Compount Motion

Day off so I read the new David Guterson novel "The Other". Excellent book. Friend I'd been out of touch with e-mailed to ask what was up in my world and I just sent him to Ridgeposts.Blogspot.Com and told to catch up at his own speed and that I really didn't have much to say beyond what I say. Didn't mean to be rude, if I was, but I don't want to have to write out everything a second time, I type too slowly. Losing leaves and the late afternoon sun is in my eyes again, need to get a window shade but I really don't like covering windows. Don't think I mentioned, during the clogged toilet run, after the plunger was brought into the conversation, I said that I understood what a difficult tool it was to use, what with the compound motion required, both up and down. Everyone chuckled nervously. Maybe will make a large lever for the Wrack Show. Weight the end down with a stump and hold up something heavy. I like the image. Do all the Simple Machines, I forget how many there are, maybe five. Funny, I actually told those people yesterday to not take it personally but that I didn't socialize. Don't want anyone to take offense, but I barely have time to live my life. Writing these daily posts about uses me up. Four weeks paid vacation (I've never had any paid vacation), but one week of that I'll use to come home an hour early the coldest days next winter, one I might work in Iowa, save the other two for emergency visits to Florida and the dying folks. They are good, by the way, but Mom can't see and Dad can't walk, so it takes both of them to do anything. Fucking bat in the house, I get the tennis racket out and place it within reach. My folks are so zen about all the end-of-life things, the failing body parts, losing control of things, they had a good laugh when I was telling them about the clogged toilet, and we talked about farm life. I was explaining the Wrack Show to Mom and when I finished she said -so, let me see if I've got this right, you and Darren are going to take a bunch of shit (when she says this word it's very long) from the river bank and install it at the museum- and we laughed again. Salt of the earth. The parade went on forever. A lot of just normal people walking, the occasional band, some very bad floats; it was as if from wherever the parade started, it just picked up stragglers and various odd shipping containers. It was kitsch, without knowing it. It thought it was a parade. My me is a construct too, so I understand these things. I am, in person, almost exactly the person I appear to be. My attempt to nail things down seems to be exploding. I thought I knew what I meant, but it got away from me. I dined on a small grilled tuna steak and some of those baby carrots I halved and caramelized in butter, I did a nice wasabi butter to finish the carrots, lots of black pepper. The carrots were better than the tuna, which was old and tired, made better with some of the wasabi butter. My typing style is becoming affected, I often lean back in my chair and strike a mark of punctuation with a kind of histrionic stab. I've finished the thought, you know, the words, and I know what the punctuation mark is, I've decided, and I sometimes look at the stabbing finger, usually pointing finger (the first) right hand, and I shake it in front of my eyes, then stab with abandon. I'm usually talking out loud at this point, rereading the last sentence. I'd make a good Punch And Judy Show. Sometimes I wish I was gay, so I could like Judy Garland, but I listen to The Cello Suites, Bach calms me, turns me in on myself. Out of the blue, the thought that I can turn one of the pieces we salvaged for the Wrack Show into an outhouse, it's perfect, what it wants to be, build a skeletal frame around it and call it done, it's elegant beauty is that it doesn't even need a toilet seat, it's that perfect. I have several toilet seats I've collected as wrack, ironic that I wouldn't use one, where I could, but it's hardly necessary, and less is more, the new pink. Probably will have to take a paid week off to do yard work. I'm bad about this, I actually like watching things grow and have trouble cutting them down. Normally what you do is interrupt natural succession and plant grass, then you can mow it. I'm looking for another answer which is, of course, shade, invasive shit only thrives in direct sunlight. The view from the outhouse, through a grove of new poplars, is completely open, because it is completely shaded, crowns competing for open space. These fast hardwoods are key, they set the stage. Allow a floor. Cubicles. People could interact by leaning over. What a terrible world, anyone could say anything.
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Technical Rehearsal

Way over the top kind of day. Portsmouth City Riverdays, 4 day thing ending tomorrow, but today was the parade and it was just a half-a-block away from the museum. I was Saturday staff and good that I was because the Brit had a kind of final rehearsal / technical rehearsal, today. A Dress rehearsal Thursday, shows Friday and two on Saturday. Work out the kinks. Desk person was in the parade, so two of Pegi's Cirque girls ran reception, and I played tech theater guy, then Sara called, not getting her e-mails, and Lily comes in to resend and fax. Overtime, to get the show on the ways, but everything is good to go. Get home a little late and eating a cold supper when there is a knock on the door. This doesn't happen at my house. It's the new family that moved into a rental house further up Bloody Twin and her cell phone doesn't get good reception down in the hollow, and they've got two flat tires. He's on Workmen's Comp, the three kids (7,5,4) can't believe someone lives up here, this way. They have to come in to make a call to the mother-in-law for transport to get the flats fixed and buy some groceries. I fed the kids some of those baby peeled carrots I'd gotten on sale, set them down in the middle of the floor, with that horrid ranch dip I brought home from the museum, and they crunched away, while the parents digested what they could see and imagine of my life-style. It was a little strange, really, and I felt sorry for them, trying to understand why someone would choose to live this way. They were perplexed, but I wanted shed of them, because I was ready to write. The guy knew B, but I never got the connection, had worked with Bear, god, it's a small world in the boondocks. They wanted me to 'stop down' and share some time, so I had to explain that I was a hermit, and didn't do that. The woman, I can't remember their names, this is awful, I was so not listening, wondering if I should get the rifle before answering the door, expressed an interest in writing, as a thing one would do, and I told her it was a lot like prison, -take it up the ass and line-dance for the guards- not to stereotype but one thing about nice, gentle, rednecks, is that 'crude' doesn't exist, you can say anything. I wanted to imply that social gatherings weren't my thing, please, leave me alone. She got it, I think: he (I) was a possible pervert, maybe a terrorist. Almost stopped at the pub for a beer but I'd missed Happy Hour and I ain't going to pay four bucks for a Bass, I'd rather go home and deal with a classic Redneck Family, drink a whiskey, roll a couple of smokes. What is clear to me is how much I love this life, I'm right here, in this spot, doing these things, not off somewhere else. Doesn't matter much what it is, as long as it engages. There was a vault door in Philly, we drilled and used those delicate charges. Everything I know, I learned somewhere. I don't think I understand anything, consider my track record, not good, -whatever I touch turns to ...-, I rest my case. You could follow that.
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Scone Jones

After years of getting coffee at the donut place, we switched to The Market Street Cafe, much better coffee, and cheaper, as we can use our own to-go cups (think smaller coffee footprint) AND they make these killer blueberry scones for which we've all developed a deep and abiding fondness. I gave the Deputy part of mine one day and now she has to have one every day too. I was an hour late on Tuesday, heavy overnight rains had drooped huge blackberry canes and sumac bushes down into the driveway, D had gotten his coffee and scone but didn't buy the Deputy one (I always do that, she keeps track, we settle up on payday) and she gave him shit all week about it. Very funny. He mostly ignored the barbs. So, as is the nature of things, there was much discussion of bathroom behavior today, the ladies apologizing for calling me in, I waved them off, -hey, it's my job- but they know who it was and both Pegi and the Deputy mentioned that there was a plunger right there and that they would have been embarrassed because there was this heroic piece of fecal matter, evidence that this had been a blockage, and was followed by a flood of considerably looser material, which had required half-a-roll of toilet paper to clean up. I don't like indoor plumbing, shitting into water just seems wrong to me, but toilets are good at what they do, and they have limits. If you're ever at someone else's house and find yourself using a lot of toilet paper, do not flush it, wad it up and cover it with several layers of paper towel or whatever, and find the nearest trash can. Toilet paper is always the reason for clogs, except for really large pieces of fecal matter (often also prolate sheroids, had never really thought about that) and kid's toys. Beany Babies drove us wild for a time. D needed to work on the calendar and newsletter today, and another meeting with one of his abstract artists for the show he's getting together, so I, finally, unrolled the drop-cloth and taped all the edges for both walls, which needed to become Catnip, Pittsburg 404-4, which is a nice soft green, the equivalent green to the blue that it is replacing, Rain. There's a Raindrop in there somewhere, but I don't remember the color, also blue. Stella Blue, a great Grateful Dead song. I have to get up and listen to it. Excellent thing about living alone, I can dance, which I would never do in public, never learned, I was always doing the sound, key grip, or stage managing. I don't perform at all anymore: when I read in public, I sit, and read without any histrionics. And I paint the walls, the paint seems perfect, the coverage, I'm hoping for one coat, but when I go back to the first wall, after painting the second, this phenomenon has happened: either the surface is too smooth (30 layers of semi-gloss) or the roller is wrong, because at the end of some strokes the paint was picked back up, off the surface, and both walls will require a second coat. Goddamnit. What I think I'll start doing is to lightly sand the walls (with the random orbit sander, not ten minutes work) and buy a better grade of rollers (additional cost: $2 a show) which will cost less than my time even though I work cheap. Not no histrionics, I move my hands a little, by way of emphasis, hard to talk without my hands. And I'm not above rolling my eyes or somehow indicating what I think. Look at your own glass house. We're all transparent, because everyone needs and needs are transparent. I talk to my Mom, she's worried about my Dad, I tell my brother to put foam rubber everywhere, what I'd do, if I was there. Broken hips are the end. I consider myself, and Lily's offer. A place to die. Right now I'd probably go with Kim, his daughter's room where he stored the 2x4's, would be fine, I could utter a last line, something about attachment.
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Sidetracked

