five minutes Kentucky looks like the promised land. It might be, I don't mean to sound facetious, I've never lived there. I'd never spent much time looking at illuminated manuscripts either, but D is thinking about Letter Form as his thesis, so I've been doing some research. That period between 940 (the Irish monks) and Gutenberg's 42 line bible, 1456 (we know the day exactly, we know who was there.) The Gutenberg Sidetrack. I meant to mention, what I thought I was going to say, was something about emergent naturalism in the later Middle Ages, especially as depicted in illuminated manuscripts. I love this stuff, I go after it like Kim goes after bricks. What happens in the Initial Letters become paintings, and we have good provenance on these books. Papyrus doesn't hold up well, north of the Med, so they were diligently copied on vellum. Ten thousand thoughts, I might pursue one or two. What I've learned, as an indicator: nothing ever was. 'I did it because I could' might be an excuse. The whole problem with this examining-things-closely concept is that you have attention. I wonder how they address that. Anyone who might be judging your progress. Read more...

Lost Lines

A glitch somewhere, I'm losing lines. I've lost 84 in the last couple of days and I don't understand where they've gone. I'm doing everything the same way. I hate losing lines, it's so hard building them. Cut wood, haul water. The books for today, off the shelves, are "A Pattern Language" (a now classic book which describes a new attitude toward architecture and planning, excellent), and the Dreyfuss "Symbol Sourcebook". The first because I'm still thinking about that last house; the second because I was looking for the symbol 'Nothing To Declare' which proved to be a no-brainer and not very satisfying. It's a green stop-sign shape, in green, with the words spelled out on a white arrow. The symbol for 'Obscure Species' is the same as the symbol for 'Incorrect Citation', a tre-foil with the bottom leg extended into a dagger. The meteorology symbols are wonderful, especially the clouds. The Caduceus (staff of Hermes) has two snakes; the Staff of Aesculapius has just one. Great book. 230 pages of symbols, 48 to the page, about covers the subject. "A Pattern Language" is dense and the type is too small, but with its companion volume "The Timeless Way Of Building", pretty much define my approach to building. I've built 24 houses and must have designed 12 of them, I don't have any pictures, I don't even remember where some of them are, couldn't find them on a bet. A couple have been moved, much simplified by my having built them on piers, which I tend toward in damp climates, to allow for air circulation. As I think about it, you enter most of the houses I've built from the rear, what I call the rear that other people often refer to as the front. I like driving in to the back of places, leaving the truck or car out of view from the front, which always looks out. Spied a nice standing dead oak that will nicely fill out my firewood pile, not far from the front of the house, slightly down-slope and I'll need to cut a path, but only 150 feet or so. I choose it because I'm sure I can drop it up-slope, saving a great deal of labor. I got down to it today with just a few scratches and a sacrificial sweatshirt; it's a nearly perfect tree for my needs, the bark is mostly off (brings bugs inside) and it's all sound heart. 23 million BTUs on the stump. Next weekend, weather permitting. Still a show to finish, and the largest fund-raiser of the year to prepare for, and four days to do it; will be a test, of sorts, I'm guessing. By Friday everyone will be in a full-bore panic. If the weather is dry, I might stay for part of it, most likely I'll come home so I can have a drink, and write. If I stayed, of course, I might bring someone home, and I'm not ruling that out. Twilight is the loneliest time of day. I'm sure Emily has something to say about that, the setting sun being the death of day. Repressed eroticism. We have to do something with that, that line where repression becomes a channeling of energy, a Tantric thing. Which, certainly, Emily achieves, but our hippy narrator might not. Just a thought. Not that a visit by a friend, or a really interesting person, could be perceived as an interruption, more grist for the meal, but I'm seldom interrupted, as if no one wants to live this way. One look at my hands is enough. You do, what? Lay bricks, harvest timber, build houses? I'd consider a double hand transplant. The first finger on my left hand, usually protected by the remnants of a glove, over the years, I've probably hit a hundred times with various hatchets, splitting kindling. Scar tissue is interesting, the folds and adjustments. Almost anything in nature bears the marks of passage. Sassafras saplings can contort into any configuration. Maybe we're all bent. The devil's in the details. I'm more than willing to listen.You and yours. I merely listen. Seven worlds collide. Five or Seven. Always an odd number. Nothing to declare. His body or his mind,. I trust your procession. Looking forward, sitting in the midday sun. Read more...