Justified

Fustian and fraudulent. Just felt like saying that. A charge I often level at myself. The truck is at Dave's, thank god. D met me there and drove me into town. I bought him lunch and a beer, Anthony arrived from Cincy, I read Updike's non-fiction. Joined Anthony for a beer and Irish at the pub. The ridge was nice, so different. Antithetical, therefore almost the same. A wave and a particle. I have some supplies and I can walk to Kroger. I stand to be painting walls all week, so I brought a ratty shirt from home. Shepherd's Pie for lunch, a serving so large it also serves as dinner. I meant to do some work on the back hall ceiling, but I just read all day. Looking at a week of painting, I thought to just take the day off. Statistics don't apply to individuals but logistics do. Trying to figure the reverse order, when we'll need what crates. A problem in three-space. I see in three-space very well. Often been a problem for me, that I assume others do also, which isn't the case, in my experience. When I'm doodling a house design, a favorite recreation, I'm seeing the structure in three dimensions, sometimes four, in every particular, every joint and piece of hardware. This is a learned thing, I think, but maybe not. Maybe there's a proclivity toward seeing things in too much detail. I'd blame that on my grandfather, my mother's side, my namesake, Tom. A mule trader, literally, and a piece of work. He projected a series of trades in three-space, always came out ahead. As good a test as any. Judging is a mined field, mine-field, mine field, which one do I mean? I spend a fair amount of time thinking about specific word choice, and another large period of time thinking about punctuation. Fucking commas are the bane of my existence. It's not unusual for me to add and subtract a comma, for what, like thirty minutes. Periods are somewhat easier, looking for closure. Commas string you on. I've written a few sentences that were longer than 42 lines single-spaced, which is what I consider a page, so I'm familiar with the format. I can't believe you'd imagine I'd believe any of that hokum, under which everything extra is banished; what you don't need, and then you're left with a quilt of your identity. A pastiche of this and that. The household gods screaming for this or that. Me, Janus, at the portal. A new mop-head, the Fantail Loop, and I wonder if that will be enough. These voices in my head. Read more...

Up Out

Anabasis, the janitor on retreat. Does laundry (a fist fight, with shoving onlookers, across the way in Wayne Hills (public housing) parking lot) and buys supplies for the mule pack, himself, to resupply. Drives around and in the long way, to touch base with the mechanic. A thousand feet in elevation means dramatic difference in snow pack and climate. Still three inches of crusted snow. Requires crampons and a ski-pole (broom stick) to keep from sliding backwards. House is cold but not frigid. Disengaging, he doesn't even start a fire right away; there's too much to see, too much to remember. A writer of paragraphs, he starts one. A few notes for later. The stove pipe needs knocking down, ashes dumped. A few minutes vacuuming, to clean dust and the odd iridescent bit of creosote. He uses half-finished paintings, on panels, left by a former lover, to block the sun at his writing window, the one facing west, just behind his black Dell. "It's nice to lay a fire again," are his first words of the day, so he sounds a bit the croaker. Not to worry, he lays a mean fire, the red maple is dry and burns hot. He kills the breaker for the refrigerator, the silence is absolute except for the dripping of the melt and the ticking of the cookstove. Not a breath of breeze. The dog is gone, he hopes to greener pastures. He thinks about companionship, even with animals, and rejects the concept. "Too burdensome" he mutters at the collection of cast-iron cookware. The unabridged dictionary is open to gnomist. He remembers looking it up. He often has a pen is his mouth, to free his hands. The crows are there, to greet him, he waves them off, spouting an admonition in Latin. "Mare est in turba." He sort of looks like a priest, keeps his head bowed, fingers beads. He might just be a surfer dude, with a web-cam at the end of the dock, so he could see wether or not to blow off work and go ride a wave. "We see this." the janitor says, as he starts a complicated risotto at the cookstove. Judge not, glass houses, all that. The janitor plays with leaving out as many words (letters) as possible and still making (make) sense, it's good he can retire to the wood. Retreat, I mean. Who am I? Where did that come from? There's a dark tunnel of identity, and at the end is you. It takes me longer and longer to write less and less, because of the way the viewer becomes the viewed. Where am I now? Trust his sense and things are turned around. How much of the janitor am I?.,;""),. Coded. But something was meant. Listen. Two nuns go into a bar. You and me. Read more...