Not really sidetracked but D and I spend most of the day in the theater, finishing the set, AND we add four dimmers to the lighting system. A joke to call it a system, a couple of wall dimmers, but we add four circuits by cutting and wiring some old track, using the dimmers from the cirque (which they don't need) and running the controls up to the projection booth. The track is tap-conned into the sidewalls of the theater, down at the first row of seats, and our regular art lighting cans, with spot bulbs, work really well. Also, everything is white and blends in perfectly. We crow. I mount the death tree on a plywood base and weight it down with stage-weights that I 'borrowed' from the college theater. No one was there and I knew where the weights were. Stephanie (my mold-specialist friend in Iowa) asked about that last article I mentioned, from NJP. Actually, it's a book, title taken from the American Association of Museums book catalog. I rescue same from the trash (recycle) to send along. I'm preparing an article for NJP and you, faithful readers, will see it first. Working title is " Ring-worm In Old Plaster" but that is subject to change if I actually find out what the phenomenon is called by plasterers. I'm a plasterer and I don't know. Also a jargon nerd. The death tree, a river-stick that I'll save for the Wrack Show, looks very nice, at the upstage right, above the Garden. Excellent touch, long as she doesn't touch it much, I need to get a brace on it. I'm at the museum Saturday, and that's when they have their final rehearsal before tech and dress. The Brit's 'Moms" have a lot to do, he says he has them ready to roll, and moms of child actors are usually motivated, so he probably does. He's also completely professional, in a funny Brit way, and a hoot to be around. But I'll be there Saturday, to make sure everything works. Half staff, at the museum, and D and I are working fast as we can, down in the theater (you walk into the theater at first-floor level, main gallery, and it's sharply tiered down from there, every row of sets, four and four, down two steps) and Pegi appears through the doorway at the top, D and I are onstage, working, and she clears her throat. As a janitor, I know the signs, and knew that there was a plumbing problem, probably in the staff bathroom, probably bad. Correct on all counts. It's the usual problem, a wad of toilet paper, and the usual shit. I keep a stash of gallon, sealable, plastic bags, for these occasions, and use a lot of paper towels, and gloves. I had babies, in a former life, and birthed hundreds of animals, mucked stalls without number. Shit don't bother me much. Funny thing was that Pegi was getting on me, just the other day, about calling myself the janitor, when I did so much more than that, am officially the "Preparator", as D has moved up to "Curator", and we were goofing about that, how I had built more sets, staged more plays than anyone in maybe a 100 mile radius, but then she shows up, at the head of the stairs, clears her throat, and this was utterly charming, says -Tom, in your other capacity, as janitor, could you please fix the upstairs toilet?- Pegi is a performer too, and she asked me in just right way. It's not a big deal and it is part of my job. Mucking out stables has a long history. Sun broke out this afternoon for the first time in days, dappled, lovely. I stopped at the lake because no one was there, placid, and full of clouds, a watercolor. A conversation with the Deputy today, I have to think about this, such a beautiful thing, that people would think about you. She offered their basement to me, when I could no longer do what was necessary to live alone on the ridge, walking up and down in the world. And she is not the first, I can choose my location. Am I killing myself so obviously that friends feel it incumbent to offer a place to die? My dad always said there were many ways (more ways than one) to skin a cat. What's meant. I appreciate it, you know, my real family, the people that would accept me for nothing more than what I was, and the opportunity to die in any area of the country I might choose, but I have a few hundred pages I need to write first, sorry, I can't die yet. What was it she said, the Deputy, something pointed, her barbs are like those arrows that don't hurt until you try and pull them out, all I could think about was the steak I was going to grill, if I ever got home. Ouch.
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Routine

Hang a show in the tiny Mehser gallery, light it, make labels, done in an hour. Need all the supplies for painting and Sara left (gone for a week) the color choice for the signage and entry walls, I'm out the door and off to get them while D continues to work on the first ever museum calendar. I finish touch-up painting everything upstairs, clean, get the tools put away, the job-box loaded and down to the main gallery, painting supplies and drop-cloths out, but first need to sand all the filled holes, don't remember when I filled them, past actions beginning to blur, 50 or so pieces hanging for the last show have left 100 holes, now filled, I don't remember when, filled but not sanded, I remember I sanded them today, now they're filled and sanded, painting supplies and drop cloths out, but something came up, I proofed copy for The Secret Garden, then something else, what was it? in the kitchen, right, I did the dishes, which is only marginally my job when you think about what a janitor does, but I don't like dirty dishes (and people that leave them), so I usually get pissed when I'm doing someone else's dishes, unless they've fed me dinner, not that I mind doing dishes, I actually like doing them, even at my house, without running water, so washing dishes somewhere where there is running water especially cold and hot running water, such times are actually a treat. I don't feel like a marathon runner, it's true that I got out the drop-cloths and the painting supplies, but kindly Bev, at the desk, said -Tom, it's already four-thirty- which I take to mean that it is too late to start painting a wall. I've painted walls later than this, but this isn't an emergency. A print to put away in the vault, I love the vault, the door, alone, is a thing of great beauty, but to have such a door, that works, and a vault, is really almost too much. Such a vault. Looking at the lock mechanism from the back side, when the door is open (door is an inadequate word). An aside: my tenses seem to be running amuck. Where was I? Great article in the new NJP, "Monitoring For Gaseous Pollutants In Museum Environments", I read an awful lot, but I've got to say that Trade Organ magazines are great. Talk about specific. And the shop talk, the lingo, is wonderful. Oh, the door I left hanging, grown men, looking at the mechanism for the first time, have been known to cry. The door, that inadequate word, and I, always show the door when I'm docenting, which is recently more often, because college has started back up and there are young ladies about, and as D says, I'm an old pervert (he talks terrible about me) but I'm smart and funny, and some people actually request me (-we were told to ask for the janitor-) which pisses D off and that's usually when he talks bad about me. He has a foul mouth, but he's my boss and he's also fairly smart and funny, which is bad, in a way, because we have way too much fun working and it kind of bothers other people who seem to think that work should be a kind of drudgery or it wasn't work, which is quite different from the 'if it isn't fun I'm going to get another job' attitude that D and I share, also we share the 'don't start painting a wall at four-thirty' thing and he doesn't yell at me when I go upstairs and flip through the latest art mags and read again through what the Deputy was writing. Fucking sleigh ride down the driveway this morning and drizzle all day, going back up I remember Liza sliding off the edge. I remember that because Sara is going to see Liza this week-end, so I had thought about her, hi Liza, and it was a bit slippy going up, as it was when she slipped off the edge. She didn't roll, thank god, but it was a close thing. It was a close thing that I didn't start painting a wall. I probably would have remembered in time. Not to. But I don't wear a watch and sometimes don't pay attention, an awkward combination. I've found myself in the damnest places, never drunk in the Phoenix airport, but you know what I mean, under the sink with a magnifying glass, or wearing rubber gloves and feeling for emerging feet, right hand 18 inches up a goat's butt, trying to turn a breech around. I was thinking about a list here, but that last kind of topped out. Not that a list is ever out of place. I like lists, I depend on then, for more than you can imagine, ever since I lost my mind or started living alone, I'm not sure which came first. That I got out the drop-cloths and the painting supplies implies intent. I wasn't doing it for effect. I see why I didn't do a list, too late in the story, but I was probably wrong. Lists are always good. There are thirteen books, two New York Reviews, and a pile of print-outs ON the sofa, there isn't room to lay, lie, there's always room for that, but what I mean is that I pull out Umberto Eco's "Kant And The Platypus" and read a few pages. I'm a fast reader, usually, I've actually been fined at the library for charring pages, but this rereading of Eco I'm taking very slowly, like taking 120 days to reread "Zettle" which I also have done. I've tried all the finishes, nothing approaches epoxy, if we're talking normal wear-and-tear, remember, don't serve grapes if your floor is grouted.
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Hey

I was just looking to mention something, the way you looked when I said whatever it was, I don't mean to press a point, my only concern was that you would understand.

Tom

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Drunken Sailor

Why would you speak to him? A drunken sailor,
seven crows, coming onto the lake, they
flew away, when the saw me, squawking
like pigs fixing to be shot; come my dear,
we could calm their wounded souls, we'll scratch
them behind the ear.

Tom

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Hendiadys

Note from Nelson that it is spelled with an 's' in singular form, don't know what the plural is, probably the same. Got the quarterly mag "New Janitorial Practices" today and it's always a treat. The centerfold is a lovely buxom Georgian, stripped down to her skivies, sweeping a huge empty railroad station, both existential and sexy at the same time. The articles look interesting: "2008 Survey Of Mops: Size Does Matter", "Current Trends In Custodial Research", "A Guide To Preventive Urinal Treatments", and "Two Cat Problem" (and interesting piece about keeping mousers , which essentially advises that if there is conflict between two you just shoot one of them). More on the mag later, when I've had a chance to read the columns. This from B:

Hendiadys

Against the strain and solitude of exile
the hound and lash of service
she became the whore and saint to his design
the cunt and comfort of home

First Fay rain, and the first leaves are falling, adumbration of fall, and an admonition to get to work on firewood. Not too concerned as there is a monster standing dead oak behind the printshop and a smaller dead oak on the driveway, the trees I've girdled will be dry by the end of winter and Booby told me I could have anything from his sawmill boneyard. D expressed his concern about the next couple of weeks, so I started a list, asked enough questions to establish priorities and the Brit, directing the play in our theater, showed up, ready to paint, which was on my list, so I think we're ok; rack 100 chairs, 20 four foot square tables, 8 six foot tables, 2 eight foot tables, sweep the floor of the main gallery and mop everything because something was spilled and it was tracked everywhere. There is squashed cake in the grout joints, I can't do much about it, scrape the larger accumulations with my pen-knife and curse that habit people seem to have with "public" spaces, the janitor will deal with it, and they grind it in with a foot while talking about Aunt Martha's recent operation. I miss the Deputy today, she was home with sick kids, and I needed to vent with her, about how stupid people were. I'm stupid too, don't get me wrong, but I needed to vent. We're all stupid, look at the current administration, and we elected them twice, we're a trillion dollars into an unwinnable war. Who's going to pay for that? George and Dick go into a bar, they get all the vets to give up everything by waving the flag, promise a new tomorrow, there are only eight people in the world who turn a profit, but the profit is large, they can build a golf course that costs 6.9 billion dollars AND Tiger Woods will design it, it's the ultimate perk, you'd be one of the very few who could afford the fee. I'm ok, I have high ground and rocks I could roll against intruders, molten lead I could pour on the heads of anyone I didn't like, but what about my daughters? My biggest fear right now, I've known so many bigots, is that in the voting booth, they'll vote for the white guy. I'm ashamed to be white.
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Hobbled

