Saturday Duty

A good thing, as it happens, that I worked today, still much to do on the ceramics show. Probably go in Monday for a few hours. An extra hour today. Trimmed the labels, which are printed on paper then spray glued onto card stock, need trimming, each one on all four sides, because it is the natural of this technique to be crooked. Then set about sticking all the pieces (handling them all yet again) down firmly with museum wax. My first years of theater, we used a mortician product, labeled, I swear, Wound Filler, to secure Set Dressing, the crap that's scattered about on a stage set, on the mantle, anything moveable, because many actors are real "method" and that involves touching. Fucking talent. Way home Friday, at the flat place outside of town that is the designated spot for leaving trees or branches, the power company, the tree guys, everyone leaves wood there, and it's free for the taking, whatever is left, two or three times a year, a company comes in with a really large chipper, 16 wheeler size, comes in and grinds mulch out of leftovers. A good system. I saw from the road, the piles maybe 200 yards away, that there a LOT of sycamore branches. It's pretty good firewood, not quite as good as oak, and can be hard to split, but free for the taking. I take a load Friday, another today, probably Sunday and Monday too. Certainly an Asplunt dump, I know their equipment, they grind anything onsite less than two inches, and the trunks are missing (the crews sell them, saw-logs, for extra cash) and most of the branches won't even need splitting. My favorite firewood. Since firewood was on the list, I don't have to feel guilty about yard-work. I'm ricking them up in the open, to dry through the summer. Ricked two by two, 3 and 4 feet long, 3 and 4 inches in diameter. This is gold, perfect wood, I want it all. I'm so far ahead of last year and the year before, I cringe, now, at living that close to the edge. It must have been important, it was certainly stupid. I'm still adjusting to this lifestyle, where I pretty much just do what I want to do. If it's necessary to reread Proust, again, because there's a new translation, I sign off on the rest of my life, other than earning a living, and reread Proust. If it's necessary for me to write you at 3 in the morning, I do it. I was so paranoid about the shelves for the pottery, that I got Pegi to come out and hang from them. I'm so paranoid that I only almost believe her, watching her hang from the shelf. I think it's passing strange that I would be at the museum now, right when they need me, the best job I've ever had, simply solving problems, elegantly, if possible, and making people laugh. A matter of course. I don't really figure things out ahead of time. Don't have a clue, but this is perfect wood, take out the fucking earplugs even though I never wear them. I listen closely, to everything, it drives me crazy. Of the senses, sight, sound, and smell we don't understand, say what you will. I'm running a survey, under a different name, trying to get some information, but the results aren't in. More thunder and lightening. I saw that. It banged around. What you thought you were saying. Listen, dude, nothing is what it seems. Read more...

Nothing Really

A cross between a crow and a house-hold god carved from coal. Something dream-like, closer to a nightmare, where the edges fold inward; you're on a very high scaffolding and it starts collapsing. Calmly fishing for cod and overwhelmed by a rogue wave, driving home from work and a gaggle of geese slam into your wind-shield. After I turn off Route 125 onto Mackletree anything can happen. Success, talked with both daughters, back in good graces. Maybe the last morels, 1/2 pound or so, three tablespoons of butter, one of olive oil, two tablespoons finely minced shallot, just heaped on two slices of slightly toasted sour dough. Basement at the museum flooded in recent hard rains, mostly dried by today. When it floods down there, the basement toilet become a fountain. Had to clean it up before the whole building smelled of sewer. Excellent task for the Zen Janitor, my no-body not smelling. Bottom of my shoes stank. Serious napp (from the French for blanket) at the spillway, a sheet of water 10 inches thick, looking like glass until it hits the bottom, where even the fractal surface of shattered water manages a fairly uniform appearance. Violent and loud, it actually looks serene. I put some ear-plugs in my pack. I like the sound, but I want to see how different it might look with just a muted sound track. I've got some good ear-plugs. Maybe get a shooter's headset, whatever those are called, wear them an entire day, see if it changes the way you see. Sara said there were enough people looking after the short term, doing it well, and she wanted me to look at the long term. Which is fine by me, because in the short term I'm mopping sewage. Need a new mop head: oh boy, another trip to the Cleaning Supply Store. Simple pleasures. Installing a show and D isn't here, unexpectedly weird, realize it means I have to do everything; I'm sure I can, that's not a problem. The only potential problem, and its been proven to be not true, was that working full-time at museum would keep me from my reading. I just sleep less, it's not a problem. A good book is way better than bad dreams. Barnhart wrote me a wonderful message, I laughed until I cried. He has a way with words. Fucking woodwind players, licking their reeds, I don't know what they're doing, something occult. Julia calling warblers with a tape recorder. Power out again last night and again today when I got home. Stopped and got a footer, too tired to cook. On my feet all day, getting the ceramic ready to open. I'm staff tomorrow, so I can trim the labels and get all the pottery stuck down securely with museum wax. Break out the plexi bonnets, maybe someone can clean them while Sara and I label and light on Tuesday. Quite the punch list I started the day with, crossed off almost everything, weary at the end. Attached the 2, 3, and 4 foot shelves to various walls with French Cleats, an elegant attachment, then painted the shelves and touched-up all the peds; which meant, of course, talking all the pottery off, remembering how it was set, end of the day got most everything restored. Finally stopped, 4:30, when I realized I shouldn't handle any more pots today. Show opens on Wednesday, and we'll make it. Wednesday at 10 and I get there before 9 so I'll even have a final hour for cleaning. Tuesday at 3 we put the bonnets on, extra help from the cirque. Two of them will be difficult. I'm already paranoid. There is no margin of error. The verges, though, on Mackletree were mown, and already lovely, despite the fire. Upper Twin is beautiful, I stop to smell some flowers, then drive on down to the ford, wash my undercarriage by driving back and forth. I remember a couple of cajun jokes, shaggy dog stories, and chuckle. Moshare and Zarbi, a backwoods Sufi pair. Finally get home, toke and get a drink, fit for nothing, I eat my footer and read movie reviews. I don't even watch movies, but I read reviews; I'm on the brink of starting to watch movies, watch one a day for a couple of years, catch up. I like movies, don't get me wrong, but my primary way of getting out of my own skin, or head, is to read. I easily assume any author's imagined readership, because I write; I know what imagining someone understands something means. It's all about connection, right? attachment. Don't get me started.
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Thunder Cells

Erratic power supply, I'll send when I can. I need a desk-top air conditioner for my black Dell. Someone said they make small free-standing units now. Last couple of days, some of these storm cells have been quite intense. The Scioto River is one shade of mud, dumping into the Ohio, which is a different shade; standing at the overlook you can watch the mingling. Fluid dynamics. After lunch, Sara sets the ceramics show, I move pedestals around and handle all the pieces several times, look at each piece closely. Potters are people too and personality is revealed in their work. Pegi mimics the Scott Dooley pieces in a kind of Balinese dance routine that's quite funny and absolutely on the money. I love working with Sara, setting a show, I learn something every time. Any given show, there are almost infinite variables, what you strive for is a pleasing presentation. When D and I work without her, we constantly ask ourselves what Sara would do and often the mere question supplies an answer. Early to town this morning, below the floodwall, and a skein of geese, forty or fifty of them, heading north. Squawking to beat the band, an eccentric V, a beautiful thing. Later, talking with Julia, a board member, while having a smoke outside, she mentioned calling in warblers with a tape recorder. Gotta go, thunder. Later. Most of these cells come from the northwest, moving southeast, at their worst I think of them as water balloons hurled my friends in St. Paul, but whatever, I can see and hear distinctly when the center has moved over me. I count -Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three- and as it moves to my left, as I sit in my writing chair, I know I can log on and write you, because my power comes from the west. Be it ever so. I love the west, especially that band between the Rockies and the Basin And Range. The most beautiful place in the world, except for where I find myself in the moment. I try to live within my means, and that includes location. I'm not sure what I mean by comfort; as a base line we might use your head in someone's lap, their fingers in your hair. There could be a list here, things that make you feel good. Right then, I'm listening to NPR, and The Indigo Girls sing a song. Perfection may await, near enough works for me. What do you have to go on, a thin thread. If you're like me it's a very thin thread, you do what you think you need to do. Elvis. Made me shout out loud. No, no, but that's not true, what was said, nothing makes any sense. Read more...