Progress

The new generation of primers are quite impressive. They seem thin, light on the solids, their coverage seems incomplete, but they lay down a film that takes paint well and often allow for a single top coat. Some things have gotten better. I get one of the drop ceilings upstairs painted, and after D finishes his graphic design project, the announcement card with list of themed events for the big show downstairs, he fills some damaged areas in the other ceiling that I had scraped and primed. Some work on the back stair-well ceiling. During a coffee break, in what you might call the archival catalog, I find a box and the buffered tissue we need to store the new Carter drawings, D orders what we need so I can store them safely away. A well-oiled machine. A beer after work. Talk with my sister and things are stable in Florida. Talk with my mechanic and he can finally get to my truck. Do laundry and get back to the ridge tomorrow, then drop off the truck and get back to town on Monday, without a vehicle (D will meet me at Dave's and drive me in), which is fine, because I have nowhere to go and many walls to paint. I'll make a crock-pot of something. Above freezing today, most of the snow melted, and there are a few places that are almost dry. Not even February yet. The real mud season is yet to come. I seem to have agreed to make croquettes for the opening. What was I thinking? Read more...

Not Thinking

Hard to make sense. Three inches of slush on the roads at dawn, a heavy wet snow overnight. Passing vehicles spouting rooster tails. D arrives and we go for coffee and scones, then unwrap one of the glass pieces. Stunning, and I'm not a glass person really. Then we remember the ceiling is damaged and that needs addressed before we set the show. D needs to design a mailer for the Modernism Show, so we make a trip to the hardware store for stain blocking primer and ceiling paint so I can get started over my head. Repair, then prime the stained areas, trying to not think about anything else. But thought intrudes. Too many lines of thought. An apartment has come up that I can't quite afford, so I'm running numbers in my head all day, wondering what further sacrifices I could possibly make. So many variables. A math beyond my means. I don't have the calculus, nor the algorithms in which to plug the numbers. In some ways the future works, in others it doesn't. How long will I live, for instance, is an issue, whether or not I use olive oil for frying potatoes. There are some things I could sell, that might grant me some time, and time is actually the issue. You reach an age when you know you are going to die and you just don't want to be a burden on anyone else. But you don't want to die, because living is better than nothing. Nothingness. My goal is to out live my parents. A simple enough parameter. I want to spare them the agony of one of their kids dying before them. The subject apartment has two bedrooms, which I don't need, a guest could sleep on on the couch, but I like the wall-space, because of the books. Provisional. My sister, Brenda, calls when I'm at the pub, and Mom is stable, they've thickened her blood and operated on her ankle, added two screws and a plate, put her in a soft cast, before the hard cast and weeks of rehap. Like I asked that harpist, years ago, could she play "Stairway To Heaven"? and she strummed a few chords. She could. Of course. Why am I not surprised? Everyone knows everything, it's just a matter of degree. Read more...

Outside Boxes

Androphagi is what you call eating human beings if you don't want to use the word cannibal. Around 1930 a New York Times reporter, William Buehler Seabrook, got, from an intern, a piece of healthy human fresh, from the description I'm guessing a thigh. He cut off a steak and cooked the rest as a roast. He describes it as being the most like veal. The steak was a bit stringy, but the roast was succulent. Since March 2007, 25 albino Tanzanians have been killed and eaten, under advice from a witch doctor, to bring good luck. Titus Andronicus, the whale-ship Essex, the Donner party, those soccer players, the siege of Stalingrad, isolated Japanese soldiers eating the crew of a downed American bomber. We know from middens that Neanderthals ate each other and probably were eaten in turn. A basic rule of survival is that you don't waste protein. Just a side-bar but interesting reading, so much information that everything is fair game. Work to do, I prep the pedestals D has indicated he wants for the glass show. Distracted by family emergencies, I can't settle my brain. Mom was in the hospital, after a black-out, but they couldn't find the problem, sent her home, she blacked-out again, fell and broke an ankle, so back in the hospital. My sister, on hand, is handling logistics, and I'm on a kind of stand-by that's disconcerting. Nothing I can do, really, but stay close to the phone, thinking in fits and starts. Her reserves are very nearly tapped. I talked with her about this at Thanksgiving; mostly, she was worried about Dad. The language of loss. Begins as a patois- pidgin, develops to a creole, then a dialect, then a full-blown expression of grief. I immerse myself in the mundane, mindless chores, paint some walls, paint the pedestals. No further calls, I go to the pub for a Paddy's Irish whiskey with a Murphy's stout back, talk with the owners about Pegi's girls doing a Celtic dance number at the St. Patrick's Day celebration. The ways of the world are ephemeral, but at least they keep us occupied. Kierkegaard was crazy. Consider Regine. Maybe I just too often support the long oppressed without enough sympathy for the truly depressed; I am, in the end, a feminist, without the trappings. More a blues riff than an intellectual tirade. You lose your girl, your dog, miss the train, and wake up in the rain, it might well be your problem, not the way the world is constellated. Read more...