Can't get the work boot on my right foot, have to forgo the arch, do hobble into town and get some supplies. Let this be a warning to you, don't drink and scratch. Mid-afternoon I take another slice off the curing loin, nuke some sliced new potatoes with salt, pepper, butter, and thin slices of parmesan (sinful stuff), and sliced cukes in balsamic. Never really believed or disbelieved stories of the black copters but just now, 7:44 (I think my one clock is eight minutes fast) two of them came over very low, no markings. Strange. One of them right over my house, not a hundred feet above the ridgetop trees, and I'm pretty sure they're supposed to stay at a thousand feet. Just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean... Nelson back at me, still thinking about rack and ruin, used a word I'd never heard, hendiady, for that verbal tic of Hamlet's, doubled nouns, and it's true, I didn't doubt him, he's taught Shakespeare for decades, but I always keep a copy out and read a bit of "Hamlet", never a bad idea. What language, working on so many fronts. Caxton had codified the language, he had to, he needed to set it in type, but Shakespeare was free to borrow anything from anywhere, and he did, we owe hundreds, maybe thousands of words, to him. A nexus that occurs rarely. A product of technology or genius, Michael Jordan or Stephen Hawking does or says something that changes everything. A thing that can't be done or said, that is, somehow, said or done, the bar is raised, simple as that, the impossible suddenly possible. What Emily did, or Olson. I was there, in the wings, when Skip Fox and Stephen Ellis broke free, into new ground, the impossible becoming real, count my lucky stars. Loud noise outside, have to go see what it is. No idea. Sit on the back porch with all the lights on, running through the possibilities, considering paranoia. But there was a noise. Not dogs, no animal sounds, maybe cats, or a cat and a something else; a deaf, dumb and blind bear; three minks on the way to a dance. Broke my concentration. Could have been a human, I suppose, but my experience, living alone in the woods, is against that, it's my terrain, everyone knows I have guns and listen closely. A natural sound that I can't place, does that make it unnatural?
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Overarching

Caught Mahler's 2nd on the radio. A magnificent piece of music. Fredrica Von Stade, Mezzo, missed who the soprano was, but my god, what a moving thing. Those odd plucked violins at the beginning of the end, building such complex layers with the brass, percussion and chorus. Chills. Ok, on the rack and ruin front. Nelson (swears, by the way, that Arch Fiasco played corner back on his college football team) says that, indeed, there isn't much room between rack and ruin, a form of wreak, simply means going to hell in a hand-basket, then another message from him, quoting Hamlet: "...all shall dissolve, / And like this insubstantial pageant fated, / The cloud -capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, / The great Globe itself, yea all which it inherit, / Leave not a rack behind. We are the stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / is rounded with a sleep." And, he reminds me, when Shakespeare was my age he'd been dead for ten years. Then, from McCord (I love my readers) the connection with the practice of landlords, after the Enclosure Acts, of raising rents so high that the tenants would be forced out, thus Wrack Rents, that ruined folk. Many Scottish estates emptied of people to make room for sheep. Rack of lamb, anyone? I always thought those little paper crowns were stupid. I'm sure Carma will dig something up when she goes to work tomorrow. The "Iraq To Ruin" was from Sara's husband Clay, the third or fourth phone call. Not sure I can work on the arch tomorrow, the damnest thing happened. I got a little drunk last night, in the throes of dictionaries and messages, and it was hot, so I slept on top of the covers and whatever it is that's been biting me in the night got me good on the top of my right foot, and I unconsciously scratched it the rest of the night. When I got up this morning my foot was a bloody mess, it's ok, but raw and swollen, and I'm not sure I can get that foot into my work-boots. The Bridwell Treatment for this kind of damage is to soak the injured body part in warm salt water, irrigate with either peroxide or .9% sodium chloride, and apply aloe or whatever ointment is available. It works, but this time I scratched deeply and the foot is sore. Fortunately I'd stopped by B and Sarah's on the way home yesterday and they had loaded me down with print-outs and back issues of The New York Review Of Books, so I spend my day off with the foot propped on a pillow reading essays and a long account of Kent Johnson's latest literary foray. Excellent stuff, too much coffee, and mid-day I slice a couple of slices off the curing loin, when I'm reapplying the cure, for a monster brunch involving tomatoes, potatoes, eggs and several different cheeses, half-a-loaf of toast and several different jams. I'm not sure I should enjoy myself this much, because I become jaded; living alone is so easy, chop wood, carry water, there is no compromise. Strip down to the basics and if you don't go to town, it's hard to spend money. I could drink better coffee or drink better whiskey but I don't have to, Ten High and Folger's Black Silk gets me where I need to go. Life, as I define it. I need to cook some ribs for Zoe, new babies and all. We all have to eat. The Wrack Show, I think, is looking good.
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Arch Fiasco

Taking things for granted is usually a mistake. Anymore, I'm what you might call The Clean-Up Carpenter, called in for specific jobs no one else can quite figure out or doesn't want to mess with. Archways and such. I'm in the addition, looking at what used to be the back wall of the house, they want two archways into the new Great Room, one on each side of the fireplace, there's about five feet of wall in each space. The space on the right terminates at half a window that should have been framed in before the addition was started, a really awkward situation, the left side looks straight forward, blank wall. I tackle the harder side first, the right, strip the diagonal sheathing, remove insulation, and, of course, there are wires in the wall and the studs are rough sawn, 3 and three-quarters inches wide, but at least, now, I can see what I'm dealing with, decide, since I'm already filthy and covered with fiberglass, to cut through the left-hand side. Rough sawn, diagonal, 1x8 pine, a zillion nails, siding nails, tar paper tacks, and the nails through the sheathing into the studs. I pull a few hundred because I have to make the long cuts with the circular saw, snap lines and make the cuts, start ripping out planks, something is wrong. I know that I'm looking at a wall partition that isn't supposed to be there, roll a smoke and look at things. Measure the back of the brick fireplace, measure from the far right wall, measure from the right hand window, take the measurements inside. I've never been inside the old living room and everyone has missed the fact the front of the fireplace brickwork is thirteen inches narrower than the back, they'd taken all measurements from the front and assumed the back was the same. This is a giant mistake and there were, actually, red flags, that someone should have noticed, I might have, probably would have, mute point. Fact is, there can't be an archway on the left, not enough room. This is what happens when you call in favors from every relative and friend and there isn't a general contractor or even an accurate scale drawing. I built my house without plans, but I usually worked alone and was always here, a different kettle of fish, and, besides, a simple freestanding house is easier than tying a complex addition onto an existing structure. From Iraq To Ruin, Sara called me, wondering about the phrase From Wrack to Ruin, which I had heard, but couldn't find, and after more than an hour with various dictionaries and books of quotations and finally phone calls, realized was actually Rack To Ruin, but it still didn't make any sense, not enough contrast between the terms, so back to the OED, and it is a RACK of (earliest) mutton or game, so the phrase means falling from having great eats to wondering where your next meal is coming from. Interesting that it is this word, or phrase, search, that rescues my day. I might not have built an arch but I found out what something meant. In my world that's good enough to take tomorrow off. Address the arch again on Monday, finish The Secret Garden set on Tuesday and Wednesday, install some lights, I'm thinking maybe Thursday we could collect a few more pieces for the show, I have a shopping list, it's like going to the mall. If your mall is the floodplain and the desired items are river sticks. We still need some things. Consider the stumps in the field. Consider the stumps, consider the field, consider all that background radiation, the bugs are really noisy tonight, I wonder if that means there might be an earthquake? A flood? A plague of locusts? I tire of worrying. I'd rather go fishing.
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Vitrine Shuffle

In the literature that came with the wood show "Far From The Tree" the plexi bonnets that top the pedestals are called vitrines. Someone with a foreign accent talking about a plumbing fixture. So we cover everything but the two largest pieces with vitrines. At the pub for lunch, bar TV is on to ESPN, as usual, with the sound off, also as usual, but the closed captioning is totally screwed up, creating, instead of language, a kind of phonetic bullshit. Very entertaining. Get through the afternoon, barely, D and I both dragging ass, agree to a beer at the pub after work, quiet and cool, very cold draft Red Hook ESB. Hot and bright outside, leisurely drive home, windows down, not a thought in my head. A strawberry-banana smoothie for dinner, no chewing. A bucket of water over my head clears some cobwebs and a chunk of ice air conditions my computer. Needed some language for the Wrack Show today, Sara writing a piece for the newsletter, but it was late and all we could come up with was " a skeleton framework of a house, inside and outside, furniture, a pergola, part of a porch roof, some sand-blasted stumps, a quantity of Ohio River Balls, an interesting burl, several natural frames" which is all true, as far as it goes. Installation as state of mind, flood-plain detritus, specific gravity of less than 1, whatever floats, you get the drift (or, we get the drift), the floating opera (Barth, of course, a wonderful book), what lodges ashore, backwater, eddy, standing wave, the confluence, some items selected from the debris pile, barge watching, the Praxiteles that got away, life below the floodwall, a few things we collected on the way to work, a tumble in the river, lost bark, crotch attactment, the desk (a case history), the best stumps always end up as catfishermen's seats, the top plastic bag represents high water, a brief look at hydraulics, some things we don't understand, the prolate sheroid in nature, the army corp of engineers as an evil thing, particular sticks, river sticks, three sticks on the way to an opening, bowling balls float!, swept away, washed ashore, some time spent along the riverside, a summer with my crazy uncle, nothing means anything anyway, everything means something. There was an interesting discussion around the staff table today, a new Art News or Art In America and there was this really graphic crotch shot of a woman, a photograph, and everyone took offense, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE PHOTOGRAPHER INTENDED, so it was art, because it called into play 'what is art'; and what is offensive, really, about a crotch or a penis right out there in plain view? Georgia O'Keefe is very naughty, all those stamens. Degree of offensiveness. I'd love to do a really offensive show. We might learn something about ourselves. We could do a show of found crotches and penises, they're everywhere in nature, natural forms. I remember a walk with the Utah Kid and B, we were way over in Lost Gap Hollow somewhere, and there was a tree that was absolutely obscene, we all three squatted and stared, we may have giggled, it was perfect, where disease or lightening had deformed a poplar into the perfect reproduction of female private parts. And dicks are everywhere, any broken branch or limb. We should do this, send me your images, I'm sensing a show here, D can curate, I'm just the janitor.
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A Note

I shouldn't be up, I need sleep, but there was a commotion in the bushes outside and I wondered what the hell it was. It's what I take to be a rabid coon which I duly dispatch and then can't get back to sleep. Fucking nature, man. I read last night's post and realize there is a missing comma and a missing word, AND realize I've committed to yet another job that I probably shouldn't have taken on. Thus the burden of the working class. I didn't mention how beautiful the drive home was last night, a red-tail hawk escaping the canopy, the filtered light, a sense of well-being when I stopped at the bottom of the driveway and shifted into four-wheel drive. I need to walk the access, cut away blackberry canes and sumac that overhang, and I will, eventually, when I can no longer see the ruts; and I need to eat more even though I'm tired of chewing. I could never get fat because I get tired of eating, I'm too easily distracted, first thing you know I'm examining bugs with a magnifying glass and making notes. What about gnats? Who carries what? What carries what? Is there a defense against Black Mold? It's not so much that life is overwhelming as it is an issue that I just don't have time to examine everything. On with the show.
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Time Constraints

