Board Meeting

I was so pissed about dirty dishes at the museum (ok, we all get petty) that I got up at 5, falling temps, cleaned and reconditioned 3 cast iron skillets that have lived the summer on the stove, put away the hot plate, cleaned and degreased the cookstove top, cleaned the smoke jacket (that space around the oven where the hot air flows, carrying ash), knocked down the stove pipe, vacuumed the mess, washed my hair, shaved and still got to work at 7:30 to clean the kitchen there. Trish is one of those people, and they are legion, that put everything off to the last minute, and I can't live that way. I knew I needed to spend the work-day on the Circus Show, so I had to go in early to clean the kitchen. Vented to Tammy, about why I was upset, then calmed and opened the shipment from Cleveland. Some very good stuff, Sara has almost over-borrowed and we have more than a show, we have a circus explosion. James frames an amazing 21 side-show postcards, I uncrate, unwrap, the last pieces and spread them around. Sara wanders around. This is the point, the moment. There's a show here, but we haven't found it yet, it's spread about the walls. She tells me, late in the afternoon, what some of her ideas are, and I know that everything will be moved at least once tomorrow, and I look forward to that, as the show comes together. There's all this stuff, paintings and posters and diaramas and banners, and it must be brought into a narrative line. No small task. And we're setting up for the annual Board Meeting dinner up in the Richard's gallery and the ladies are concerned with protocol, correct placement of things, Jesus, I really only want one fork, it's hard enough getting out of bed. But I monitor their needs, because I'm staying for dinner, and I need to keep everyone reasonably happy, and I hate discord. I'd walk several blocks out of my way not to hear an argument. The natural world spoils you. You start watching crows, or maybe establish a tentative relationship with a fox, and suddenly the world is different. The fact that I can roll her an apple, the fact that she takes the apple as her due. I'm bumfuzzled: a) I was never sure that anyone got this, b) given your level of sensitive information I'm surprised they allowed you, or me to talk, c) either they don't get it or we don't get it. There may be more at stake than you can imagine. Or not. How do you know? I've looked at this from a lot of different directions. I'm pleased with my restraint. I never mentioned that time you showed up drunk, and, behind the tents, we made fun of you. I have no brook with being transparent, I'm not easy, but I'm real.

Tom

Something leaked away, a fluid, I'm not sure what they meant. Read more...

Last Shipment

The show is in the house, last shipment rumbled in just before closing time, the last 12 paintings. Everything else already spread around the gallery but for the 23 small cards (side-show pics) to be hinged and framed. Gonna make it.
Annual Board Meeting tomorrow night, staff invited, sit down dinner that Pegi's husband is cooking (for 28) and the menu sounds fantastic, standing rib roasts, garlic mashed potatoes, individual bunches of green beans, wrapped in bacon and baked, cheesecake; open bar. Guess I'll stay for that. Make a list: wash hair in the morning, take sport coat and clean tee-shirt, wear clean jeans. Post it on the coffee pot. Busy day, moving art, taking apart frames, condition reports. James, with his MLS, is a perfect match for this show, I just point him in a direction. Much colder weather, 30's tonight, high in the 50's tomorrow, from tee-shirts to denim with a Carhartt hoody. Glad for the sharp transition, because we still have nice days ahead, and now will better appreciate. Animals are manic, the squirrels, the woodchucks, the chipmunks, frenetic down at the lake, and I have them to myself, not a soul in sight. This morning the lake was giving off heat, the vapors bleeding BTUs. Remember watching ice turning to vapor in Colorado, never turning to water. A combination of very cold ground and very bright sun. Evapo-transpiration. Bless the art-shipper's hearts, they got in before five, they'd called, expressing concern, we off-loaded 12 pieces in five minutes, despite the fact that one of them is insured for 100K. Fuck 'em if they can't pack it correctly. Not really, of course; that painting is from the Cleveland Art Institute and they crate and pack like D and I do: assume it's going to fall off the back of a truck. Unwrap these 12 tomorrow and we'll see the show, all in the wrong places, but that's the next step. A great scene in Glenn's movie, we install the abstract show, in a speeded sequence, and it shows the process. It's all about process. A full day today, and a little more every day for the next two weeks. Show time. I feel comfortable with it, now; the labeling looks laborious, both the making and the mounting, but it can't take more than a couple of days, and there's slack enough for whatever contingencies. Out of the blue I think of a way we can break the plane, I could actually make a tent of the largest banner, over the side-show section, easy, really, if you just imagine in three-space, which I just did, and saw it, what we could do. Solves another problem too, because one of the banners is so damn large. I'm so excited I have to call Sara, and she's excited too, because it's a good idea and it expands her show, breaks the flat plane. It seems I'm always interested in breaking that flat plane; I'm curious what would happen if, therefore, I tweak whatever it is. Habit more than anything. What you might prepare to say. What you thought you meant. Watching myself, in Glenn's movie, because I'm completely comfortable with him, I can be completely natural, whether you know me our not, that the me is close to the authentic me, the me you read. I could use some help here, moving things, I exhaust myself. Pretty sure I am what I am. I'll save Hegle for tomorrow. Read more...