Poor Fathering

My older daughter, Samara, called to ream me out for not being enough of a father. I didn't know what to say. Rainy day, so no yard-work, mostly I slink around, considering my failures. With my girls, I thought we had an arrangement, when they needed to talk they called. Wrong, despite the fact that everyone knows you can't reach teenage, now Samara is 21, young women, and have any kind of conversation on a cell phone. My bad. Mope around like an old cyborg. Actually call Marilyn and open channels to call Rhea at home. Not too bad, I can deal with it. I'll call Samara more often, usually getting her in her car, little hits. It's hard to know, at this distance, what else to do. I can't fly anymore, can't afford it anyway. Ricky Lee Jones singing something I can't quite understand, but sounds like she feels like me. I was a good father, before Marilyn ran me off; but I had to get far from the scene, after the severance, because I was in such pain. A wounded animal. The mud I needed, as plaster to my wounds, I found here. Sometimes you just do what you have to do. I couldn't afford to stay out west, I never would have owned land again, lived a nomadic life that really doesn't suit me. I'm domestic and a creature of habit. I have all these books. I hate moving. My earliest memories are moving, tucked in the back seat with a pile of books. Being a navy brat isn't easy. You grow uncertain about relationships. I surprised a mouse at the communal bag of basmati rice, we waved, it was a magic moment. Didn't send last night, got maudlin. Needed to self-edit. Call Samara, got her in her car, short and sweet. So much modern discourse is tedious and, finally, stupid. Cleaning Supply Store, looked fondly at the Clean Boy 550, probably not in the budget, and I'd have to find a place to store it. Unpacked the Functional Ceramics show. Functional is a relative term but there is some beautiful stuff; three artists, three completely different techniques, both throwing and firing. You can go to the museum web-site and see some images. I love Anthony's work, the anagama fired stuff, and he's a loveable teddy bear personally, usually wearing over-alls and grinning. He passes himself off as Amish, throws pots standing up. Sara and I will set the show, D and Carma off to Kitty Hawk. I always look forward to setting a show, always learn something, and working with Sara is interesting and enjoyable, the nuance of color and position, and handling the pieces is an enjoyable part, becoming an instant critic. God, the green is so intense, I go outside to pee, a thousand shades and everything growing. Walled in on every side, a jungle. There should be monkeys here, where are those prop guys? drinking beer again across the alley? fuck Happy Hour, we have a show to open. I make a note to remind my older daughter that I have another show opening soon. Part of Poor Fathering is that you just don't get it. Me, for instance. Recently bit by a spider, I'm sure I'll have to lose a chunk of flesh. I could do that, whatever you require, a middle finger, a piece of my back, my nose, sight in one eye, whatever sacrificial mode you demanded, I have to think about this, what I thought I meant. Get back to you later. Another power failure. Intense thunder cells. The house shakes. The wind in the trees is so loud I wish I had earphones and a storm cellar. Bach is good, when the world is imploding. Being at the end of the line is a state of mind. I heard a report about water use in drought-stricken California, where they were limited to 150 gallons a day, per household. I use less than 3 gallons a day, and wonder where I could save: clearly, we're not on the same page. A factor of fifty seems ridiculous. Stars, and a new beginning, it was the quiet that woke me. Where did the wind go? Suddenly nothing. Merely a lull. Beat the time, yes, yes, yes, then no, a line we cannot cross. Liza gets this, Glenn does, it's a thing that happens, Barnhart could make sense of it, I trust his sense of time, but it's an iffy situation. The downbeat. Power on, I'll ship this and start another. Read more...

Nothing Simple

Nostalgia is often driven by the sense of smell. Looking back through the tulle mists because of the smell you associate with your grandfather. The usual mythic detritus. We live in these congeries, sorting between hubris and revelation. Memory reconstructs, it doesn't recapture; but it is closest, I think, when smell makes us remember. History is a kind of diversion, interesting and often fun, but never to be trusted. I can almost remember today, don't trust myself on yesterday. Clean socks, and that funky smell is gone. I almost blewoff going to town, but I needed the library and the liquor store, might as well wash socks. I know, I know, buy more socks and get a hamper with a lid, but I use certain tells to keep myself organized, live by yourself and you can get away with shit, who's to say? And I don't feel like cooking, I want a footer (locally means a foot long hot-dog, with a thin ground meat tomato sauce, American cheese, yellow mustard, chopped onions, on a bun, steamed to melt the cheese) and onion rings. Stopped at the Dairy Bar, you order at one of two windows and pay, they tap on the glass and point to you went your order is ready. I always take a book and lean on the corner of the building, out of the way, watch people and read a few pages. Take it home, to eat with a beer while I read a new author recommended several times, Nam Le, he's pretty good. Minimalist Meta-Fiction. I make judgments from my lair. Act like I understand what's going on. Mostly bullshit, but I do look at things and there was this explosion of white in the drainage. I thought it was mortar shells but it was blackberry blossoms. Not carpet bombing with unspeakable chemicals, but a product of the recent fire: the far side of the grader ditch is thick in blackberry and the blooms are so solid that the canes dip. All this rain, they'll probable bear, bare, arrggghhhh. I thought about you today, I was hauling an arm-load of prickly litter, not that there's any connection, just that I thought about you, and a light went on in my head. I spent several hours looking at very small flowers, so perfect and beautiful, probably what would be called purple, but it was yellow and green and red, almost blue, ultimately purple. Steps along the way. Read more...

Before Leavening

What any leavening agent does is start fermentation, thereby entraining air. Presto, risen. Breakfast, then yard work, then breakfast again. Crab cakes and eggs. Must find some salt-cod, Kroger stopped carrying it. Bastards. Ethnic markets in Columbus. No leavening, the cakes got me thinking. Made an interesting crab corn-cake, not sure if they're any good or not. A friend sent a bag of pure fresh-milled plain cornmeal, white. Quarter cup corn meal, juice from a small can of premium crab meat with a little more clam juice to make a loose batter, stirred in the crab meat, made four nice patties. I thought they were pretty good, but I was quite hungry. Not a fair trial if you're really hungry. I liked them best with just a pat of butter, salt and pepper. Salsa might be good. These, and a nice small bitter salad, with balsamic, would be a great summer dinner, with a really flinty white wine or maybe a gewurztraminer. Sweaty and dirty, I put out a solar shower, the five gallon one, heat water for a complete clean-up, scrub my back with a sponge on a stick, wash my hair, come inside and shave, clip my nails. Good to go, but of course I'm not going anywhere, I just needed to get totally clean. Gotta zip in and do a load of laundry tomorrow, need to buy more socks, check at Big Lots, I only buy socks at Big Lots. I did order two books yesterday: I try and limit my buying to books, booze, tobacco and what food I require. I never really think that my lifestyle is any different than anyone else's. I do what I do to get along. If I make a point it's not because I'm trying to, I'm merely recounting events. Before leaving. That's probably a completely different post, something we might think about. You really can't catch me by surprise, even if you project ahead: I bet the farm, I'll be one move ahead. I operate in a vacuum, I don't really know, but I suspect. Good enough, for the jaded. Me too, I'd much rather be noticed, not in the cards. Still, I'd rather write to you, something I see as a thread, than not write at all. Read more...

Cognates

A Spanish Web is one of those thick ropes with loops spliced in, a comely lass climbs the rope, hooks either a foot or a hand in a loop, a strong usually guy on the floor swings the rope and the girl whirls. The results are stunning. Vertical force on the rope is transferred into energy the girl can use for various horizontal stunts. A lesson in dynamics. Doing a big circus show next year and we've all been reading up. Sara brought in a huge book, a Tashcen product, must be 14 inches wide by 20 tall, 2 inches thick. Call it the history of circus. It resides on a chair in Pegi's office and I spend breaks flipping pages. What amazes me, more than even the fact of circus, is the incredible rigging, like a full ship under full sail, with lives at risk. Pegi does a lot of rigging, for her Cirque, and I'm going to a performance next month. A lot of rigging in theater, and I've done my share, but nothing like trapeze. A friend made his living flying Peter Pans. Before my late onset Fear Of Heights I enjoyed climbing with ropes, always with ropes, free assents scare the shit out of me, always have. Get half way and have a panic attack. Still enjoy knots, tie them occasionally for pleasure. That sounds ambiguous. I'll leave it that way. There are new knots, still; a famous one invented (tied? discovered?) in the 1980's, I forget the name, that climbers use. Knots that release under load are important. I'd like to rig the Richards gallery while the circus show is downstairs, with a staircase or two; pulleys and lines going everywhere. If you find any pulleys at a yard sale, and they're only a couple of bucks, send them to me. Send them to the museum, care of me, Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, Ohio, they'll get here. Any size, I think about this, I've collected quite a few pulleys. I hadn't thought about another show, but I want to do one, a rigging show. The fact that it might have nubile young things swinging around has nothing to do with it. I'm only in it for the knots. Couldn't send, power being out, but I only lost a couple of lines, as I had just printed, to see what I was saying. Too hot too soon, high eighties, the green has darkened and thickened. Seems like I spent most of the day in the basement, so I probably did, consolidating, throwing some things away, clearing a path to the pedestal storage room, because between the pottery show upstairs, and the ODC (Ohio Designer Craftsmen) show downstairs, almost everything in both galleries will be 3-D and require peds. We'll use them all and then some. Much painting and repair, no doubt, it's been several years since we had them all in play. D away judging an art show, back after lunch and we share a few laughs, a couple of cigs with Sara. Discuss the near future, Pegi needs a new computer, next winter we're looking short-handed. More budget discussions on Tuesday, before D leaves for two weeks, earned vacation, I might sit in, I'm good with simple math. I don't much like Trish's new protege, Penny, who sits around a lot; she actually thought she could mop, used to much Damp Mop and left a scum. I tend to do things myself because I don't want to comment on the incompetence of others. I don't care what you can't do, don't want to be bothered; there are a great many things I can't do, and I don't want you to suffer them. Invade my wheelhouse at risk, get my dander up, even though I think there is no intent. Trish thought she was helping, to get one of these state, fed, supported people, to do some of my job. Fact is Penny's lazy, incompetent, and dresses badly; I have to clean up after her. But she gets the museum mail for Trish, and runs errands, I don't care, one way or the other. It empowers to feel you control another. Fact of life, what those of us, in The Ohio Post-Modern Study-Group learned. I would never point arrows, usually just assume I need to find a solution. Ignore everything and only speak when you're spoken to. A patois. I was listening, behind a pillar, fearing for my life, I caught the rhythm of the language, long before I caught meaning, I have to think about that, what I might have said. What you thought you were meaning. Read more...