The Deputy's sister, Zoe, calls at the museum, they're ready to cut through from the addition into the main house. Her cousin, Bear, is doing most of the work on the addition but tells her to call Bridwell (he always calls me by my last name) to do the arched doorways for the two openings. I agree to come over after work and discuss what, where, how. Get to see the twins, tiny but perfect, a lovely pair of boys, not quite eating size, but keepers. Bear demands I drink beer while we talk, and he is a beer-drinking fool. The window guy shows up because there is a problem with the windows, a manufacturing problem (again, that issue of new stuff being bad) and we all talk about that, he promises replacement sashes, and then the guy who is going to tape and finish the dry-wall, which is cool, because I want to build the arches in such a way as to make him happy shows up and we talk about corner bead. On the way home, several beers later, I think about time. By anyone else's standards I should a lot of free time, and I need the money, to get a roof over my back porch, so I agree to the job. They also want D and I to trim the inside, and Bear wants me to help with the tongue and groove pine ceilings. We have the Wrack Show to do and I work full time at the museum. There are 168 hours in a week, I run the math: work, commute, shop, 40 hours, sleep 49 hours, write 21 hours, read 21 hours, eat 7 hours, stare off into space, 7 hours. 155 hours. I could give them one day a week, like I said I need the money, and still be ok, which is what I need to and will do. But if this wasn't B's daughter, Zoe, who I love like my own, I wouldn't. It's easy to say cut back on the reading, maybe skip a few nights writing, but I can't, I'll have to anyway, when we're installing the show, and those would be really good pages. I've become so unused to compromising my time. We installed the Wood Turning show today and it is stunning, as we expected; when it was lit, it fairly pops. D and Sara are so good, working together on the lighting, they read each other's minds. I'd slipped out, to get some things at the hardware store, and when I got back they were nearly done, I hated to leave, I love this stage so well, but I am the keeper of the punch-list and tomorrow is a huge day, many things must be done, and the floors need attention. The janitor's calling. I remember this from when I first came to the museum, when you light three-dimensional art, the floor comes into play, you see it. When stuff is on the walls you don't see the floors, hanging a painting show there can be dust-bunnies in the corner and you don't notice them, but when you light objects on pedestals the space is different, the floor becomes what the wall usually is, the flat surface you notice. Attention to detail. Carma is right there, when she says she can help with the cooking, during the Wrack installation, exactly where we'll need help. I think I'm transparent, after all. My concerns.
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Relative Size

We get these files of images for every show, so we know what to expect and what piece is by whom, but there's a problem that seems universal in the field, nothing to indicate size. No little ruler, or pack of cigarets. Many of the pieces for the Wood Turning show are quite a bit smaller than we expected, some are larger. Unpacked the last piece this morning, then set pedestals, but didn't install the pieces because the peds were all in tough shape. D went off to try and restore e-mail (no one could send, everyone could recieve) so I had a chance to fill, sand, and paint all the tops (I can touch up the sides later) and we should be able to set the show in an hour tomorrow. Then labels and lights. Really looking forward to lighting this show, all the pieces 3D, and great finishes. It's going to look wonderful. Sand and touch-up the gallery walls. D getting slightly deranged by the end of the day because of the computer glitch, AND the air handler for the AC isn't working, the drain for same, and we spend time mopping up copious quantities of water (20 or 30 gallons) because we have to leave it running so the repair guys can see what's wrong, fucking Catch-22, and then they call and say they can't make it back over until tomorrow morning, so we mop one last time and shut the whole system down. Argh. And, of course, hot weather upon us. Nice slow drive home, to decompress. They'd cut the verges on Mackletree last week, and today cut along Upper Twin, lovely smell and beautiful, I stop several times, picking up trash, trying to identify common weeds, drag a dead dog and a dead crow off the road, to give the scavengers safer pickings. Too tired and too hot to cook, I make a couple of tomato and sliced onion sandwiches, just mayo and black pepper, a berry and banana smoothie. The curing loin has started sweating profusely so I rub it again, turn it. Then sluice off with a bucket of water on the deck, rub down hard with a towel, wrap it around me, get a drink, roll a smoke, answer a couple of e-mails before I even get up to put on some threadbare Dockers and what remains of a tee-shirt when you cut off the arms and the neck band, hot weather writing mufti, a fan above, a fan behind. Consider listening to some music but blow it off in favor of bug-song and the white-noise drone of fans. The great news tonight is a message from the Master Scrounger, Kim, from Tallahassee, offering a week of his time for the installation of the Wrack Show: there is no one better, when it comes to crunch time, to have on your side, and Glenn will be here filming; I only fear I won't have time to cook for everyone, it promises to be a chaotic time, but we'll navigate, eat pizza, whatever, at a certain point, the show is everything. Kim and I learned this in Boston, under Sarah Caldwell, commit to the impossible and make it happen. I don't assume my role in this lightly, the chance to throw some great people up against each other. I expect to get something to write about, some food for thought, a kind of bizarre reunion. Maybe we should contact Fritz and Suzanne, get the whole sick crew together, no one would believe us, George, Dierdre, that crew from the late 60's through the mid 70's, was amazing, we could do anything, ANYTHING, there was nothing beyond our grasp. One of those rare situations where certain talents were collected, Black Mountain, SUNY Buffalo, the hills outside San Francisco, where shit happened and everyone stepped it up a notch. I don't even want to be there, I've never attended a single reunion, I like being alone, hunting and pecking at the keyboard, with a drink and a smoke, but it feels good, some times, to work with someone other.
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Mouse Water

My experiments in The Putridity Of Mice In Room Temperature Rain Water are over. Can't believe I lost five gallons of rain water to one damned mouse, then, of course, I put the lid on and forgot. Fuck me in the shower, does that sucker stink. This was yesterday. Put it outside then the next time I needed to pee, threw it in the bushes, throwing away both the baby and the bathwater, then bleached the bucket, then took the bucket with me to work, where the kitchen sink has a goose-neck faucet and hot running water. Dish soap and hot running water, wow. I don't need water at home, I have enough, my archaic system, I keep about fifty gallons, ten of that is drinking water AND, I realize, I haven't carried wash water in over a year, the rain so perfectly spaced, but I don't want to carry the bucket back empty (it's a pickle bucket, with a gasketed lid, the best for carrying water) so I fill it up at the museum. Chopping wood, carrying water. Dense fog this morning, so dense in lower pockets that I had to slow to 20 mph to not outdrive my breaks, lovely muffle. I went below the flloodwall and it was magic, everything dampened. Exhausting and wonderful day. Clean up from the auction, then, after lunch, uncrating the Turned Wood show for upstairs. The pieces are amazing, I don't know how some of them were turned, so complex, I can't figure it out. Maybe we'll post them on the website, beautiful objects. Farmer's Market today and I picked through Uncle Ronnie's tomatoes, getting one for tonight, one for tomorrow, etc. and he charged me 50 cents. I think it was a token. Tonight I'm having toasted open-faced tomato sandwiches, two with cheese, one without, and a side of seedless cucumbers in balsamic, so far I've thrown two pair of pants into the laundry basket, the balsamic stains are particularly interesting, kind of batik. The Deputy worked behind closed doors for much of the afternoon, when I finally wormed my way inside, it smelled like a rose hot-house, white and powdery, realized I like a kind of musky thing in the summer (actually, I like musky all the time) and the more floral things, like Tommy Girl, in winter, when it fills a gap. In summer and fall there are infinite sweet smells. I couldn't defend this, it's a preference, nothing more. So much is. Two crows going to work and four crows going home, I wonder if I'm entering an even phase. I wonder what the difference is. On the way home I stop to see B, Lily told me he'd cut through the wall of the house to connect the addition with French Doors and I wanted to see. Yes he had, but the doors were slightly off and we talked about solutions. It's weird and indicative that new things needed to be altered to work AT ALL. -Excuse me mam, but if I was to weld a step about there it might me easier for you to enter your vehicle.- I'm sure B and I see this Wrack Show closely the same, not exactly the same, but close. Interesting, that in talking about aspects of it, I realize just our language is different, not what we mean. We all say things differently. What we think we mean. I think a lot about what is heard, how different it might be from what was meant. After this weekend, a blow from outer space, everything is under the scope. There was this dude at Janitor School, Chet, he was an absolute realist. He didn't make the cut, but he was cool. Not many made the cut.You would have thought he would have made it, articulate in several languages, hands like a pianist, not blunt stubs like the rest of us, plumber fingers, much mangled by time, not that I care about that, the way my fingers look, there really are more important things, what you see, what you believe, and, you know, you can get swept up in the moment, and not see or remember anything else. I'm sure there's a German word. Count on the Germans for extreme specificity. Brennslauss. God, I hope I got that right, correct, I only collect German, I don't speak it. That top of the trajectory where everything is determined, you know what I mean, I empower you as you enable me. Three blonds go into a bar.
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Dappled Light