Stendhal's Syndrome

The Utah Kid sent along Julian Barnes new book on the fear of dying, which same is both funny and poignant, and clearly the result of a life-long consideration. The cast of characters is large, the variety of voices wonderful, an elegant balancing act. Stendhal, when he was still Henri Beyle, went to Florence and kept a diary; years later, Stendhal as Stendhal, wrote that he entered Florence and swooned at the art. 1979 a psychiatrist coined the Syndrome. Hogwash. S/H made it up. Back to Plato, Barnes quotes a Professor C. from Oxford: "The religion of art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt for those considered inartistic." (Barnes points out that the opposite is more likely true.) Emily famously, dying, said: "I must go in. The fog is rising." which certainly seems to approach the sublime, and doesn't seem to threaten anyone. Not being religious, great art and nature are my shrines. Listening to the Cello Suites, walking the woods when an ice-storm has crystallized the entire visible world, sitting for an hour staring at a Sargent portrait, Beverly Sills' last Traviata, Turkey Creek in spate, reading Skip Fox and Stephen Ellis; the list could easily grow to include great meals with excellent wines, certain ankles, a particular smile, the last time I nearly swooned was when Holly showed me her tattoo. Worship is an interesting word, more, for me, that I should be engaged, and that is my faith. Cold front and wind, temps dropping into the forties at night, the leaves are being blown off the trees and they haven't colored yet. With a bow-saw I hand-cut the first firewood, pieces of the Wrack Show, and I don't want to use a chainsaw, because the noise would be so off-putting. Probably need a fire tomorrow night, not much of one, but enough to fry an egg, have breakfast for dinner. Cooler weather, I need to use the sling-blade, when I get home from work, a few minutes a day, get back into my physical self, work on some muscle groups, cut back on the reading for the fall, so I can read more this winter. But I want to move slowly here, warming up the system, because I can't afford a failure. I'm so completely alone. I mean really. We all are, of course, ultimately. But I'm so isolated, in addition. Be careful, is all, take care. A monk goes into a bar in Wyoming, he has a monkey on his shoulder, every time the monk orders a drink the monkey runs down the monk's arm and drinks it, after three or four the monkey falls over, dead drunk, and the monk says: " Walk down, and fuck 'em all." I love a bit of weather, the way it changes things, this front has me cleaning the stovepipe. There are ways I'm just an aging Boy Scout with dreams of looking up someone's skirt. There is a way in which Plato is correct, many, he proposed women's suffrage, he established the syllabus, he's the Man, the Dude. No matter what I think. I might argue a minor point but the spirit of Plato rises up like a golem and squashes me. One step, bam, I'm non-existent. Which somehow ties back to whatever that was. I don't care about anything, but I'm concerned nonetheless. When Stendhal reinvented Florence he was just re-remembering. I'm pretty sure I have this straight, what construct comes from what line of reasoning. You can build any world you want, but it all comes back to the natural world, what you actually saw. You have to start somewhere. I like the natural world because it's even-handed. Sometimes slaps me on the face, but sometimes allows great beauty to show through. Like any other relationship. I like a fox right now, she doesn't demand much; I roll her an apple, she's happy with me. I could be accused of a great many things, but inattention isn't one of them. I might swoon, at the Circus Show, but it could just be exhaustion. We'll never know, because I'm installing this show, and everything becomes fiction. The closer I describe something, the further away it appears. It's an artifact of the medium, something to do with something I don't understand; I'd leave everything to someone else but I can't afford their time, I can barely buy groceries for god's sake. What seems to be the real world is more than enough. Consider our narrator poking the napp with a stick, how thick, exactly, is the blanket? Read more...