Long Pig

Cannibalism was fairly common in the new world, taking two distinct forms. Either you ate the vanquished, or you ate the old and wise from your own tribe. Diaz, with Cortez, chronicles the ferocious Aztec rituals, and, in his detailed journals, actually includes some recipes. The prisoners were forced to climb the 114 steps to the top of the stepped pyramid, bent over tautly so the priest could slice under the rib cage with an obsidian knife and rip out the still beating heart. The body was then rolled down the back side of the steps, the arms and legs were cut off and cooked with squash, the torsos were tossed to animals in the zoo. At the other extreme is a kind of stew you make from the heart and brains of your grandfather. Cultural conditioning. Gruesome reading before breakfast, but I have a strong stomach. When Pegi arrives at the museum I head right out to Market Street for scones, warm from the oven. Hot coffee and a warm pastry is a great way to start the day. Finish mopping the floors, collect the trash, haul away everything that can be recycled; the recycling center is behind the library, so I take back some books and get a large volume of John Updike's non-fiction, essays and criticism, "More Matter". I'm not that big a fan of his fiction but I like his non-fiction well enough. Another sequence of storms forecast and it's important to have tobacco, booze, and a good book. I finish painting early enough to run out to the ridge and get my mail and still get back to town for Happy Hour at the pub. Pegi requested I not sleep on the ridge lest I not make it in to work tomorrow. Ice and snow by early morning. I'm a cheap date, free heat and hot running water, I'll agree to anything. Astra surprised me today, at lunch. There was a table of four that came in before me, I was sitting at the bar, in my usual place, and she took their orders, then came up behind me, asking what I wanted; an egg salad on toasted sour-dough, slaw on the side, and she put my order in first, so I would be served first, so I could eat and get away quickly. I'm a regular, I warrant special treatment. Nothing ever was. Yet it is. As I mentioned earlier, all of these people touch me now, as if I'm family, and I'm like a guppy, straining for breath, little swollen lips pursing in and out. Something might be better than nothing. I'm not sure. Nothing is comforting in many ways: what we expect, what we end up with, the tail end of the story. Read more...

Best Intentions

More snow this morning, slick roads, and I'm glad I stayed in town. Trashed the floors, bringing in the glass show on Friday, so I sweep and start cleaning them. So much road and sidewalk salt tracked inside on wet shoes, enough to make a janitor cry. Technically a day off, so I take a long walk down below the floodwall. A string of barges and their tug have stopped in the wide swing of river west of the confluence and part of the crew has come ashore in a zodiac. I catch their bow line at the revetment in the lee of the world's ugliest jetty. Revetment from the Old French revestir, to clothe again, from the Latin re + vestire, to clothe, meaning concrete or rocks or dead cars and old appliances used to stabilize a bank or shore. The crew has come ashore to pick up a part they needed for the tug's engine. A deck hand stays with the boat, while the others go for coffee and sweets at the Market Street Cafe. I talk with the kid for a while. It was his dream to be on the river, and now he is. The food is good, the pay is good, and he loves his job, even in this foul weather; better, he says, than farming tobacco. The tug is a monster, pushing five barges upstream, 8,000 horsepower, and needing every bit of it. In his two years on the water they've never gone aground, but they hit a snag once, a forty foot oak with root ball attached, that sent him to his knees. Four separate skeins of geese, flying over, honking, a parade in the sky, marching bands with just tubas. Struck me as funny, like they were late or something. Got the date wrong, late for an appointment. Navaho time, in which there is only now, and any projection is mere folly. Tomorrow at noon means some time in the future. Maybe the day after tomorrow, maybe never; I'm still processing what I learned, living on the Res. That gun-shot trailer saved my life, the way real time was compressed. Bullet holes will catch your attention, but they don't necessarily mean anything, random acts of violence might just be random acts. A neighbor with a short fuse, the paperboy making a point, no reason to go ballistic, except that maybe it disturbed your sleep, and that might be reason enough to get angry enough to say something. Sarcasm is often the weapon of choice. Read more...