Worked outside, then picked off ticks for an hour. Came in early to clean up and cure a pork loin. Going for something vaguely Italian. First mix up the rub: one half brown sugar, one quarter salt, one quarter mixed black pepper and the six dried chili powders (one is the frighteningly hot green chili that hits like wasabi but doesn't let go), then get the loin out of it's impossible wrapper, cut the ends off for two other meals, dry the four pound middle, and pat on the cure, covering every square inch, put it on a rack inside a disposable aluminum roaster rack in the fridge. Seal up the rest of the rub/cure for further application, I'll check it every couple of days, cure it for a couple of weeks. Slices of this, soaked in milk, blotted dry, fried in olive oil, will be breakfast meat for a month. Almost feel bad about venting last night, but the writing was nothing compared to the verbal tirade I went on afterwards. Another bonus of living alone is being able to invent truly obscene phrases and bounce them off the walls. I felt much better this morning, clean spleen and all, then sweating out the bile in a day that was not too hot. I rarely let mere words get to me, but sometimes things catch you at just the wrong moment, I'd had a rough week and my defenses were down, and maybe the phrase "mundane drivel" was too close to the truth. So beautiful outside today, a few isolated clouds but mostly blue sky and dappled light that already speaks of fall. I girdled a couple of oak trees, chopping all the way around with a sharp hatchet, removing the bark and cambium, so no more moisture would rise and the leaves would suck the trees dry before I drop them in the fall, a neat trick. That blue sky, while I cleaned up and cured the meat today, I listened to the Allman Brothers, loudly, kind of dancing at the sink while I washed my hair, humming along, off-key. I subscribe to simple pleasures, low expectations. Start a fire in the grill, Mesquite, rub one of the loin tips with just the chilies, sear it on the heat then dot it with butter, drizzle with lime juice and wrap it in foil, off the heat for an hour, let it rest while I pick off ticks. Slice some baby seedless cucumbers (remaindered) sliced in balsamic, my signature sliced new potatoes in butter and milk, nuked, then torched with a topping of cheese using a propane canister (I still can't believe I do this, but it works) and I have a meal that would make the gods jealous. It's so good I can't read, thank god I'm eating alone because I couldn't possibly make conversation. MFK Fisher talks about eating a dinner of mashed potatoes, alone, that is like this, I can't remember where, every fork-full is a transport of joy. Just as I'm finishing eating, my old friend, the pileated woodpecker, flies in, offers a few squawks, bouncing down the trunk of a hickory tree; he seems to cock his head and view me suspiciously, after a few moments I wave him away, preferring the last bites of dinner. His crest is magnificent, but I have a life too, need to finish dinner and write you. I'll clean up in the morning, love is strange.
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Quietly Agnostic

I would answer a rather harsh criticism of my quotidian. First off, why would someone I don't know go out of their way to criticize my writing after reading me for just a week? Not sure I understand the motivation. If you don't like me, don't read me. Fuck a bunch of ugly words. I've built more than two dozen houses, I designed 16 or 18 of them, do, in fact, know about building. I've designed, type-set, printed, and bound between 60 and 70 letterpress books, at least that many broadsides, I actually do know about printing. I am a good cook. I tend to look closely at things. I'm pretty far to the left of most liberals. I really do cook on a wood-stove, I don't have running water, and certainly not air conditioning. I am a janitor. I buy art and books even though I live below the poverty level. I'm a funny drunk, a cheap date, and a careful driver. I'm Southern born, but talk without an accent usually. I can slaughter a hog, milk a goat, make cheese, and shoot well enough to keep the enemy at bay. I've designed sets, built sets, stage managed or directed maybe 150 plays, two dozen operas, a dozen dances. I'm a good listener, generally only offering my opinion when asked. I've built staircases that impressed other builders, I've composted my shit for 30 years, and have very little to hide, other than holes in my socks and a distressing history of relationships. I do seem to be hard to live with, so I live alone. I'm social enough, and a good conversationalist, but I don't drink and drive and I really hate bullshit and compromise. That's the drift. Someone said about me once that I was a floating nucleus, with a positive charge, and random electrons were attracted. I demand decent conversation, without which all is lost, if I'd taken up golf or chess I'd be unbearable, but early on decided words were my field, at least there I could be second or third best, after Stephen Ellis or Skip Fox or Brian Richards, god, that makes me fourth, out of the medals, but what the hell, within striking distance, a minor regional voice. I believe in very little, what I see, what I can touch, the tangible: bricks, crows, the way tadpoles turn into frogs. Almost everything else is smoke and mirrors, what someone wants you to believe. History is an Advertising Slogan, with lots of tits and ass, a construct that appeals to your baser instincts, and mostly we buy it, because we'd rather masturbate and believe than question the party line.
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Considering Attachments

Deeply tired, bone-weary, still woke early, raucous crows. Adventure in the night I thought was a dream, then remembered it wasn't. Sara had given me a tennis racket, the preferred weapon against household bats, and I had put it next to the bed along with the big cop flashlight. Sometime after midnight (I don't keep a clock in my bedroom) I awoke to those little nips of sound bats use for echolation and actually managed to knock the fucker out of the air. One for the home team. Back to sleep. Awake again just after dawn, tired and leg-sore from 42 trips up and down stairs at the museum, but wanting to rest, not sleep, I heated water and dragged in the sheep-watering trough, took a bath, shaved; huge breakfast of sausage, potatoes, eggs, toast, enough coffee to float a boat. Then a trip to town to run all the errands I'd postponed, laundry, library, Kroger, moving slowly, driving slowly, smelling the newly cut grass. Got the new James Lee Burke novel, Clete and Dave take on Montana, and when I get home I strip down to my drawers and rub the backs of my thighs with SOMBRA, a pain relieving gel that really works, assume a prone position on the sofa, with my knees up, and read for several hours. There's a light wind on the ridge, and the leaves rustle, the occasional birdsong, the usual bugs, otherwise, not a sound, what I think of as natural quiet; no vehicles, no planes, I disconnect the phone and unplug the fridge. At some point I put down the book and get an early drink, roll a smoke, drift off into consideration of the Wrack Show, specifically, the attachment. It's like a house of cards, we can't attach into the floor, but we can attach to the walls and ceiling, how do we keep things from falling over? Tie everything together and anchor it at a few points. My model for this thinking is the railing on my stairs, it's a single curved dogwood (very strong) trunk, maybe three inches in diameter, it only touches anything else at two points but would support a college linebacker. Attachment is everything. If you can avoid that initial moment of movement, you save the farm. If it starts to move, all is lost, house of cards. I don't really come up with any solutions (or precipitates) but know I have in the past and might again. After the second drink I'm drawing sketches with "lines of force" arrowed and underlined, as if I understood. Probably I do, just because I've lived long enough, like Kim solving that one inch problem in his brickwork, you can move even metal roofing, but not very much per course, always measuring to the edge, to see how close you could be. I've been perfect a few times but it was always luck, I'm not that good, even at my best, I never could see those birds crossing.
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Dancing on the Edge

If there was a dress code I wouldn't comply. My Mom claims I've always been contrary, a good kid, and bright, but contrary. My favorite quote recently, from a Daedalus catalog "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate." Henry Tillman. Too tired to think, hardest two days working at the museum ever, prep for the wine tasting and setting up for the auction. Auction Sunday, Tuesday clean-up will be huge, and still two shows to install. Everyone in good spirits today, which certainly helps. Chairman of the Board saw D and I outdoors smoking and walked over, gave us a little pep talk. 20 degrees cooler than this date last year, low 50's tonight, good sleeping weather. The young turkeys, again, at a curve on Mackletree, looked stupidly at the truck and then scattered, awkward blokes, could have shot one with a sling-shot, if I'd had a sling-shot and had wanted to shoot one. I'm terrific with a sling-shot (and not bad throwing rocks), and still a pretty good shot with a rifle. Learned to shoot with a single-shot .22 off the back porch of Cousin Kenny's place in Water Valley Missip, exploding green black walnuts off a tree 75 feet away. I couldn't see them today. Mentioned the turkeys to D and remembered Ocee Dale, in Duck Hill, Missip, who delighted in shooting young turkeys on the wing, with a .22, called them fryers. Man could shoot. I didn't believe him until he took me out and showed me. Cousin Kenny only shot squirrels in the head, so as not to ruin meat; his mother Aunt Pete (I never found out what her name really was) was a great shooter of birds on the wing, but always aware of the cost of shells, only shot when two birds were "crossing" and she could get them both with a single shot. I can't even see when birds are crossing. Just called my Dad to find out about Aunt Pete, she raised him (his mother (Dovey)'s sister) after his Mom died when he was young, and he didn't know why she became "Pete" but her name was Mildred, which is maybe reason enough to become Pete. Hey Joe. Purple Haze. "Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?" D bought me a portable CD player and showed me how to hook the headphones into my computer, so I'm listening to old rock music. I don't put the earphones on my ears, just put them around my neck, and I don't do it often, because I enjoy the sounds of the natural world, but after the last couple of days, Jimi and Janice are a welcome relief. Thank god history is at my fingertips. When I press with both hands, the music fills the middle of my head, I can forget everything else. Oh sweet forgetfullness.
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Wine Tasting

2nd of 4 wine tastings as fund raisers. Odd that the only two guys who work at the museum do the place-settings. I felt like a waiter in an expensive restaurant. I was never a waiter, I don't know how to wait. I can tell you, though, that this space is too tight and there will be wine spilled. Not my problem. The hostess was cooking today, when we went over to do the set-up, she's a funny lady and I went into her kitchen and told her it smelled like she had "burned the pork chops". She was cooking an entire beef loin, it had just come out of the oven and smelled delicious, I wanted her time and temps. We chatted about food prep for a few minutes, then back to the museum, setting up tables for the auction fund-raiser. I don't understand the scheduling. Too compressed. I'm trying to build a set for the children's play, revamp the lighting, install two shows, have two fund-raisers, all within two weeks, madness. I'm used to theater, cut my teeth on it, and besides, I'm just the janitor, it hardly matters if I buckle under the pressure, you can always find some crack-head to clean the toilets, but D is wavering, under criticism, and no one can fill his job, not for what he's paid. The politic of the work-place. A little praise offsets necessary criticism. I'm just happy to leave, go home, confront the dinner question, get a drink, roll a smoke, listen to the bugs; push comes to shove I could do something else, build a house, sell some land, go to Iowa for a couple of weeks, options. I've never not earned a living, only took food-stamps once, and that was only to make a point (my ex-wife's father was so arrogant I wanted to feed him a welfare meal), tab A, slot B, like my gay friend said. I'm 62 years old, don't take criticism lightly, but listen carefully, almost everything I hear is nonsense, I'd rather not work for anyone, then I wouldn't have to take exception, but there is no silver spoon, and I'm left hanging, an apparent suicide, or slave-labor, or whatever. I'm polite, there's not the smell of burning bodies, though it might be implied. This is the way we wash our clothes. Hang them out to dry. I'm pissed about something and can't say what, exactly. Bear with me. Bare.
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Big City