Cosmetic

As in superficial attempt to cover something: road repairs destined for failure, painting rotten wood, apologizing when you don't mean it, sweeping the dirt you tracked into a corner, taping broken glass, the mercy fuck before you dump him. Speaking of road repair, an interesting failure on Mackletree. Late winter they repaired some serious holes (on the one hill I must go up to get out) with a mixture of gravel and hot tar, but the hole was cold and the patch didn't adhere, in the freeze-thaw cycle it pretty much worked out of its hole and disintegrated. The entire lower slope is a field of pea-gravel. Worse than Ice. Way to work this morning, I stopped at the lake, with tidbits for the geese; there are tables set out, here and there, with those charcoal grills mounted on pipes set in concrete. They're being used, again, and three crows were on three different grills, pecking at the charred matter. All animals, it seems, eat a little charcoal when they can; and this was particularly good charcoal, with some food value, being made from red meat and mysterious hot dogs. Arguing aesthetics with a friend who sails, exchanging comments on pulleys. He wanted a new set of straight grain teak for the blocks, I told him he was an idiot, that there was nothing better than American Elm because you can't split it; his fucking teak, the first time it's under a massive load, heaving-down tackles in careening, he'd want something like elm, or a hornbeam crotch. He thought I was being excessive. At Graduate Janitor School, in Finland, the local staff kept a nice wooden Bark, they sailed in any weather when the ice wasn't too thick. I made the mistake of going out with them a few times. Lord god, I've never been so sick, the candle sconces in gimbals, when the wind blew the hardest, would pivot so far the candles would char the bulkhead. Great way to spend your half-day off. Their pulley blocks were all burls, they'd never had one fail. Consider whaling ships and the heaving, the pressures at play. The pleasures at bay. Lunch at the pub, and it started slow, then a couple of groups came in, a bunch more singles and doubles, the place was busy, suddenly. Tommie and Dr. John came up behind us, I had lent her these three CD's to copy, because of the dulcimer, Farina and Mimi, and just as she's starting to say something, my favorite bar-maid knocks a glass of water, 16 ounces of water and ice, spilled in my lap. It's not a big deal, just water, I understand these things, accidents, I'm a janitor. I call for a towel, blot my crotch and laugh, better me than someone else. Imagine if I was a banker in a suit, how awkward it would be, but I'm not: just another Joe needing to air-dry after a mishap. Read more...

Aesthetically Impaired

You hear some really stupid things in an art museum, offset by the occasional brilliant aside. Most common dumb thing is -I could do that- which, of course, is precisely not true. First you have to have the idea, then you have to have your tool-kit together and know how to use it. Rarely does anything come without hard work and sacrifice. The nature of the beast. Sanded and painted, D on the road, collecting Functional Ceramics. The Main Street group that used our kitchen this past weekend left things cleaner than they were when they started. This has never happened to me before. I tie up a bag of food trash and put in a larger bag, because the garbage doesn't go out until Thursday, that's it. Check to see if everything is returned to the proper place, and it is, they are. A hillbilly couple were in the main gallery, I'd come out of the kitchen, from washing a paintbrush, going to get a chocolate Kisses from the dish Bev keeps stocked at the front desk. The couple had a boy-child, and the father had him shouldered, straddling his right shoulder, a hand pressing the kid to his head so he wouldn't fall. Didn't look safe to me, but the kid was very happy, beating daddy's head with his hands, and his clavicle with feet. They were all standing in front of Aminah's most abstract piece, cloth glued on paper, and they liked it, the flow, thought it looked like a creek. Aesthetics is where you find it. I'm pretty sure it's not comic books that become video games that become movies. Story is critical, no matter how abstracted. Remember reading those Barthleme stories in The New Yorker. The nature of reality changed, a 7.5 on the Ritcher, I never saw things the same after that. The nature of truth is called into question, the nature of fiction. Since janitors are assumed to be deaf, I'm in the unique position to hear what people say. I'm a cynic to begin with, and nothing I hear changes that, people out of work, birds waking me up in the middle of the night, fires. I'm perfectly prepared to talk about what I look at, the things that interest me. I really don't care about anything else. Read more...

Slightly Tetched

"What is man, when you come to think on him, but a minutely set ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?" Isak Dinesen Yard work yesterday and a goodly fire break cleared. Need to rake it out. Sling blade and clippers. Two sessions, one before and one after lunch, broke early so I could fix dinner. Pork medallions with a similar mushroom gravy to the masterpiece from last month, fried cream corn with chilies, forgot the cole-slaw. Had been drinking beer. Jacob is a strange young dude. Quite handsome, has the requisite angst, and beautiful girlfriends, seemed to be talking about a kind of blended spirituality, which I don't really care about one way or the other, unless it bases itself in the natural world. He was, though, a good talker, and seemed to listen in turn. Could be the first of several conversations. I need a new person to have conversations with, a hole in my life with B gone. Oddly, got an email from Lily, saying she felt bad. From the context I couldn't tell if she ill, in her body, or felt badly about what had happened, not that it matters, but I tend to look for meaning. Specific meaning. Not that I find it. Rereading MFK Fisher's "A Cordiall Water" today, the Dinesen quote came from there, damn, but she, Fisher, I thought at first then realized both, is/are (a) damned fine writer(s). You can build your own sentence, I sell parts, don't sell, exactly, I merely post. I try to not interfere. The ritual, the interface, allows something to happen. You're not looking, blind-sided, whatever collision, maybe that wakes you. A hard knock to the head. Pain is a wonderful thing, it bridges movement. By bridging it loads. I have you to consider, where you might be, traveling either East or West. I'm pretty much locked in here, proscribed, consider what I actually said, nothing I had uttered, I was quiet, I hid behind a tree. Talk about what comes back to haunt you. I have to go, but hold that thought. Fucking thunder storms. Read more...

Line Squalls

All day, an hour or two between them, intense rain cells moving through. The sound and smell are wonderful, occasional distant thunder, the wind in new leaves, the smell of green mixed with the fecund rotting duff. I should have at least cleaned the house a little. Jacob is going to sleep-over tomorrow, after yard work and dinner, but I listened and sniffed and read. I made a sinful sandwich today. The other day those little, expensive, tenderloin steaks, wrapped in bacon, in their cute little plastic containers, were on sale, and I grabbed a couple. I grilled one, with a nice butter / mushroom sauce, and a single serving of Potatoes Diane that I did in the toaster oven. I didn't mold it, just prepared it in a ramekin. This was a very good meal, something else, right, a nice horseradish coleslaw. Then today, I was up early, listening to the rain, I had a couple of basted eggs on toast with coffee, maybe 6 o'clock, then just read and thought and vegetated for eight hours, and was hungry again. Took the bacon off the second steak and fried it, then seared both sides of the steak, took it off the heat, let it rest, then sliced it in three/sixteenths slices, seared the sides of the slices for less than a minute each, assembled a sandwich on large toasted slices of a very good multi-grain. The first slice goes down, you slather it with a good spread, whatever your preference, either a grainy mustard, or a garlic horseradish thing, and then you cover it completely with tenderloin slices, right from the skillet, without draining, top it with the bacon, then slices of Vidalia onion and a token lettuce, top the whole thing with morels and butter, plop the lid on. This is the best sandwich that I've ever had in my life. Bumps the formerly first to second. There are probably going to be some hard feelings, my experience is that if disturb anything, hackles are raised. We're a very conservative state, and any attempt at change has a long row to hoe. There are no qualifications, I could be Supreme Court judge, and I might be a good one. I tend to look at things closely. What's required. These storms are fucking with my head. They come out of nowhere, and don't leave a trace. I'm suspicious you can call them up at will. Who are you? Read more...