The List

With the addenda and the sub-sets, the list has taken on a life of its own. We do spend most of the day in the basement, achieving what might pass for order. Dirty ugly work, especially when D decides (correctly) that we need to rip out an old door-jamb (no door) in the interest of widening a bottleneck between the elevator and the new crate storage area we created today. Truck loads of debris. Then tackled the pedestal storage area and got rid of another truckload, this one of useless boxes, and increased our storage area there by 25%. Swept everything clean, and even using a sweeping compound, the dust fills every pore of our clothes and bodies. Took delivery of the glass show, seven large pieces, off the back of a truck from Cleveland. Unloaded over ice and snow, nicely crated but no handles. Last thing today, we took the pieces up to the Richard's Gallery, six of the seven; five in the elevator, one at a time, and one up the stairs. The seventh has to be uncrated downstairs and carried up. It's seven feet tall. Might fit in the elevator, after uncrating. Sneezing fits in the afternoon. When D leaves I forgo a beer at the pub, wash my hair and take a sponge bath, bag the complete set of clothes for separate soaking, get a drink and read for an hour. Essays by Stephen Harrigan, middling good. Talks about some places I've been. An atlas becomes a book of memory. Five below, when D left his house this morning, zero when he gets to town, I'm waiting, in the back doorway of the museum, outside, smoking a cigaret. Actually, I'm leaning in the doorway, like a character in a French spy film, and when D makes the turn into into the Entry row of the bank parking lot, so that he can Exit toward Market Street, for coffee and scones, I flip the butt into the alley and flat-foot across the ice to his truck. But today is Saturday and we get Loretta to make us a Breakfast Wrap. It would stop a charging Rhino. Read an interesting essay about a tiger killing a keeper at the zoo in Houston, merely being a tiger is called into question. Memory and fiction are a lot alike. I might write some fiction. I was thinking, the grace of being a B writer, I think of myself as a B-minus, certainly someplace in the B's. I've always graded oddly, so I wouldn't trust me on this. At my adjuration (earnest solemn appeal) they judged me mostly on my crooked smile. I wouldn't lie if it made any difference. Trust me. I have to laugh. Fucking narrator. Cut the shot closely, he flips the cigaret butt into the alley, and walks to the truck. Cut. Voice over, some Bach in the background. I can't do everything, really; I can't do much, anymore. You and yours, I don't have a clue, but I do, what you need is the most simple repetitive thing possible. Lift weights. I'll rescue you tomorrow. Stand off to the side when I blow the door, then, follow my lead. We don't need to talk.I hate you, you know that, that you could understand means I could know, should know. That meant if you did know you should have at least made a move. Read more...

Learning Curve

I've read a lot of condition reports, but this was a new one, a painting by Charles Burchfield, "Trees and Ravine", quote: "Incoming loan condition: Water in bubble wrap. Foul smell". Also, several works on paper, and instructions that the light levels not exceed 5 foot candles. Which means breaking out the equipage. I love it when they get technical. D in, so we do the natural thing when there is an apparent disagreement in numbers. We empirically check. In fact, the truth is even more confusing. I had missed two painting, in my quadruple check yesterday, because two packages that seemed like singles were actually doubles. We had to pull pieces from their boxes to read the labels. Which means that we signed for 53 painting and we actually have 55. Still one short of what I calculate the number to be, but we now have a check-list and know which is the missing painting. Make a call to the museum of origin, finally get through to the guy who does my job there, and he remembers that the painting in question was pulled to be shipped back to Chicago. We have 55, we're supposed to have 55, I can now make the list Sara requested. Went over logistics today, for the next couple of months. Crates out the ying-yang and we have to create some order. Tomorrow morning we spend in the basement, clearing storage space, talk through the order in which things arrive and the order in which they need to leave. Try to move things just twice, coming in and going out. Intended to start painting walls today, but got side-tracked stripping vinyl signage. The new generation is thinner, as the cutting has become more precise, and the adhesion is better. I'm a Luddite, OK; I liked the last generation, slightly thicker and didn't stick as well, because you could peel it off. This new stuff I have to scrape with a razor blade. I'm prone to small nicks and tears anyway, and really shouldn't be trusted with a single-edge razor blade. A creche of blackbirds on the wire, a full Leonard Cohen, talking about the weather, but I couldn't quite understand their language. Bloody cold and colder coming. I'm spoiled now, sleeping warm, becoming a creature of comfort. Wittgenstein's cat lolling next to the stove, that retired bird dog, Ava, living for a boot massage under the table. Went over to the pub with D, and the fireman, Josh, was there, shooting down Irish whisky with stout back, and told us a very funny story about fighting three fires in one day. Mid-winter, snow, sub-zero, and his outfit was frozen solid. At the third fire he asked the nozzle guy to hold off for a few minutes, while he warmed his hands. Heat is always lost, that's the rule, in so far as I understand the rule. Maxwell's secret hammer. Read more...