Two country boys ogling the lovely women in Columbus Center during lunch hour almost rear-end a city bus. It is certainly true that half the really attractive women in Ohio can be found in the several square miles of German Village, Columbus Center, Short North, and The OSU campus. D and I had not made a trip together in a while and it was a treat to act like school boys. Up early this morning, I got to town with plenty of time (despite being stopped dead in my tracks on Mackletree to watch eleven young turkeys pester a single crow trying to make a meal off a squashed rabbit) to go below the floodwall. Found: 2 crotched posts, 4 stump pedestals, and 3 bleached and tumbled rails. Next week we must collect them, but, as I said to Sara, I'm no longer concerned about the Wrack Show, everything we need is available. Get to the museum, D arrives with the truck, we light out, never stepping foot inside. Stop for monster breakfast burritos (a tradition) and another coffee. We talk about such a range of subjects, common interests, that these trips fly. Straight up 23 which becomes High St. and west on 5th Ave. to The Ohio Craft Museum, Betty shows us the pieces, five crates and a box, we load them, then chat for a few minutes, being neighborly, look at their displays, gossip a bit, then back on the road, headed home. Neither of us hungry, we skip lunch at the North Market, stop at a discount tobacco store, where I get a can of Bali Shag (a great tobacco) and then maybe ten minutes at an upscale Goodwill Store, looking for D a summer sport coat, stop at a Quick Stop for snack mix and a quart of Gatorade each, not a wasted minute. Back at the museum a little after 3, unload the show, take a breather out back for a smoke. Both of us feeling beaten and badly abused by a rented truck with no shocks. I immediately go get the cordless drill, to open one of the crates, we unpack two of the thirty-two pieces and they are exquisite, I can't even imagine how they were actually turned. We hold them in our bare hands, knowing we should be wearing gloves, but wanting to touch them, they are a crossroad between art and craft. Vessels that don't hold water. I'll get D to send images to Glenn to post at Ridgeposts, fucking amazing. I have to eat, before I write you, a small yellow-fin tuna steak, less than six ounces, I took out to thaw this morning, I start a small oak fire in the grill, rub the steak with walnut oil and pepper, serve myself on a bed of baby greens and a sesame dressing, some cheese, another perfect vine-ripened tomato. Good to go.
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Pistachio Poisoning

Damned D came over yesterday, work on the Wrack Show, hurricane clips and purlings on the shed. He brought a six-pack and a pound bag of pistachios. Needless to say, after work, while drinking too much too early, we ate pistachios like men possessed, amassing neat piles of shells, he at the table, me at the island, while we talked. After he left, I must have been a little drunk, because in addition to my neat pile, there where shells all over the floor, like an upscale bar, jesus. According to Boostin, quoting Cicero, a story about Simonides (considered the father of the mnemonic art, and the first poet to accept payment for his work), who was asked to chant a lyric in honor of the host at a banquet in the house of Scopas in Thessaly. However only half the poem was about Scopas, S got sidetracked or something and the other half was about Castor and Pollux. Scopas was pissed and only paid Simonides half the agreed price. A servant comes in and says their are two young men at the door to see S, he goes out, no one there, of course, it was Castor and Pollux, paying their half for the poem, and as soon as S is outside, the roof of the banquet hall collapses and everyone else is crushed to death. When the grieving families come to collect the bodies for burial honors, they can't identify the mangled bodies. Simonides can remember where everyone was sitting and thus identify which squashed person is which. Interesting article from Neil, seems Middle School Custodians in NYC make more money than teachers with Master Degrees, but, of course, they must clean up a lot of vomit. Interesting note, a thought and calculation while taking an emergency pistachio poop at the museum today: if I used the toilet there every day I work (and it is a warm place to, you know) I would increase my water use by 50%. Water is the oil of tomorrow, clearly everyone should compost their shit. Farmer's Market today and I bought some vine-ripe tomatoes from everyone's Uncle Ronnie, and dine on two tomato sandwiches (heavy on the mayo) and a heavenly sliced tomato with a drizzle of very good balsamic, a goodly sprinkle of pepper, some juice still on the plate, so I make a couple of small cucumber sandwiches (with butter) and clean things up; for dessert, some very ripe brie and a few olives. Excellent summer dinner. On the road tomorrow, Columbus, for the Wood Turning Show, and we're excited. We've been told that it is really well crated, and we do enjoy proper packing. I can't wait to see a bowl insured for 20 grand, it's gotta be a nice bowl. Going back, how books supplanted memory, this is a big deal, and now another leap; printing codified language and destroyed the oral tradition, and I can't remember squat now, because I don't have to, just a key word and the internet. But this past weekend, I was telling D, I built a tower of books around me, the history of books, the history of bookshelves, the history of libraries, books on extinct languages, language acquisition, wild children, I'd think about something and remember I had a book about that. Over the years my readers keep me informed, why else would I have a book about bookshelves? Coming home tonight I had Carma's ceramic piece on the seat beside me, a piece that defines my concerns for a certain period of my life, call it a tile, call it a cartoon, a conceit, whatever, it was on the seat next to me, my goal was to get it home unbroken. I stopped at the lake, put my groceries in the bed of the truck, and wrapped the piece in a blanket. How do I say this: in the gallery it was one thing, in my home it is another, larger than life, I think this is the best piece she has ever done and it's mine. I'm deeply flattered. I really don't deserve that kind of attention:

Three crows,
never mind.
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Putting Away Books

Also making a large Shrimp Fried Rice, D coming out tomorrow to work on the Wrack Show, need lunch and dinner prepared and extra to take to the Deputy on Tuesday. Zoe broke water, twins on the way. Some notes. Birds are Avis "because the do not follow straight roads (visas)", Ursus the bear, connected to the word 'Orsus' (a beginning) said to get her name because she sculpts her young with her mouth (ore). Talk about naming: Linnaeus named 5900 species in one year. Must read Buffon, he certainly adumbrates Darwin, and said, somewhere, -Thus the fox will be known to be a different species from the dog, if it proves to be the fact that from the mating of a male and a female of these two kinds of animals no offspring is born... even if there should result a hybrid offspring, a sort of mule... (it) would be sterile. Lyell and Lamarck too, talking about acquired characteristics. Both Darwin and Wallace acknowledge great importance to "Maltus On Population" to the development of their theories. In the case of Wallace it was an epiphany during a fever. The Goddess Of Memory (Mnemosyne) was a Titan, before writing, memory was everything, EVERYTHING. Simonides offered to teach Themistocles The Art Of Memory, who famously replied -Teach me not the art of remembering, but the art of forgetting, for I remember things I do not wish to remember, but I cannot forget things I wish to forget- and, in fact, forgetting might be more important. Ebbinghaus' "forgetting-curve" shows that most forgetting takes place soon after learning. St. Jerome advised -a book should always be in your hand or under your eyes.- When Alcuin joined Charlemagne, to get more words on the page, he developed the lower case (800 AD), Carolingian Minuscule. The book becomes possible. Korean experiments, half a century before Gutenberg, had produced moveable type. Making books codifies language, expands literacy. Suddenly, vernacular literature. I have to go shoot a rabid dog and saute some shrimp. If we have to draw a timeline Rabelais is right here "Pantagruel" and "Gargantua". Caxton establishes the English language, then Shakespeare uses it, adding a good bit. For a book, we need paper, and binding. "Volume" is from the Latin, volvere, to roll, because they were rolls, early Egypt, paper was made from papyrus, Nile delta, called byblos from the port of the same name wherefrom comes bible, The Book. An alternative was parchment, after Pergamum, and vellum, a particularly fine parchment made from calf-skin (Old French, Veel) and manuscripts were no longer rolled but collated into a codex (or Caudex, tree-trunk, because they were bound in boards). The Chinese must have invented paper as we know it, because in some war some Chinese prisoners were brought back as slaves and the first paper we know, macerated fibers collected on a screen, were produced in Baghdad, 800 AD. Who knows how long they'd been producing it. I love this early colophon, Festina Lenta, "make haste slowly", colophon is Greek for "finishing touch". Incunabula are the earliest books, from the Latin, "swaddling clothes" or "cradle". Leibniz was a librarian, developed a system for classification, alphabetical schemes, organized several large collections, may be responsible for public libraries. At the end of the day, it's a great Shrimp Fried Rice that I eat out of the skillet, no mediation, and a list of facts that I believe to be true, but I can't guarantee anything. A slippery slope. In fact, one of my favorite poets, Ted Enslin, accused be of being a jack-daw, a raven, a crow, picking up anything and using it as my own, and he was right. More later, I'm not done with memory and books.
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Skinks, Anoles

Way too many lizards in the house. Skink crap is very distinctive, brown/gray with a white dot at one end, and you have to let it dry before you sweep it up. Saturday mornings, all summer, I sweep up lizard shit. Left the cover off the five-gallon bucket of water nearest the stove when I was doing dishes last night, went to get a dipper full this morning and there was a drowned mouse suspended in death. Had to throw away five gallons of really clean rain water. Hate that. A five gallon bucket with an inch of water and a shim boardwalk going to any shelf in the kitchen is a superior mouse-trap. This mouse is suspended almost exactly in the center of the bucket, like his specific gravity is .5, and fluffed out in the water, not really what you want to see when you're getting water for coffee. Cool morning, should have been good sleeping temps but I was up before seven considering breakfast options. D had given me a dozen fresh eggs from someone raising chickens (those South American chickens that lay colored eggs), pullet eggs, a dozen blue eggs, in fact, like robin eggs only larger but not much, I decide on an omelet, cheese and mushroom, first fry a patty of shredded potatoes in olive oil, then make a six small egg omelet, with Italian toast and really bitter orange marmalade. A good start on the day, a second cup of coffee, reading on the sofa, very quiet, when the fridge is off, just bugs and birds and the wind in the trees, I listen to a couple of the Bach Cello Suites and they really take my attention, no mediation, like me and God are on lounge chairs with cold Coronas and slices of lime, the zone, where everything makes sense but the mystery is intact. I won't tell your secrets if you won't tell mine. There's a skink on the window sill, perplexed at the change in temperature, I don't know where it sleeps, but I wish I could help it get there; I expect it to still be where it is in the morning, waiting for the sun. It's the problem with being cold-blooded. I'm almost always disappointed in everyone, where's that at? Expectations. I've learned to hold my tongue and mop. Assume nothing.
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Good Fortune