Late

I'm listening to the blues. Then Clapton, "Layla", almost more than I can stand. Where the piano kicks in, the guitar over the top. Listen. Nothing prepares you for the real world. Bitch as you must. Hendrix. The wind whispers, somewhere the queen is sweeping. Dwayne. Dicky Betts. Then a weird solo. A squeeze box. Finally get back to sleep, awake at dawn. The last two days have been seriously funny, Sara back and everyone really enjoying their job at the museum. Took down the High School art show, stripped hardware, patched and filled. That narrow window when artichokes are cheapest and I buy a couple; a large one, with a hunk of bread, is a complete meal for me. I love them. Tonight's I'm having with a garlic mayo, a touch of horseradish, tomorrow just melted butter. I've made paper from the leaves, strong fibers that are easy to separate from the organic matter. With okra too, very easy paper to make; it's all about the fiber. The Vatican used papyrus until well into the 15th century, vellum was always a luxury, why it was so often palimpsest. Because of the line squalls we decide Sunday would be best for yard work, I'll pick Jacob up in town, so he doesn't have to get lost, take him back Monday. Probably won't write Sunday night, but I'll have a better fire-break. Rain, thunder, I'd better Save. Lost power, it never fails, and if the relay doesn't work, someone has to physically go to the sub-station, so it's either one minute or one hour. I lose power so often I know the drill. There may be a connection to the countless dead modems. If so, fine, modems are cheap, now that I can install them internally, $20, small price to pay. I've fried two hard drives and seven modems, two printers; the TV and the microwave have been dead for months. Electronics don't like being on the fringes of the grid. Summer time, I can't write in the afternoon because of brown-outs. I got a battery thing but it's dead too. I need to buy a new one, a UPS, but I'll have to wait until cash flow changes next January, no more child support, and they probably have to give me a small raise at the museum because I seem to be important. Smoke and mirrors, mostly, but I can hang a show. I seem to be good at other things that I don't actually think about. I relay information really well, evidently; I keep a tight focus on what's happening where, because I need to prepare and clean up after. I focus on the task at hand. It's difficult to gross me out, I've dealt with so much shit, there's a learning curve, you know, you learn to deal with things. Break out the Floor Prince and clean the mess. Those drops of oil, in the back hallway, no problem, but I don't know what they are, I sniff them but nothing is revealed. I think it's olive oil, the Main Street ladies sweeping in through the back door. I just don't want anyone to stumble and fall, I mop in a pattern because it pleases me, no other reason. Fuck your story, anything you can do, I could do better. Arrogant bastard, yes I am. I have to be careful, and I'm good at being careful, I cover my ass whenever I can. What you see is only the tip of the ice-berg. Read more...

Darkening Green

Surrounded by a darkening green. Big dark line squall in the weather direction this morning, shaved quickly and badly, made a double espresso, got down the hill before it rained. Almost to town the first drops hit like golf balls, didn't last long (never does when the raindrops are large) but intense. Over to Kentucky for a can of tobacco, then below the floodwall. Should be able to haul a load of wrack firewood next week, river dropping quickly. A dead dog as wrack, stank, I poked a hole in his belly, so the birds could clean things up. Serious janitor day, broke out the Geerpres Floor Prince, cleaned the building from stem to stern, stocked the bathrooms, cleaned the theater, cleaned the classroom. Big street event Saturday and the organizing group is using our kitchen to prepare food for massive grills that the hospital provides for these events. Great grills, I don't like gas, otherwise superb. Three feet by six feet, well-fitting full domed lids, smoke stack. Bentleys. Women are often surprised when I engage in food-talk with them, strangers I mean, people that know me aren't surprised by much. They're doing tenderloin ka-bobs and what sounds like a really nice spicy rice pilaf. A lot of nice fruit, a case of organic baby lettuce, bags of celery hearts. Reminds me, I have to rejuvenate the sauce this weekend, I'm getting sloppy, lax, the sauce is seven years old and rib-season is before us. There was an argument, no, not an argument, a discussion, between two of you that concerned me, and a third party sent me some of the emails. I was quoted, and the discussion was about an imagined line between fact and fiction. If you have to ask, maybe that was the point. I quoted MFK Fisher in the kitchen today, but no one was there: "But for a few hours, while I was writing about horny cats and aching bones and nosebleeds, and all that clutter of life, I was stripped of banality, and I wrote simply in my native tongue." There should be a play, this is a great role, four of them, actually, roles, because what I see is the story told in four stages, four women, each of them does twenty years, learning as they stumble. It's probably a film, I've started seeing that way. Even though I'm not a visual person, though, of course, I am. My language says what I am. Look at the last posts, see what equates. I have things to do. I walked in the burned zone this afternoon, it's amazing, the way things grow, after a fire. The green is so intense. There's a lesson to be learned. Thoreau said, in his journal, after he'd burned the woods, that fire was a natural thing; and it's true, that if you build a base of kindling, and hit it with a spark, it will flame. Then there's succession. The natural world is prepared for casuistry. Shit grows. Is actually enhanced. So green. I'm wordless. Read more...

The River

At the ugly jetty (broken pieces of concrete with dabs of concrete, truck clean-outs, holding it together) the river current, maybe 4 knots, was perfect for the standing whirlpool. It had trapped so much debris that it was almost a solid surface. Three crows landed and walked around on it. A tube of river fog was completely confined by the banks, maybe 100 feet tall. It must be spring, birds are fucking in the parking lot. May have enlisted paid help for some yard work, a good guy, former student of D's, needs gas money. I'm a little ahead, because the IRS, in their infinite wisdom, sent me more money than I figured. Can't understand the refund, since I file a 1040EZ, with one W2, one simple subtraction and look up the number in the tables. I did it twice. $150 extra: I told the kid I could give him $75 and dinner to help me for 6 or 7 hours. Support your local artist. I'm almost a month ahead on money and it's been 10 years since I could say that. It's been a haul. Without you, starting when I wrote "Notes From The Cistern", there is no way I could have made it. I'll never forget writing that book, it was such an intense time. By necessity, I couldn't afford a therapist, and I was all alone, so I could talk out loud. Which I did. Literally, my desk, my working surface, was a sheet of plywood on saw-horses. I had a VCR and one movie, it never occurred to me to rent another, I was living hand to mouth, so I watched "Independence Day" forty or fifty times. Watched is not the right word. I didn't really watch it but it was on. I do a very bad Will Smith imitation. Raining hard, I might have to leave. I've saved you. We'll meet later for coffee. No thunder yet but the leaves are turning inside out. Pegi and I talked about some of her kids at the Cirque, she reaches out, subsidizes those that can afford, she does everything, she's magic. But she can't change any particular set of circumstances. Beating your head against a wall doesn't make any difference, the absolutely frightening aspect of this, there's nothing you can do. A child is fully formed before three, anything else you're doing for yourself. Keep them home at night, make them study, right. You're doing the correct thing, staying a breast of the situation. Consider words that are used incorrectly, drives me crazy, but I can do it now, I found my voice. I call to that last hole in the ground, that last disturbance in a pile of leaves. What about that? Nothing means nothing, I read a book about zero recently, reread, actually, and thought about nothing. I came up with nothing new, but spent a delightful evening. Nothing is an interesting subject. Read more...

Battlefield

I write to keep from dying. Look at it another way, if I wasn't doing this, what would I be doing? There aren't that many options. You could go to a Red Sox's game, birth some goats, poke through some shit that drifted ashore, but ultimately you're left with yourself. I'm fine with that, an oddly Greek playing field. You look for the modern and you're confronted with Sappho, you dutifully do your reading and there's Emily. There's an irony here, but I won't go there. Looking at a letter from Cellini to Michelangelo, I parse out the language as if it were Latin, get out a few dictionaries, he seems to be bitching about not getting paid. I'm a terrible translator but I want to know what's being said. That's the way life is. Always on the verge of understanding. Making sense is tricky business. For instance, the other day I was vacuuming the theater, not a thought in my head, merely cleaning, and there was a sparkle that caught my eye. Pegi, knew that I had banned glitter and grapes, I knew that she knew she should pay attention to what I thought. One sparkle, it disturbed my sensibilities. I don't think so, but. What lingers as meaning. We're on the cusp here, I'm not sure it matters if you're on board. I have no choice in the matter, I do what I must, What seemed to be real became tangible. Right, I can deal with this. Read more...