Condition Reports

Sara is in Hilton Head, but is coming back next month, for a week, to organize "Against The Grain" and wants all possible information, so I'm comparing the catalog for the show against the condition reports. A big, expensive show like this, the condition reports are extensive. There are pages of data on the Thomas Hart Benton. The show divides itself into six sections, and, as it happens, we have six sections in the main gallery, Sara wants to know how many paintings are in each section and the catalog doesn't provide quite enough information, because we're not getting 10 of the pieces. We signed for 53 paintings, and there are 53 paintings here (our ass is in the clear), but there are 66 paintings in the catalog, and I need to determine which are the other three, and where they are. It starts snowing hard and everyone goes home a little early. I stay, going over the condition reports, which record every teeny bit of damage, every venue, looking for any clue. Hours later, it's still snowing and town is blanketed, nothing is moving. I go up on the roof, to get the panorama, and it's beautiful; lights and muffled sound of a train across the river in Kentucky, a thousand prisms as snow falls through the street-lights. I did take a break, after closing down the museum, went over for a draft at the pub. No one there but the pregnant waitress, Lindsey (who I now call Blimpy) and young John who manages for John and Barb, the owners. A Phratric environment. They're going to close up early because the weather conditions are so bad, but we chat for half an hour. I'm not really used to this kind of socializing, but I do it well enough. I like these people, and I can converse about almost anything. Walking back, careful of step, in the hazy penumbrae of light, I have no thought, other than where the next foot falls. Read more...

Above Freezing

The ridge is still snow-bound but rotting fast, spike out the stove quickly with very dry red maple. Wait, that was yesterday. Too many split-shots of Irish Whisky, with Murphy's Stout to chase. Anthony is a perfect drinking companion. The conversations I'd missed since the fracture with B. We talked about site-specific installations, specific gravity, and where we'll be when the cows came home. Open up the museum early because I'm expecting an electrician D has talked to about repairing some of the light tracks in the main gallery. Mark, I think his name is. He shows, a little late, because his 19 month-old first child, a boy, wanted Daddy. I've got a world of things to do, Clean up some dried vomit, on carpet, in the Carter gallery, strip hardware, fill holes, erase marks (there are numerous light pencil marks hidden by a hung piece: center-line, distance from floor, spacing from the neighbor) to allow for easier touch-up. Because the vomit is dry, I cover it with a very wet towel, leave it to moisten. I took a course in this. Removal Efficiency, after the mandatory Detention Time. Vomit is easy to clean, if you catch it wet. This case is a little odd because the vomitor was moving away from the bathrooms, toward a quiet corner, which me wonder what he or she was drinking. I get a whiff, through the towel, of gin, which must have been from a flask, because it wasn't an event with a bar. I have to remember to tell you about the recent experiments with left-over mashed potato croquettes. Pegi asked me about finger-food for the opening, mid-western and my first thought was potatoes. Sling whatever barbs about profiling, but they were the first thing I thought about. I'd seen some on the Food Network, god bless Hulu. The electrician shows and this is a two-man job, because the dimmers and breakers are 70 feet away from where Mark is working on a ladder. I need to stay close, so I refill and sand the holes from the last show, flip switches on and off. Once you soaked the dried vomit, you wipe it up, I keep old tee-shirts for the soaking and wiping and then just throw them away. Not that different from baby-milk-puke, or a ewe dying from a prolapsed uterus. All of it is pretty much the same. There's a new show of Rockwell Kent at Denison. I know way too much about Rockwell Kent, I own some of his work, found two of his original cartoons, in an attic on Cape Cod. I was teaching Waste Water Management at the time, but there was this Hungarian, teaching a curse in Transcendental Waste; a weird woman, She took no excuses and failed almost everyone. It's hard to say when I'm serious, and when I'm poking fun. Take Astra, for instance. Consider the three different leaves on a sassafras. Consider almost anything, for that matter. Patsy Cline, John Lee Hooker, always the other side. I actually wrote down a recipe, does that make me a Republican? Read more...