Kroger before work, a few things for the weekend, I'm thinking maybe a steak, also bread, and lo, good french bread on sale and as I approach the meat counters a guy is wheeling out a dolly loaded with pork loins, the whole loins, cryo-packed, and they are so cheap I'm stunned. The smallest of them, just under six pounds is $9.63, and I can't not buy it, figuring I'll cut off a couple of meals, probably butterfly two chops (stuff with chutney) and cure the rest as a kind of Canadian Bacon, fucking yum. Still not quite time to open the museum so I go below the floodwall, thinking about the Death Tree for Roger's set, stop at the first turn-out on the lower road, get out. What I need is slightly odd in tree world, a trunk section with a branch at close to 90 degrees, small enough that I can lift it, large enough to hold a teenage girl. Get this: the first stick I look at fits the bill perfectly, load it in the back and head to the museum, I park, D arrives (we go in his truck for the scone and coffee run) and he nods approval, recognizing, as I already had, that it was another stick that would work for the River Wrack show. Sara is out, visiting another museum to check on circus items for an upcoming show, Trish is out on vacation; Pegi, the Deputy, D and I have way too much fun, working hard and verbally abusing each other. Pegi's on a roll and we all feed her set-up lines. We collate, fold and stitch 36 booklets for the second wine-tasting / fund-raiser and can't believe we get them done, still time to carry down ten bags of mulch to fill the frame I'd built for "The Secret Garden". On the way home there is no one at the lake so I stop and roll a smoke, walk over to the spillway, there's a Burger King bag, I hate trash, so I pick it up, to collect other trash before I throw it away, and inside it are a few french fries and $15, I pocket the cash and feed the fries to the ducks. Someone must have bought a Whopper for someone else and put the change in the bag. My good fortune. In my world all windfall profits are spent on booze, so Tuesday (I don't make unnecessary trips) I'll buy a bottle of whiskey. God is in his heaven and all's right on the ridge. Going back to the museum from a trip to the hardware store, I drove past the college, and in the new-mown green I noticed some white dots. I knew they were a slightly toxic Conocybe and stopped to harvest a few, ate them in an omelet a while ago, probably soon be leaving you. Such a day. I might write something strange later or I might trim my toenails, there's no way of telling. I like uncertainty, as a principle it guides me. I unwrap the loin, a dangerous procedure, and butterfly a couple of chops, then rub the remainder with a mixture of chilies, brown sugar, and salt, put it on a rack in a pan in the fridge, break down the cell walls, leach out the moisture, is my intent, pretty sure I know what I'm doing, still, I've lost pieces of meat before so this wouldn't be the first time I failed. At a certain point failure is necessary or you don't learn, a pat on the back is seldom a lesson, what you need is a huge mess you have to clean up before you can start again. The learning curve. Dried shit on the floor and a chisel.
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Imagined Constraints

Outside the box. I think I solved this lighting problem D and I had pondered for several weeks, for the kid's show. We don't need stage lighting, we just need a couple of short tracks and a couple of the museum spots. One of those slap-yourself-up-against-the-side-of-the-head moments. Roger called me into the theater to discuss something else (the Tree From Which The Pregnant Mom Falls) and I saw what we needed in a flash. Last cigaret outside with D, I tell him, and he's like, wow, yes, of course, how could we have been so dumb? Perfectly obvious once you see. Anchored the Secret Garden gate and cleaned construction mess, everyone is thrilled, a working gate, my god. Pretty sure I can solve the Death Tree problem. The usual scenery for kids' plays at the museum has been painted cardboard on sticks, we're making a quantum leap here, I lean toward minimal scenery but it needs to be real. Driving home, I realize this will probably be the best, technically, produced play in this space. I can't not. Would be letting myself down if I didn't. You buy me, you buy the whole package, a smart-ass janitor with skills, it's hard to criticize someone who does something better than you. I learned at the feet of masters, I've known butchers who understood the universe, parsing the whole into component parts, lighting designers who could establish reality, loggers who could fell a tree exactly where they intended. Ted Enslin called me a Jack-Daw, a raven, a crow, an opportunistic bastard, and I had to agree with him, I am, there are ways in which I have no shame; if it plays into your game, there's no reason for you to criticize my pot-smoking heavy-drinking life style: if I get it done you need me. I'm revealing a lot here, but I'm talking among friends, you don't have to read me if you don't want to. The fox was back, she did a magnificent tail-swing after taking an apple that was such a 'fuck you' that I laughed out loud. If she were human I would have copped a feel, but it's a fox, man, after all, and we're not that close, phylum wise, I don't think it would work, a fox-human, then think, maybe, a certain barmaid with perfect ankles, a tattoo in the middle of her back, maybe. Foxy Lady.
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Theater Again

Can't believe I keep doing this, bitch and moan about it, but still, jump in and do whatever needs doing. Spend the day building a set for "The Secret Garden" and the director is pleased because yesterday there was nothing and after today it's nearly done. I've built so many sets, I can't even estimate, hundreds. I was doing some serious construction in Iowa City, a few years ago, and ended up building a set for "Hansel and Gretel" because a friend of a friend needed help. Always interesting problems, that's part of it, a free-standing gate that gets used is difficult, building something that works that kids can't destroy immediately, doing it cheaply, because there is no budget. At Janitor College there was a course, "Peripheral Projects" where we were expected to do things that weren't in the job description, land a plane at night, find a small island using only the stars for navigation, survive in the wilderness with just a knife. A great course, I'd never eaten lizard before, not bad but not even close to chicken, where you were only thrown curve balls. I'm cooling my computer right now with a two pound block of ham and bean soup that I'd frozen and forgotten about, I need to throw it away but it works fine for this. Like that. There was no rain in the forecast but these little cells keep sweeping over, hard rain for two minutes and then they're gone, no thunder and lightening, so I ignore them. Not quite true, I listen to them, watch, but don't shut down. We gauge the seriousness of events, make choices, live with the consequences. I might lose a paragraph, maybe not, I really don't know what will happen, likely I'll have to apologize for fucking up again. After work D and I decide to go for a beer at the pub, Jim had reinstated Happy Hour and ESB was on tap, half-price, too good to miss, a bonding thing, after hours, shooting the shit, the slightly off-color jokes, demanding the remote so we don't have to watch people fighting on the bar TV. Eleven dead on K2, Brett Farve is traded, we both roll a smoke before we leave and when we get outside it's raining hard, not in the forecast, so we stand under an awning and smoke, make a dash in a lull, yell good-byes, truck home. West of town the roads are dry, then another downpour on Mackletree, but the driveway is dry, a few drops as I achieve the ridge, everything is so goddamned local. A lesson there.
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Scenery

Damned Brit director (actually we all love Roger, but it's necessary to continue the conflict between The Talent and The Techies), like all directors, wanting more, more, more. While D's new hard drive is absorbing data we make a run to the surplus building supply place and get some surplus building supplies to build scenery. $38. Need a few more things, might spend close to $100 before all is said and done. Not exactly sure of the numbers, but I think we spent a quarter of a million on the American premier of Berlioz's "Les Troyens" in Boston, and that was a long time ago. The Deputy is back, after a week's vacation, and Pegi is back (she is director of the performing arts) from a week at Cirque with challenged kids, so the museum is fully staffed, thank god. The Cream Of The Crop show comes down this week and two shows installed over the next couple of weeks, both of which we probably have to pick up somewhere. Most of the characters in this writing read me, know me well, and I have these two paintings to send to Iowa and I know I have the address, push-pinned to the wall, somewhere in my house, but I can't find it, I love to talk to her (we both live alone, an odd stigma) so I just call and we talk about mold and I get her address, again, get up to speed, she invites me out and says she's coming to the Wrack Show, a ten hour drive, I think I might go see her, over a long week-end, just to drink a few beers and eat a couple of meals. Consider the people you're really comfortable with, and why. Run down the list. Real connection is very important, transcends normal bullshit. The fox is back, she comes to the edge of the clearing, I open the back door slowly, toss an apple her way, I move slowly, she doesn't bolt, accepts the fruit, flips her fine butt at me and trots back off into the woods. This may be the relationship I always imagined, where I was accepted, or at least endured. I could have ended up in Iowa, it's a lovely place, the people are real, but this ridge, in Ohio, is a cheap place to be, and there aren't any building codes.
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Derisive Croak

Solitary crow over the outhouse seems to take offense at my using the facilities or maybe he's waiting for his friends, ready to get on with the day. I have a book overflow problem, or a flat surface problem, or a laziness problem, but before I put a book away, I have to take out (usually) numerous bookmarks and that means rereading passages (marked with a pencil dot), which usually means making some notes. The real problem is that I enjoy the process and take my time, thus about one day a month, if someone was watching, I do nothing but wander slowly about the house, open books everywhere, sometimes as often as once an hour putting a book back on a shelf. Since I cleaned out the fridge I've been trying to watch the compost pile, the wild dogs have been staying away, since I shot a couple of the pack, and I'm hoping to see the fox. Late afternoon she shows up, she must be done nursing, I know it's her by the set of her ears, maybe I'll see the kits, make a note to get some apples. Still hot when I start writing today but the large yogurt container of ice and a strategically placed fan work very well to keep things cool. I'm a terrible draftsman but during the course of the day I make several sketches for the Wrack Show, doodles really, trying to figure out the post count. D's a no-show, so I have ribs for dinner again, potatoes, a salad, bread, manage to save three meaty ribs for the Deputy tomorrow, a kind of token sample, I know her sister will tell her I cooked slabs for us and need to diffuse the situation, walking that delicate line between a boss and a pregnant lady. Angled light, sun below the trees, thick rich greens, and that huge Pileated Woodpecker flies in from the west, checking out his favorite hickory tree. The splash of red is a shock and I do love watching him work, cocking his head, listening for movement beneath the bark, hopping down the tree, circling around. Talked to my older daughter, Samara, this weekend, and she needs money I don't have, talked to my parents, yesterday, and they are dying (with great good grace), need to get to Colorado, see Samara in a play, get to Florida, see my folks, but can't afford either of those trips, could try and get to upstate New York for a long weekend away, maybe I need that, before the next push. On the other hand, today was a perfect tonic, put away some books and pour a bucket of water over my head, what did Pynchon say -Simple Pleasures- gas prices being what they are. Imagine what it costs to launch a rocket. How can the deficit not include the cost of the war? What kind of accounting is that? Like saying if I don't include my VISA I can balance my checkbook, how stupid are we supposed to be? W and that asshole Cheney have put a lien onto the next generation plus the generation after that is unpayable. Oops, got started, I really try to avoid politics, but these guys have got their heads up each other's ass, I'm stock-piling beans, laying in seed, figure, before I die, we'll be third world. What are the odds they'll invade Iran and declare Martial Law? Put off the election or Obama will get shot or global warming raises sea level or something. I don't want to be paranoid, but there's every indication I should be. And I'm a simple guy, that's the problem. I could live on weeds and roadkill, my needs are basic and easily met, but the system is more complex, take away rapid transit and a lot of people are isolated, blow up some bridges and a lot of people are desperate, blow up a few power plants and everything falls apart. If I were a terrorist, what I'd do, living near the Ohio River, is blow up some bridges and power plants, bingo, chaos, the perfect tool.
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Don't Know