Cast Iron

My friend Kim, in Florida, works cast iron, makes molds, pours molten metal. In the mail from him today was a truly lovely cast iron skillet. I cook almost entirely in cast iron, have quite the collection (I have four corn-stick pans) but nothing like this. The edges are decorative, almost like a flower unfolding. Never imagined such a thing. I'm curing it now, started a small fire in the cookstove, nearly filled it with oil, will leave it in the over overnight. Found a lid that fits down inside it nicely, so it will become my basted egg skillet. My favorite way of frying eggs, pat of butter, two eggs, a scant teaspoon of vermouth, put the lid on, perfect. I had been using a six-inch skillet, but it was slightly too large, and this is a five-inch. The handle is perfect shaped and grooved to fit the hand. Just counted, this skillet brings my total cast-iron cooking vessels to 20. The largest two are an oval pan, with a lid that doubles as a griddle, long enough to cook an entire pork loin, 18 inches, and a lidded casserole that's six quarts. Another new piece I found recently in an abandoned shack, needs some work, but it's a four quart and there was no lid, ten inch diameter, and I found a tight-fitting pyrex lid at the Goodwill for a dollar. Oh, and the new skillet is right-handed; pour-spouts, right and left sides. Bad rusty cast iron you clean in a lye solution, not too strong, then scrub like hell and file off things if you need to. Sand-blasting is good, with ground walnut shells; for cookware, then I like to treat the outside in a separate step, wipe on oil, no dribbles, then overnight in the oven, low temp, on a rack above a throw-away pie tin. One could, I suppose, combine the last two steps, but I've always found it difficult to be both outside and inside at the same time. I have friends that swear it's possible. But being a doubting Thomas, I try and stick to one thing at a time. Chansons de geste, Roland specifically, because there hadn't been anything other than classics that had been copied up until then. This is the beginning of creative writing, if you don't count the Greeks and Romans, but you know what I mean, the modern leap, this was 1180, I think, don't trust me for dates. Kim had sent me an email, -not seasoned, open in the presence of others- I knew it was either a very special spoon or a piece of cast-iron. He'd build me a brick wall, if I ask him, bricks better than anyone I've actually seen, there's almost a narrative line to the coursing. When I hefted the package, I knew it was iron. Hey. I know the difference between wood and iron. It strikes me suddenly, I actually do know the difference. I don't want a metal, I will not appear, I'll send someone else. Most people want to be remembered, a tombstone that would be, not what actually happened. Granted, I watch this from the woods, still, the separation might be important. TImes I don't know what I want, even though I think about this often. Where am I in all this. Merely another proud, you, responding


Tom





ming.. I have an idea. Read more...

War Stories

Pretty sure the damage isn't serious but my shoulder hurts. The book situation approaches critical, piles are ready to topple. The moon, waning. Took the truck down to the ford, back and forth through the water to clean the undercarriage. Mud accumulates in the wheel wells and makes steering awkward. A noise outside I have to address, clearly an animal, I need to pee anyway, another rabid coon working the compost pile. I kill it with a single blow of the shovel. Red eyes in the flashlight beam look like lasers. I don't want to kill it, but I do, because I go outside in the dark often, to look at the moon, to pee, to watch an approaching storm, and one thing I don't need is a rabid coon latched onto my leg. Coming back inside, I need a drink and a smoke, the rush has wakened me completely. I turn on the radio for company and there's a pure voice, no vibrato, slightly British, probably Australian, and she's really good, I don't catch her name but I'd recognize it if I ever heard it again. Life is that way, something heard but not identified, a mystery. What you don't know greatly exceeds what you know. Fuck inspiration, mostly it's just work, turning the compost pile, digging a post hole; unless you're Mr. Hefner, you just have to get out of bed. The next thing. Never trust anyone who doesn't have something to do. I mean that, I don't trust anyone who doesn't have time for me. Almost everything is bullshit. What we base our life on, mostly ephemeral crap. At the heart of it, is that it's difficult to believe anything. I can look closely, my salvation, at a leaf emerging, and forget everything else. The Greater Question is put at bay, because these beautiful miniature flowers exist. It might be that I'm merely distracted. I don't think so, but you never know. The connection between you and me. Is it a real thing? Amazing grace. Or just another fractal. I believe this: I'm a janitor and I mop. I use a Gearpres Floor Prince and a heavy mop-head. I'm serious about this. Listen, I can't say I miss you when you're gone. Read more...

Catching Up

Flagrant lie. I know I'll never catch up, not completely. Too many books to read, pages to write. Yard work, clipping, again, until my shoulders cramp. The new rake is a superior tool, stout enough for me to exert the necessary pressure. Quick trip to town to do the laundry, stop at the library, they called, my Inter-Library books were in. Thoreau's poetry, which is actually fairly dreadful, a book of early maps, a book on bridge failures (it's always stress), and a history of what various cultures use to mop floors. Left-overs for dinner so I can read for several hours at the island, grazing, in both regards, for sustenance. My kind of party. I keep bookmarks in my tee-shirt pocket, make a small pencil dot at the passage I want to read again later, leave a bookmark. Jot notes on index cards, get other books, to join the party. Cleaning up after these bookfests is a pain in the ass, putting books away is not really a job you want to employ me to do. I tend to stop and read a lot. Often, I'll stop and roll a smoke, get a drink, and settle right into my reading spot on the sofa. Not a good sign if you're interested in productivity. I'm a poor bet, in that regard, at any rate, except that I pull my weight at the museum. This has to be the best last job anyone ever had. It's a perfect fit. That I'd end up wearing white cotton gloves, moving very carefully, hanging a painting worth half a million. Then, later, repairing the damage done in hanging the painting. It's perfect for my tool-kit. This yard-work I'm not so sure about, but the fire scared the shit out of me, and I want a green buffer. I saw what grass could do to a ground fire. I stopped today, coming back in, and looked closely at the burnt-over ground for the first time. Really interesting. Dirt must be a great insulator because things are already emerging, dock, and even trillium. The only trees that burned were dead, late April, the sap was up, no way a ground fire could burn a living tree, would have to boil off all the sap first, and that wouldn't be possible, in the few short minutes a ground fire was around. Realize I'm looking at the nature of fire. It's a natural thing, this incredible phenomenon. Fire and flood are nature's way of handling things. Whoever that British guy is, is correct, It's all an integrated system. The Polar bears and the butterflies, I'll assume, you'd agree. Nod, if you know what I talking about. Listen, it's still soft green, anything can happen. He might pull it out of his ass. Maybe everything is for naught. I'm on salary, is there a problem here? A detective agent interviews me, I don't seem, I merely am. What the fuck. Read more...

Things Conspire

I meant to just go to sleep. Goddamn goat-suckers got me up again. I had to pee and the light was wrong, moon behind cloud bank. Started thinking about what Thoreau said, February 8, 1841, about his Journals: -I bend the twig and write my prayers on it, then letting it go, the bough springs up, shows the scrawl to heaven.- Then again on August 4, 1841, Wednesday: -My pen is a lever which, in proportion the near end stirs me further within, the further end reaches to a greater depth in the reader.- I don't know what I'm saying. Dave Matthews says it better, Steven does, or Skip. I work with a limited vocabulary. Crossing boundaries is easier late at night, wearing black, slipping from shadows. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems. The politics of pleasure. A lubricated experience. Roy Orbison late at night, or something, a night-hawk. Occasionally I can project exactly what the next song will be. It used to scare me, but now I accept it as a matter of course. Sailing with the wind. Sure has been a long hard ride. Dylan. Everyone was there to meet me, when I stepped inside. The things of the world conspire to keep you involved, a banjo solo, Bela Fleck. Pack it up, sleep a while, beat it on down the line, the things I could tell you. We're right on time, water to wine. The soup is sublime. Yeah, right. Everything is perfect. I was below the floodwall and everything was collected in the usual eddies, I nodded, of course, it would be. No indignation, just the flow. I want to call Glenn but it's like three in the morning and I can't. There are limits. No one will ever love you for your honesty, but that doesn't mean you're not a nice person. The Indigo Girls. Then some serious blues. John Lee. Black Snake. I'll talk with you later. I hear these voices, soprano, wavering, they cut to the heart of me. A cello, that sustained note, you weep, how could you not? What does it mean? She moans, is that this thing or the next? Take it easy, move on down the line. You're right on the money, a tenor sax would be good here, maybe a soft female voice. Someone to scratch your back. Tried and true. Slept awhile, woke in the sweats of a dream, not pleasant, the scaffolding was falling. Big breakfast and yard work. Clipped until I cramped, collected a few morels. Pork tenderloin medallions, morel gravy, fried creamed corn with chilies. Very good meal. Whiskey and a smoke, back to you. The most enjoyable two to four hours I spend every day is writing you. I enjoy the four hours of reading too, it kindly primes the pump. Rereading a large format book, between my Thoreau sessions, that I refound buried beneath the phone books: The Art Of Written Forms. Excellent history of writing. My old friend Poggio, with samples of his work, and Niccolo Niccoli, also with samples, and we start seeing true cursive, where the pen is not lifted, and the italic is born. Personality starts to influence style. There are extant letters from Cellini to Michelangelo. They seem jotted off, real handwriting, not something carved in stone. Paper was, of course, the problem, that and illiteracy. I've made a lot of paper and known a lot of illiterate people, go figure. Making paper is so cool, it's one of the best things I know how to do, teaching someone to read ranks above that. That moment when someone can see a word, conceive an image, place in a context, is magic. Language is magic. That we understand each other mostly. Read more...