Unhanging Alice

First, though, I must mop the back hallway, to see how the new finish held up to reception traffic, tracking in road salt. Excellent mopability. Then, as I was in mopping mode, swept then mopped the common room and bathroom upstairs, then vacuumed the offices. The Alice pieces are fairly light. I get 16 of the 19 pieces in the monster crate solo, while D designs an announcement card for the Brent Lee glass show. Early afternoon D joins me and we get all of the Alice crated. 15 pieces in each of the two other crates. 49 pieces in three crates. By comparison, the Mid-West modernist show, "Against The Grain" is in nine crates, four shipping boxes and five large open boxes holding several bubble-wrapped paintings each, so 18 packages. Total of 53 pieces. Much to do before that show hangs. Everything needs painting, after patching the 78 holes. Have to get the pedestals ready for the glass show. Found a missing painting from the permanent collection yesterday, it's in the Governor's Office in Columbus. Some confusion with the loan forms. So, I've found everything in the collection except for two photos of Roy Rogers. He was from around here, the esplanade is named for him. Best hot-dogs in town used to be from a street vendor there, but he's gone, now, and there's just a plaque. Roy in bronze relief, with his hat at that cocky angle. D had to get home, with Cool Whip for the pumpkin pie Carma had baked, but I went to the pub and had a shot of Paddy, my new favorite of the Irish Whiskies. Had a small chat with Jordan, the beautiful but seldom smiling and always quiet waitress. She asked me where my partners-in-crime were, and I said they had families and a life, She asked what about you, and I told her I lived alone in the woods but the Director of the museum was out-of-pocket and had asked me to stay in town in case there was any problem. "Against The Grain" is a very valuable show. She, Jordan, asked where I slept, and I told her I didn't sleep, just drank coffee and walked around with a baseball bat. Got a laugh out of her. It's hard to be completely up to speed in real time. Usually you think of what to have said later. So many filters between what we think and what we say. "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell. If you're not in it for the bucks, you tease out meaning for it's own sake. The problem with history is deciding what to believe. There's this weird guy we run into at the pub occasionally, who feels it necessary to invade our private conversation. I can ignore almost anything, but the hair on D's neck prickles. The guy came in while we were lunching today, D picked up his bowl and downed his soup, asked Isaac for our checks, and got us out of there before he would say something really rude. He, D. hates these interruptions in our conversation. I'm afraid he's going to kill the guy, it occurs to me I might have to kill the guy, so D doesn't have to. I don't have much of a temper, but I won't see my friends suffer. If it wasn't for the Cool Whip I might have gone for a piece of pumpkin pie, so I could explain the theory of fall-back positions. On the Intimacy Scale, most of the people at the pub touch me now, when they're passing or giving me some water. I hear Bach in the heating ducts, a sonorous longing; what's bringing Alice down off the wall? A change of venue. Internet server went out. I'd stopped writing for a while, to read, and had saved, so didn't lose anything. Went out to the ridge this morning. A different world. The snow is mostly gone in town, and the temps above freezing, but on the ridge the snow has settled to a four inch crust and the driveway was solid ice. I'll try again tomorrow to get to the house. Dave said he could work on the truck net weekend. The lake was frozen over and covered with snow. I stopped to walk down to the spillway. That interesting visual phenomenon where the napp of water lifts the edge of ice so it can escape. A pileated woodpecker and three crows. The remaining ducks were crowded into a picnic shelter. St Augustine said that memory is the belly of the soul. Read more...