On Film

Linda had warned me that it was strange seeing yourself on film. In this case the movie is so wonderful I almost forget myself, watching what is happening. Excellent work. I've known Glenn for 40 years and expected GOOD, but it is far better than that. He gets it all, drainage, process, artistic temperament: The Wrack Show from conception through installation to destruction. Great interviews, great use of Barnhart's music, and I read well enough not to embarrass myself. There's quite a bit of me in there, talking, reading, collecting. The Neo-Romantic lead. This is a must see, but Glenn took to master back to remix the sound a bit. He mixed on earphones and hadn't heard it through a sound system, but copies will be available soon. He makes the museum look great. And the staff. A nice janitor sequence. Catches the spirit and the place so well many people at the screening were speechless. This is like festival quality stuff. Love the way he catches the child-like attitude many of us had in the creation of the show in the first place. You are also made aware that this a movie about an event, not the event, not even the take on the event that the creators might have, a separate thing, another monad, or another Venn Diagram, because there is overlap. Screening on Friday was fantastic, I thought, then Glenn and I went back to town to lunch with Sara and D on Saturday and talked for hours, then back home where I grilled a London Broil in a drizzle. We ate and drank well. We talked about particular scenes, particular shots, there's a silhouette shot of Sara that is breath-taking, a shot of me clipping bull-vine at my graveyard, that Glenn had mentioned back at the beginning of the editing process. That he had the ending, the graveyard and that sound of me clipping, fade to black, and then a couple more snips with the clippers, then the credits. I want to work this way again, and Glenn wants to work together, so last night, late, we kicked around ideas. When I woke up this morning he was gone, left at 4, trying to get back to the Twin Cities by 6. Life is parsed this way. Take it or leave it. There was a guy at Janitor College, Frank, from Queens, everything to him was a scam; he was laughable in his predictability, we knew way more than we wanted to know about him, and he fucked everything he ever touched. A recipe for disaster. He retired at 28, on full disability for a cut foot he suffered from a piece of glass he'd missed cleaning up after a spill. I'm sympathetic, but I can't excuse rude behavior, or bad technique. Too far down the road. Listen, the birds are coming out, the rain is over for a while. Read more...