Don't know, really, how I keep your attention. I'm looking forward to ribs and eggs for breakfast. I've never had that combination before, maybe a salad, with blue-cheese dressing, pull out all the stops. Certainly toast, sour-dough and a seedless blackberry preserve, enough butter to stop your heart. That remaining nine plus hours, I love I can think about what I'm going to say. Pick up the beat and roll. Suddenly you're in another universe, where rhythm is the only sense. I don't know for sure but it seems like things make sense, a drum at dawn or sunset, that green flash, hey I merely report, nothing is cast. Any day that starts with ribs for breakfast is going to be a good day. Got the printer going by just replugging both ends, caught up on some copies. Surprised at last night's length. Catch up on mail. Do the hour outside, hour reading thing most of the day, stay indoors after 3:30, reading back over myself. Between the box of manuscripts and pages in the vault at the museum and the pile on my desk, right at three thousand single spaced pages, ten years work, 9 actually, because I wrote "Notes From The Cistern" in 97/98 and then edited it. Also lost between 500-750 pages of "Text Towards Building A House" in the robbery. A prolific period. I enjoy the intimacy of the last year's writing and notice that many months I don't miss a single day. Also notice that nights when I start the next day's piece are more disjointed, something about the almost real time swing seems to lend a level of coherence. Real or imagined. I had forgotten fruit flies in my drink, how bad they taste. After I cleaned up I dabbed a touch of Dzing! on one wrist, I love it in dry down. It is so affected by personal chemistry that it's a fine scent for a man, if a man wants a scent, I mostly enjoy smelling samples, trying them on women I know. Almost all women, in my experience, are willing to try a new perfume. For dinner I sear a small tuna steak and have it on a salad, with a very nice vinaigrette (raspberry) around the edges, a piece of bread, saving the rest of the ribs in case D comes out tomorrow to work on the Wrack shed. Need to talk to a couple of local artists who may or may not be doing set-pieces for the installation, need to know if they're wall pieces, need a pedestal, or are free-standing, need to do some sand-blasting. Need to count how many posts we have and get down on the first terrace, harvest what else we need. A day's work, not even, a morning's work and an afternoon drinking beer, admiring our haul. We'll probably damage the gallery walls, because we need numerous anchor points so we don't create a house of cards, but all shows damage walls, it's the nature of the beast. There needs to be a certain interconnectedness to the whole thing, lest it fall down, some diagonal bracing, attachment will be an issue, thought about it for several hours today, probing weak points. I can visualize things really well, if I focus my attention, to the point of being anti-social; plan several steps ahead like I never could in chess, and I see some problems but nothing we can't solve. We can't drill holes in the floor is the biggest problem, but we get around that using triangulation, long as we're tied together up top and the rails go all the way through. I don't see much of a problem, 2 weeks or 5 three-day week-ends, we'll do this. In my head today, thinking seriously about the show, it was spectacular. Will be. I have trouble with tense when thinking ahead, the future pluperfect; also there is a very large spider inside, I don't know what they are, October Spiders, I call them, monsters, but will have to kill it or sleep in a motel room, no way I could wake to that mother-fucker in the house. I'd be afraid to go anywhere, get a shoe and track him to the kitchen, smash him against the side of the island, with a satisfying mess: that's fine, I don't care, I'd rather clean up the mess than wake eye-to-eye. Fucking spiders, man, second only to snakes.
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Layers Deep

Thought I had lost another page but found it, on line, thank you god, or Glenn, or someone. I was, like, eight layers deep into researching myself, a drummer in Texas, the wind in Wyoming, I'd been drinking and was confused. There were all of these other Tom Bridwells out there and I was trying to figure out where I fit in, found myself, parenthetically, as (janitor) which made me smile. Of course, I remember. Everyone needs a designation. I pretty much don't believe in anything, but coming home last night, three fucking crows on Mackletree. I'm hesitant even to mention, but there they were, in ambush, waiting for me. Dining on roadkill squirrel. I drive this section of road slowly, but they were still lazy, getting out of my way. I don't think they mean anything, specifically, just birds, you know, opportunistic, dinner, still, cause for reflection, consideration. With their grease smeared feathers, they'll probably last longer than me. Cockroaches. Ants, tadpoles, termites. Decided to cook the ribs today before it got hot, start a fire in the grill, rub the baby-backs with a mixture of six different chili powders, garlic salt, onion powder, and a wild dried mushroom thing, sear them, then into foil (3 layers) with butter, lime juice, and a mango chili sauce, cook them off the heat for two hours, turning them every fifteen minutes. While they're cooking I clean up, shave, wash my hair, strip the linens, a little house cleaning, clean out the fridge. The sauce needs boiling, with various additions, several marinades I've saved, some wine and beer, a can of Harisa. At seven years old the sauce needs little attention but occasionally I have to 'brighten' it, thus the Harisa. When the ribs are done I carefully open the foil boat, make a spout at one end and very carefully pour the drippings into the sauce. I like the added grease but it also serves as a seal in the one quart and two pint jars, when I next use the sauce I'll throw away the hardened plug. Confit sauce. The ribs are so good I practically weep. Little new potatoes, from D and Carma's garden, nuked with butter and pepper, hunk of bread. I had set up the current book, Boorstin's "The Discoverers" at my island reading station but don't read a word. I used to glaze ribs with the sauce and caramelize after the slow-cooking in foil, now I serve the sauce on the side, as a dipping sauce, much better. Mid-afternoon I take a slab to Zoe, with a container of sauce. Josh meets me at the door, says she's asleep, but she hears my voice and asks, yells really, from the bedroom, -what's up?- I walk to the bedroom door and she's prone, on her side, wrapped around a pillow that is considerably smaller than her pregnant belly. -Ribs- I say, and she is up in almost a flash, that double bounce on the mattress pregnant women use to achieve a vertical posture, rushing at me like a linebacker. I have the container of sauce in one hand and the ribs in the other and she gives me the full frontal slam, belly-first, and a kiss on the lips. I do believe I've made her day, tell her to give a couple to Josh, head to town to do the laundry. Wanted to get a haircut, but for reasons I don't understand both barbershops are closed on a Saturday afternoon, so I go to the laundromat, put the clothes in to wash, settle down to read. A comely white Miss gets her stuff out of the dryer and is folding at the table next to me, when she gets to the sheets, I stand up and offer to help, she accepts, everyone who does laundry knows what a pain in the ass sheets are solo, and while we're working away her Mexican husband comes in to pick her up. He takes great offense that we're folding together, starts yelling at her; Richard, the owner, comes out of the back room, to quell whatever the issue. Another patron, who spoke both Spanish and English, explained that folding sheets together was too intimate for another man to be doing with the husband's wife. The actual translation was that even he didn't fold sheets with her, I said that maybe he should, went back to my book. Fuck a bunch of civilization. Too many people at the lake for me to stop. Two things on Mackletree, going through the forest, a very young fawn, all legs, crosses the road, and something brown, larger than a cat, but not moving like a woodchuck, probably a woodchuck though, I mean what else could it be, a small bear, a wolverine? There aren't many options. Not cat-like. The filtered light on Mackletree, through the canopy, is beautiful; the shafts are tangible, individual, yellow pillars of dust and pollen. Then up the driveway, completely overgrown, and home: a house in a sea of green. Late afternoon breeze, dry air for a change, means I can write without icing my computer. Life is good. I eat a few more ribs. Yes, I think, yes.

Tom

I started writing this page fourteen hours ago, and, in a sense, it took fourteen hours to write, despite the fact that I was only sitting in the chair, the driver's seat, for something just over four hours. Fucking Whip-poor-will has set up near the house. It's a conspiracy to distract me, like those crows. Bring it on. I control the high ground, Ridge Posts indeed. My printer has failed, I don't have last night and tonight, hard copy, I assume they're out there, somewhere, but my joy, really, is in the doing. The trip is the designation.
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Here Now

Soon as I get the set built for The Secret Garden got to get started, full-bore, on the Wrack Show, need five or six more posts and a few rails. NEED STUMPS, to use as pedestals, need to find some rope. Nice day to be inside with AC, very hot and muggy, I paint the Director's office, D has one of the worst days of his life, computer troubles, his new big Mac crashes or whatever, locks up repeatedly, end of the day he's afraid he's lost everything. Finally though, he retrieves all data, using another computer, going in tomorrow to wipe his mainframe clean and reinstall the operating program. Stop to watch the spillway spill. I'm interested in the number of cubic feet per second for a given flow, I can measure depth. I pick up a bunch of twigs and drop them at the lake side edge of the spillway top, dropping is too disruptive, I have to lay on my belly and place them, then count, as they go over the top and fall. Four inches of water today, two linear feet of water four inches deep over every second, spillway is 42 feet, 28.12 cubic feet. Water is 1.00 Specific Gravity, 62.4 pounds, 1754.69 lbs per second. We had a flume on irrigation water in Colorado, accurate within 5%, homemade, can't remember the name of the dude who invented it, everyone had one, and they were all called, like, Harvey Flumes, you set the rate of flow by inserting dagger boards. Very cool. Most everything about making hay and irrigating fields is extremely local, a particular tool kit, around Montrose, we made diversion damns with tarps on sticks, and dirt, fast and cheap. Drying hay didn't need to be turned, bale it on the third day, after dew had dried, all alfalfa, cut early, low yield but high protein. Three cuttings, the first watered by snow and surface moisture, the second, easily, on irrigation, the third was the devil's foal, might be great or might be awful. In Missip, I never made grass hay because it had no food value at all, made hay from sweet potato tops and peanut plants, kudzu, all of which rival alfalfa for protein (huge numbers, 18-20%). Don't know how I got sidetracked, water, right, I'm sure my numbers are bogus, but I like the fact that I came up with some. Wore a different deodorant today and didn't smell like myself, strange, as if there was another person in the room, but it was me, noticed it mostly after I got home, slipping into a sleeveless tee and loose, thin Dockers, summer writing clothes, there was still a woody background and this musky thing, of course, dirty underwear. You only thought you smelled good, actually, everyone takes offense. I wash my panties in the sink, with dish-soap, a few pair of socks, this is how far we have advanced, that we can wash our underwear. D and Carma trusted their daughter with me, to go upstairs, Gwen, she's a sharp kid, Sara came out to talk to her directly, this kid is a talker, a motor-mouth, but it all makes a kind of sense. Language is key, listen to what she says. Read more...