One More

Someplace out there, in the field, I came on an artifact, we argued until we just threw coins at a line, to decide who won. Beware what you believe, bowers up in smoke, it can always go up in smoke. History is a fiction. Everything is hidden, and what you think you know is false. I can sleep on the sofa, I'd rather know, I'd rather know than not know. Someone asked me, recently, about belief, and I nearly choked. I believe everything and nothing, a kind of balance I achieve with an umbrella and natural grace. I've never been religious, more erratic than anything else. Usually I'm listening to something you can't hear unless you listen closely. I've paid for this position, bought my seat, I'm here because I want to be here. How far do you want to go? I'll give you two for one tomorrow. Meaning explodes. My only advice is to poke the puddles, see how deep they are. You might drive in some saplings, to mark the channel, or just breathe a sigh of relief. Poggio devoted his whole life to letters, gave us the lower case around 1400. There are thousands of other examples, but Poggio always interested me. His hand was beautiful, some pages of Cicero are heart-stopping, where we see both his lower case and his love of classical capitals. His Sylloge from 1429 is an intense study of inscription letters. Quite the sidetrack, but I needed a break from Thoreau. Walden is where he finally stopping ripping pages out of his Journals and starting copying-out passages. A brilliant piece of writing is his study of the slow erosion on the slopes of the raised train bed. It's model and modern writing. I read it over three or four times; it's a sonata, a tone-poem. The way he describes texture and color are worthy of Emily. Any man who befriends a fox is a friend of mine. And that almost set-piece about almost befriending a woodchuck is fine writing; and someplace in the travel writing, a lecture that went into Maine Woods, ends with the line: -O make haste, ye gods, with your wind and rains, and start the jam before it rots- strikes me as Melvilleian. Is that a word? Do you leave out that last e? It would look better without it. I don't know the rule. I think the rule is that you drop the e. So it would strike me as Melvillian, which sounds doubly bad. Double, you see, loses the e. Our doctor, and he was, in Mississippi, was Mal Riddle, he enjoyed sewing me up, and delivered my older daughter. His name meant 'bad joke' and I kidded him about that, he'd jab me with the needle. It's good to have a working relationship, even if you can't handle something on the personal front. I relate fine with the people at work, can't wait for Sara to get back, so we can talk, but I do require lots of time to myself. 50% leaf-out, light is become shafted. Oh shit, I thought, I should keep a journal: then realized I did. Was going to leave for Florida tomorrow, but my truck is broke, something in the suspension, front end; my driveway eats front ends. Maybe I can get down there after D and the bride get back from the outer banks. I hate to leave the house because I'll be robbed again. And the natural world demands attention. The leaves, now, are a soft green and pliable, bend before the wind, not at all like their October self, rigid, or almost a kite. In acorns is the salvation of the world. I was privy to a vision, it showed these oak leaves floating . Maybe it was a dream. Uncle Vernon was calling to me, everything was dying, it's hard to escape the point. A tenth of an inch a foot is more than enough, shit flows downhill. A static liquid. Catsup, or some restaurant sauce. I have to go, the wind is blowing hard, we should both think about intention. I swear I'm innocent, no matter what anyone says. I merely observed a sequence of events, you and your people. I don't have a problem with that, you and my boss, whatever the hell we mean. I post a note later, nothing matches. Listen, meaning is suspect. I don't say. Read more...

Another Story

I don't know how large the floodplain is, where the Scioto comes into the Ohio, hundreds of acres, maybe thousands and it is all flooded, though, technically, the Ohio is supposed to crest eight feet below true flood. Splitting hairs at that point where the water starts invading houses. Most of this bottom is farmed in soybeans, some feed corn, and as in the deltas of long ago, when we allowed the rivers to flood and spread another layer of silt, this farmland floods yearly, several times. Seems like a good thing, natural, green, but this is Scioto and Ohio (two drainage ditches) silt and I wonder how anything can grow. What is the first thing they plant in those newly impounded areas they where they reclaim land from the North Sea? There are big red maple trees that grow with their feet in the river, but we're not supposed to swim in it, and only eat the fish once a month. Yet there are bottom feeding catfish, monsters, that live there, 50, 60 pounds, and they've got to be old. This is all a mystery to me. I'm a little involved learning the chemistry necessary to fathom why some things live, it's all about understanding how an organism deals with poison. Also true in the workplace. A crew is an organism. The one house-building job, a house I had designed, that I quit, was because the owner's fourth husband was trying to second-guess me. Don't think I haven't thought it through. I used some boards in the entry, they had sneaker marks on them, I knew I could get shed to them, I intended to finish the entry bright, a clear finish on the boards. So I knew I'd be sanding, superficial marks meant nothing to me. I can sand and listen to the Cello Suites forever. Revealing grain. Relying on faith, is really all you have to go on, and this bastard, the fourth husband, has hired a crew to take down my work. I nod, and don't say a word, you can only imagine how hard this was for me, what I could have said, the scaffolding was rented and I made him sign over responsibility. As I remember, I went home, cooked an ox-tail, and drank a bottle of scotch.

Tom

Worse than that, I ate a few slices of stinky cheese, ate a can of baked beans, and I'm farting like a sailor. Nothing prepares you for this. Theatrical preparation is best, I think, because you never know what's going to happen. The bottom of the food-chain, where you find yourself, consider why you are there. My real world is fleeting, did she enjoy that dish? I could fart on key, but it's not electronic. Read more...

Frustration

I'm an easy going guy. Hard to rile, quick to settle disputes. At work today, I couldn't find the vacuum. I always put it back in the same place, but other people tend to leave it a couple of other places. Checked all the places, no vacuum. Went and asked everyone if they knew where it was. No. Not everyone is there, which means one of the missing might have left it somewhere. I go to the basement, search everywhere, then work my way up through the first, second and third floors, nothing, work my way back down three floors and the basement, looking in interesting and extremely unlikely corners and closets. Trisa, finally remembers she used it (!) before the Chopin Thing Sunday night and it's behind the hall door. It's not. Lunch time. I've been looking for the vacuum over two hours. Go to lunch, flirt with the bar-maid, back to the museum. D's busy with an Arts Council guy, selecting pieces from our permanent collection to hang in the Governor's mansion. At this point I've made dowsing rods from a couple of coat hangers and I'm walking slowly through the building, people are looking at strangely, and I'm muttering. I could be hired out as an eccentric. Kotzwinkle wrote a great story about an eccentric rented by a British Lord, who proceeded to undermine the mansion and blow up the grounds. Great story. Pegi and Trisa have taken a late lunch, working on a grant proposal, and I finally sink into a chair at the other end of the table. Pegi asks what's wrong, and I say that I still can't find the fucking vacuum cleaner. Trisa turns beet red and spits out a mouthful of chips, not a pretty sight, sputters that the damned thing is behind the curtain. I know immediately what she means, where the Orick is hidden. I had even thought about it, but disregarded the thought, why would you hide a vacuum there? The drape, a lovely velour D got at a High School going of business sale is right against the back wall of the theater, makes the acoustics barely acceptable and kills light. Black velour is a wonderful thing, it deceives the eye. I could tell stories, but I'm trying to report, here, on a sequence of actions. It lays against the wall, but there is enormous fullness, you could hide anything there, the Orick is not even a bleep, my wands never wavered. But, of course, it is there, and I'm grateful I found it, not upset, but Pegi thinks I should probably tie Trisa up and tickle her with a turkey feather until she pees her pants. I'm not a vindictive guy, sometimes I wish I could be, track down that mother-fucker that stole 1500 pages of my work, and shoot him in the foot, so he'd limp forever. A great moon, just coming into sight-lines, all these new leaves do is obscure things, I start almost seeing clearing, then the pixels blur and the image disappears. The story of my life. I think I have things in focus, but they're not, it's a false positive or something. What I thought I was talking about was quite simple, then it turns out we're speaking different languages and we actually thought we were communicating. I'm sure of this, though, in the original. You'd have to laugh. Translation is such an artificial art. I read them because language is not a gift for me, I struggle with meaning, the nuance, really, I'm a simple guy. Read more...