Fairly Abstract

Heavy lifting. Days that D works we need to get many things done that I can't do alone. The awkward and heavy. Place is a mess, serious work to be done. Take down the Alice show, pack it in the ridiculous crates, the heaviest one is 303 pounds. Stupid. Get those ready to ship. The modernism show arrived, on schedule, during the reception for the student show. Well packed, we unload the truck, there are four of us, in twenty minutes flat; all through the back door, didn't have to use the loading door, which was a good thing, because the alley is a sheet of ice. Good test for the re-finished floor. Put that show in the main gallery, which is closed and newly secure. Big show, 53 painting, can't wait to see them, hold them, hang them, look at them for a couple of months. One of the cool perks of hanging art is the degree of intimacy involved. We get to wear the white gloves and handle things. First though, after unhanging Alice there will be 90 or more holes in the walls. The next show for upstairs Brent Lee glass, will be coming in next week. Rapidly becoming a warehouse. Keeping everything away from the walls so I can do the patch and repair. Crazy amount of damage this time, so many anchors, and the next show will be the same. Wall anchors generally, by their nature, are permanent attachments; but in museums, they're temporary, fleeting even, a one-night stand. Several lists started in broad outline; projected needed hardware, schedule of daily events, painting projects, keeping an eye at the market for more of those mussels. Pegi, with a co-worker and six kids are going on a retreat (a yearly thing) where they listen to music and consider what Cirque dance stuff they might do in the coming year. In a paranoid frenzy, Pegi asked me to be the person someone would call if something went wrong at the museum, asked me to stay in town for another couple of nights. Sure, I said, it's heated, and there's hot running water. Being a "B" writer is OK, a minor regionalist, I'd take that. I'm not much, really, other than minor regionalist. The problem is if I stopped writing, I wouldn't have anything to do; then, I'd already b a problem. I've done the math. If nothing you ever say counts against you, you might plead simply dumb. These these Wal-Mart gals are perfect. I rest my case. What I thought I meant. Read more...

Bowling Trophies

Just kidding about the bowling, though I did enjoy it when I was in High School. For five bucks you could bowl unlimited games between midnight and five AM. I played in a league for a year, because I wanted the shirt; bowled a 617 set, with a 239 high score. But I just found a picture of the trophy I won at the Mopping World Championships. It was, or still is, a beautiful thing. I sold it to finance the publication (pay for the mono-typing) of a book of strange Gaelic Tales that had never been translated. Excellent project, beautiful book, letterpress, of course, with four-color block print illustrations. The trophy was specially designed and constructed. A bronzed Fantail Loop mounted on what almost looks like a candle-stand. Oval chevron-inlaid top tilting above a baluster and urn-form support on three down-swept line-inlaid legs ending in spade feet A handsome thing. I gave all my Public Speaking and Debate trophies to my High School. Had all the medals, the gold and silver ones, mounted as charms on a bracelet my Mom wore for many years. Wrack and opinion. I don't keep photographs. Nothing left but memory. I'm almost done reading about the history of furniture, burning out on it. Anything can interest me for a while, even nothing. And now I can describe the base for the mopping trophy. In a book on chairs, today, here's the description: Outstanding Federal Mahogany Lolling Chair (a lolling chair, fuck me, I have one of those, but it doesn't look the same) having a serpentine crest, molded arms and arm supports and molded tapered legs joined by "H" stretchers. All Original. Massachusetts, circa 1790. They had fresh mussels at Kroger, so I bought a few things and devised a method to cook them in a small crock pot. This was tricky, but you know how necessity spawns invention. I cooked down some celery and onions in butter and white wine, with the setting on high, added the mussels. Took too long to open and they were a little tough, but I did this without a stove, and I'd made a lovely fairly hot Thai dipping sauce. Blue Mussels may be my favorite shellfish, followed closely by razor clams, and then, oysters, but this is a preference list from a guy who eats everything. Snails are good, large beetles without their legs, ant eggs are a lot like caviar. Pregnant women take note, high in folic acid . Fine set of six Federal carved mahogany side chairs, each having a molded shield back containing vertical slats connected with carved drapery, rosettes and a central urn, all over an over-upholstered seat, all on tapered legs ending in spade feet. Now that I understand the language, I could go on forever. Read more...