Big Rains

Line squalls, some quite intense. The Scioto River has slipped its banks, the Ohio in spate. Must get below the floodwall tomorrow. Water up to the bottom of the window at the concession stand at the dirt track, which is high enough to flow over the exit from the track and water then pours through and fills the raceway. A lot of water, and several more days of rain forecast. Route 104 flooded. Another lovely sign, a real one this time, in a picture from Cape Cod, circa 1910, NO EELS TODAY. I gigged eels through the ice one winter on the Cape, house-sitting at a place actually called Lucy's Crotch; filled a freezer, then found that eels gigged in winter, when they were quasi-hibernating in the mud, always tasted like mud. Fed the rest to a harbor seal I befriended, who was wintering under my dock. Seals are beautiful animals, those Jersey cow eyes. I'd never been close to a one before, she (a yearling female) never let me touch her but I could feed her from my hand. Smart animals. I gave her 6 inch sections of skinned eel, frozen, and after the first couple, she would just set it aside and stare at me for a few minutes, like I was supposed to put it in the microwave or something, thaw the damn thing for her. I was writing a very bad novel at the time, which I burned, and driving a High School art teacher to and from work (she had lost her license by dint of having four wrecks in three weeks) and I was sitting pretty: a great house that the owners needed to keep heated, a job that required me to be functional for a half-hour in the morning, and a half-hour in the afternoon, a cat, and a seal. I was raising my own hybrid openly then, because no one knew what it was, and I was stoned a lot. I worked hard, took long walks on the beach, but I had no experience, nothing to say. The novel was a conceit. I remember what I thought I was doing, I could probably do it now, I hadn't even set my sights very high. A fairly simple story, coming of age. Things happen, suddenly you confront the demon, you compromise, you settle down. Draining the cubes, it's time for another. This green infringing world, that I find myself in, demands my attention. From the hermit's point of view, living alone was never really an option, who could imagine that? our every impulse is to be with other. If you live alone, it's the only reason to clean house. That someone else sees what you are, a Clean Boy 550, or my Geerpres Floor Prince, which I cuddle, the best wringer I've ever known, however they see you. I'm feeling frog-like, with all this rain, I won't croak, despite your water-boarding techniques. I'm equally adrift wherever I find myself. I need a cave. Read more...

Backwater Rising

Minor floods require just a nod, yes, the water is high, you wear boots or get your feet wet, watch where you step. I've got a knot in my shoulder, from mopping. I use a 28 ounce head, depend on a kind of perpetual movement to keep things going, you stop, everything is lost. Need to get below the floodwall tomorrow, the water is high. Boone Coleman's fields are flooded. The racetrack is awash. The floodplain is at play. Begs the question, where does the dirt go? Always downstream. What made the Nile basin so fertile for so long before Aswan. Why dams fail. Silt. Fines. Eventually dirt wins. Maybe twenty dam/locks on the Ohio but they've learned, the Army Corp, give them credit, they know they have to allow local flooding, and the river deposits. There's a fractal edge to local geography, defined by landforms you wouldn't notice otherwise, the way a road berm becomes a barrier. A bottom pasture becomes swamp. I can watch this from my perch, not unlike that noisy crow perched over the outhouse, I may have to shoot that bastard, he's become way too familiar, he knows when I void my bowels and sings scratchy songs from the fifty's. I'm upset by the turn of events, wishing things to be otherwise, I understand they're not, make what adjustments I can. What flies in your face. I have to turn the music off. I don't want to be mad, but I am. Certain things upset me and I'm pissed by the action of others. In a perfect world there wouldn't be these Whip-Poor-Wills, but there they are, resplendent. Usually I roll a smoke and smile. Sometimes I wonder why I'm here, in place merely to notice a bird. I honestly don't know, I dig at it, struggle toward definition, but I don't know. Maybe it's enough that I make you laugh. Maybe that's the be-all and end-all. However you respond is the most important thing.

Tom

I apologize, I've been reading way too much Thoreau.
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Off-key

"It takes awhile before / you can step over inert / bodies and go ahead with / what you were trying to do." Sign as art in the new Art In America. Done just the way I was going to do an installation of signs, vinyl signage on a metal sign blank. Excellent. Made some really spicy salsa to have on fried cornmeal mush, you can't just have morel duxelles at every meal. They do, however, make a wonderful omelet, which you can have with the cornmeal mush and salsa. I stuffed some lovely smallish morels with goat cheese, heated them through in the toaster-oven; you need to blanch the morels first, and dry thoroughly. Sara sent a Dining section of the NY Times with a recipe for pork loin, with braised asparagus and mushrooms, I'll use a tenderloin instead, since I live alone, grill the meat, slightly blackened, served with a red currant sauce. I'm sorry I can't be there more often, for my daughters, in time I hope they'll understand that I was told to leave, that I love them nonetheless. Phone calls. Worked my ass off today, cleaning some places that had never been cleaned, 10 feet of rubber mat that stretches in front of the kitchen sink and counter, the urinal in the men's room, the box, in the ladies' room where they deposit sanitary napkins and tampax. Tampax tubes are common wrack. Most men would never know that there was usually a metal box, attached to the wall, in many public ladies' rooms, for the disposal of sanitary products. Eventually, these need cleaning. There was a course, at Janitor College, taught by a battle-axe, one of the first union females, that was required. Sanitary Disposal. It assumed we knew nothing about women, being mostly dumb males, and for the most part they were probably correct. Who knew you could bleed so much. That we would need to address the smell. I like the smell, actually, menstrual blood, it's funky; but the public needs protected, so I disinfect the box and put a vial of patchouli behind the toilet. A child of the sixties. Next thing you know I'll be pushing little balls of mercury across the floor. Been there, done that. Not a shattered thermometer but merely something we did, to pass the time, while we listening to the Goldberg Variations. I love Glenn Gould humming in the background, makes it real for me. Off-key and slightly out of step, where I usually find myself, frankly bewieldered. It's confusing, the world, major league curve balls, all that shit. Thoreau was correct. Lead with your heart. Read more...

Yard Work

Yard is a joke, I really don't have a yard, I have a clearing in the woods, still, good to get started. Clippers and sling-blade. So much rain the moisture content in the stalks of things ruins an old set of clothes. I turn green, finally have to come in and bathe. Late afternoon I make a vat of Shrimp Fried Rice, enough for several days and a sample for Pegi at the museum. I like taking her food, she raves, a little praise goes a long way. Fox at the compost pile. I watched pretty closely, meaning I glanced occasionally. She liked the smoked jowl I cooked the butter beans with, all that fat so early in the spring, probably a good thing for her, also the salt. She's losing her winter coat. I'd like a picture of her, but I don't take pictures, which I have always found odd about myself. Always been around photographers, but I have no record of myself or any of the things or houses I've built. I don't even know how many houses I've built, maybe two dozen; I can't remember some places I've lived, others are just a blur, an out of focus snapshot. An interesting gall on one sumac stem, looked, and colored like an onion dome Greek Orthodox church. I sliced it open and there were two worms, both of whom I'd sliced in two. They had taken over the cambium layer, routed it through their gall, so they could take whatever it was, the nutrients. I don't know what they are, if they become something else or not, my knowledge of galls is nonexistent, I only know what to call one, what they look like. I've sliced a lot of them open, there're always worms inside, so I take that as a rule: most galls are caused by worms. I talk with my older daughter and she wants me there, for graduation from college, and her sister's graduation from High School, next May, and I can agree to that, but the odds of me getting to her final project directing a main stage play, in February, is more problematic, there'll be weather to consider, all that shit. I could crawl there, with a bison robe, under threat of freezing to death, and probably survive. Neither here nor there, she wants me, at a point, where she can direct her anger, why she really called. Read more...

Cool Rain

Reading a history of the Ohio Valley, history is mostly a bunch of books, reduced to a bunch of books, you need to do a lot of cross-checking to get even close to the thing itself. I remember taking American History in the 9th or 10th grade and the teacher was the baseball coach and dumber than a rock. First time I knew more about a subject than the teacher. My parents had gotten me a set of encyclopedias and I pretty much read them, I knew he was wrong on several important issues. He was not happy with me, I had to quit baseball. Broke my Dad's heart. I was a good baseball player, any position, even catching, but, then, the catcher calls the show. Melancholy day, rain, much cooler, I talked to my Mom and they want me down there, got to figure out a way to make it happen. I hate to leave the house, know I'll get robbed again, and I hate being away from what I do; I'll go, of course, and I'll enjoy myself with my family, but it will be exhausting. On the other hand, a spring trip would sure get the burned smell out of the truck; if I was still out west, I'd fumigate the damned thing with a burning bunch of sage. Shit closes down around you, things conspire, I figure I'm on thin ice for a while. Impending deaths, biblical fires, important friendships up in smoke, the very structure of things is changed. I'm pretty sure I can handle this, I've seen other people do it, so I know it can be done. That should be enough. I'm usually smart enough to figure things out * (that sign now means that I thought about something but forgot what it was) and can muddle along. Not that this is any great talent, but it does come in handy, when you might not want to be noticed. I shuffle mostly, try to stay below the radar, open doors, help old ladies across the street. I disavow any knowledge, I know as close to nothing as it is possible to know. * A certain braggadocio, cocky, in that Ivy-League way, a whole different nest of green-briar. There are still ways that I can talk about the flow, but I have to be careful, not to offend. Life is that dance, where, unless you're Skip, you mostly try to not offend. He throws, either up or down, I'm undecided, a gauntlet, those pesky gloves, and says, no, wait, you have to look at this too. Reciprocity is a great thing, it keeps you on your toes. I refuse to comment on Pegi's student, Heather, doing a bobbly-butt in the hallway. Looked good to me. I don't know what the message was. Nothing seems the same, maybe this world is a shadow, a mere reflection. Read more...

Mackletree

Phone's out, probably some burned snag on Mackletree, I have to SAVE and SEND later. Hard rain falling gets me up, checking for leaks, putting out a bucket to collect some water. The frogs are loud. A single Whip-O-Will braves the weather. I made a great dish tonight. Needed some bacon fat, used the last of the pint I brought from Florida at Xmas, so I bought a pound, fried some with a stinky cheese omelet for brunch, then collected a few morels during a lull. I had to dry them on brown paper sacks, then chopped them and cooked with some scallions in the hot bacon fat. Two people this past week had mentioned stuffing mushrooms and some stuffers were remaindered. Mushrooms stuffed with mushrooms, I should have thought of this before, a heart-stopping testament to improvisation. I pretended I was at a cocktail party, made some cucumber sandwiches. Ended up getting quite tight and talking with someone I didn't know about the first few seconds of the Big Bang. Actually, no one was there, I was talking with myself, but it was a real conversation, I took parts. Engaging life fully, as Thoreau would have it. Today he was reminding me of "Works And Days", Hesiod, gnomic. What is that crap that gathers in the corner of your eye? Probably dust, gathered into an eddy by fluid, whatever that liquid your eye produces. Glenn's correct, you know, it's all drainage. I was driving home the other day, minding my own business, which probably translates as spaced out; driving slowly, staring at the burned out zone, east side of Mackletree, and there was a place, I stopped, where a dozer had cut a break right up the hillside. An ugly but necessary scar, and it was raining hard, I was worried about getting up the driveway, but what caught my eye, was the riverlet coming down the cut. I was watching a gully form, right in front of me, something that would exist as a land-form long after I'm gone. A random bit of terra-forming. Geography is a live event. Route 50, going west, that section of Tall-Grass Prairie in Kansas. Everything relates to everything else. the older I get. I was thinking about something today, then forgot what it was, found myself staring at an iris. That's life, I thought, staring at one thing and thinking about another. Really, when you think about it. The Fire of 09. Repercussions, what happens as a product of. I'm sure thinking about this, what happens next, how could I not? It seems there are things we don't talk about, certain private things, Skip talks about them, Steven sometimes, I give them a passing notice. It isn't so much what we talk about as the way we say it. Take the sonnet, it's fourteen lines, there's a scheme but no rules, really, put that in the hands of a magician. Blend in a really good single-malt, one less peaty, a couple of shots, then ask them what they think they mean. My bet is they get all weepy and talk about their childhood. I'm a hard-assed realist, when it comes down to it, I respect nothing that hasn't been through a fire. Mackletree explodes. Read more...

Hermitical Inclinations

Quiet day reading, needing time to recover from the fire, rest my worried brain. "Best Short Stories, 2005" which I find I had missed, some good ones. Collect a few morels, dine twice with duxelles on fried corn-meal mush. Eat a cold can of beans right from the can. I eat the duxelles and polenta right from the pan. No mediation. Toke, and drift through the afternoon, thinking about hermits I've known, probably more than my share, given the nature of hermits. But there is also the phenomena of urban hermits, and we should include them in the count, but of the class of pure hermits, I've known three, one on Cape Cod, one in Colorado, and one in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The one in Michigan I discovered when I was hunting morels, an odd confrontation, or rather, another odd confrontation, I have a history of these, I liken them to what I think a migraine headache must be like. I walking working my way through a sea of huge pine stumps (twelve feet across) with my head down, looking closely at the ground, and I was suddenly looking at what had formerly been a pair of shoes, and was now serving that function only grudgingly. I've always worn sword-fishing hats, with long brims, to serve as blinders, when I'm hunting mushrooms, helps focus the field of view. Also I look like a dork and have a crick in my neck, as I slowly lift my head what I see, first, are some impossibly strained pants and the a flannel shirt missing most of its buttons and a jean jacket without sleeves. I was holding a knife, a really nice Gerber, that I use to cut the mushrooms right where they enter the ground, I'm good at this, I seldom have to wipe off any dirt, but I didn't want to appear as a threat, so I slowly, plain-sight, folded the knife and put it in my pocket. He was a withered old coot, much like me now, I wondered what had drawn him thus. He needed to talk. For whatever reason, the various influences, I'm a good listener. I tend to hear what's being said. I think I do. Maybe I don't understand anything, a missing gene or something, a disorder we don't see that often. He invited me to his cave. I'm a pragmatist, generally, so I make sense of where I find myself. Have you ever known a hermit? Of course I went to his cave, how many chances like this you going to have? He lived like a saint. Invited me to his cave and brewed an undrinkable tea from local weeds. I thought he was crazy, I thought all the hermits I've known, where they trying to go, what that meant. I had lured myself way deep in a conversation I didn't want to have, where we talked about things, you and me, frankly, what I want is to write at there next level, where there isn't doubt. The impossible is merely more difficult. Come on, we do this all the time. Read more...

Almost Always

The sound of wind through leaves has always interested me. Fishing, as a kid, Dad, an old sailor, would always anchor our small fishing boat in the lee of some trees when it was windy. Hot days on the river, Julington River, a tributary of the St. Johns, two rivers, actually, and Clark's Fish Camp was where they converged, so we could fish a lot of water, and we knew it well, knew where the spawning beds were, had maybe a dozen private spots and almost always caught fish. Manatees, alligators, snakes, saw my first bear there, on the peninsula, a swampy tangle, that threaded between the rivers. We where stake-poled, still-fishing for blue-gill, and he came right down to the water's edge; we were fifteen feet out, he looked at us, we looked at him, he wandered away. I early on learned the lesson of the benign encounter, confrontation is always a last resort. Sublimation, is the word Neal asked for years ago, I finally remembered, it's also called evapo-transpiration, I think. That process whereby something skips a step. From ice to vapor, without ever being a liquid, why clothes can dry frozen. But I was talking about the wind, the lee of, and we'd hear the gusts coming, and then they'd hit the trees at our back, it's a rush. I was addicted from the beginning. My parents didn't listen to music, at all, nothing I remember, then I find myself doing musicals, then serious opera, and I'm not a sound person. I'm a visual, smell person, not a sound person. It's May Day, we should be pulling our rockets through the square. Instead D struggles with a design, and there's an event no one warned me about. I pull out the union papers, oh, fuck, there are no union papers, but I'm pretty sure I asked at the last staff meeting if there was anything coming up. Left field. We're fine, because I understand this situation, I dished it off to Trish and told her to just put it on the calendar. Something that needed to be done. Everyone else's agenda, I can't speak. He's on the other line. Listen. Maybe we should integrate something. I thought what he was saying referred to a particular knot. Imagine the confusion., he was talking about something else, something probably more private, and you didn't understand he was being honest, for once, that nothing couldn't be taken away, look at the numbers, the distribution. Eventually they'll call ii the Bridwell Curve, something that leads nowhere. I accept that, what I am, a Trojan horse, what you thought you understood. What I thought you heard. Spare me. I rise merely above the plain, forgive me, I don't undrerstand
then the language enjambs. I need to go to sleep but we could talk later. Let's stay in touch. Read more...