Not Sure

Sometimes even criticism is a compliment. Just because you don't understand doesn't mean you really don't understand, it might just mean you're not paying attention. Auction aftermath, tables, chairs, junk that didn't sell; Trish got the two oil lamps for me for 6 bucks apiece. Docent briefing so I couldn't make noise early, went to the basement and sorted hardware, getting ready to hang the next show, "Sawdust and Spectacle", which, since we originate, we must compile a complete condition report for every piece. Start in earnest tomorrow. Advance copy of the Wrack movie in today and we couldn't get it to play on a DVD player through the projector (work that out tomorrow) but did watch it on D's computer. A very fine piece of work that I hope Glenn will make available to you. The river, the drainage, the debris-field, the eddies and backwaters, it's all there, and you see it come together, with the subtle touches; that glance at the fingers drumming time, the gestures, the intensity of feeling blended with a childlike approach to bumper cars. I want all of you to see this, though I am frankly embarrassed to be the romantic ugly lead in a movie of any sort. All those twitches. Jesus, it's like watching your doppleganger, or a twin you never knew you had. Reality is weird, Sara and I were having a smoke on the concrete apron, and that lawyer lady walked through, Sara greeted her by name, so that I would catch it, and I did, Valarie, noted, she's bright and available, and I think Sara was matchmaking. My problem is me, not other, I make a poor match for anyone. Step one foot aside and look, what you see is a dufus that eats beans out of a can. I spare myself no slack. I am a lonely goatherd. You and your problems, we'll deal with them later. Hey, we're still friends, aren't we? I walked this particular plank, it seemed secure, I saw the butt-end was locked under a root-mat, I ventured out. Questionable terrain. Sometimes not knowing is fine with me, sometimes I try and find out whatever it is. Wittgenstein might argue. What I do is lay the next course of brick as nearly perfectly as possible. I've got an actual string, this isn't mumbo-jumbo, I can measure the distance between here and there. But I can understand not trusting me, I lie, I make things up, I'm not to be trusted, I fabricate. Thinking about this later, I'm not an actor, but I act, watching myself is painful, but it's a movie, not me, it's drainage, the river, some sticks, and this guy, who twiddles his fingers and talks. One scene in the movie, we're hanging D's Abstract Show, and we forget Glenn is filming, we're hanging a show, we're busy, occupied, and a cartoon quality takes over. And it's exactly correct. Amazing really, because the film, an adaptive medium, sees more clearly than the characters; and there's a particular back-water, lodged behind a log, I even say, at some point, that what we're seeing is because of that particular log, and it's on film, we see the eddy; there's a blue ball, a blue something, and it makes a blue sense. There's a language to film. I'm a virgin, really, I haven't seen a movie in a decade, but I suddenly like this medium, it's a clay I hadn't considered. The pot, a vessel, fresh from being fired, is not the same as the raw material, it's not even the same material, it's a different element. Water over the dam. Napp becomes standing wave. Does water have a form? I think so, sometimes, when the current is so construed. Mostly, what I feel, is that I'd like to explore this medium, with Glenn, because he has an eye. What he does with the Barnhart music is magic, he doesn't chop it, he lets it run. There's a shot of the river, you'll miss it if you're not paying attention, and it's roiling, in spate, carrying sticks in spades, it's fucking magic. I wonder how an image can carry sense. How a sound can. Heady stuff. For the sake of the movie I wish I could be better than I am, but I'm merely the balding dufus. Linda warned me, but I barely heard what she said, I was too busy watching myself, which is the danger. Self-absorption. You are not what the camera sees. What the camera sees is a river running spate. What you are could be something desired. The tone. Certain harmonics. I stand aside. The me pictured is not me. I'm someone else, held closely. Read more...

Littoral

"I could have argued the economics of wild strawberries, but it would have been pointless." Euell Gibbons. All the years I lived on the coast the littoral was my market. Gathering a meal was the work of a few moments, and I ate very well indeed. Usually house-sitting in the winter, bartering home-brew, needing little money I often just worked in the summer, Stage Managing ten shows in ten weeks. Les felt that everyone needed a boat, so we built me a pirogue, a lovely thing, a double-ender that could be poled in just a couple of inches of water which allowed access to tidal creeks, hidden places that no one knew existed. I seeded them with mussel and oyster spat. In the spring these miniature shellfish might be counted in the thousands on a single rock, a rock per prepared pool (other rocks or concrete rubble) and I'd be deep into future meals, then on the Vineyard I found a huge oyster bed and continued eating my weight in razor clams every year. The hardest thing about moving inland was giving up the free bounty of the sea, but in Missip I traded home-brew for bushel bags of crawdads, ate snapping turtles and stocked a pond with bluegill and bass; in Colorado I became addicted to cut-throat trout and wild asparagus. Now I eat acorns. Boil acorns, whole, in several changes of water, dry/bake in a slow oven, then dip them in clarified sugar. Since the natural sugars are water soluble (along with the tannins) it's nice to replace them. These are, really good. Try them, but first time around use a white oak acorn. It occurs to me, here, that because I cook on a woodstove, I don't think about the energy requirements of lightly boiling something for several hours. I'm going to try leeching them in the crock pot, you really need to change the water whenever it becomes tea-colored, four to six changes, and I have the replacement water ready, boiling on the woodstove, and you don't, and then my oven is always on, so drying isn't an issue. It's a perfect food-prep thing for me, but it would be damned inconvenient for most other people. Interesting. Balanoculture requires a different tool kit. I'm perfectly situated to become a balanophague. It's strange, really, because I'd been wondering how I might survive when I could just crawl around. Gather acorns and make gruel, that could get me another couple of years, and I'm enjoying this now, living this way, considered. I'm not proving a point, I'm just trying to live in the natural world. I make no claim for this, though I might, eventually. I've been reading Plato for two days straight and my mind is worn thin. I think he knew he was good. A proof of this is that he offers no literary criticism. Snaky bastard. He hated playwrights, I think, because they did something he couldn't; but he did dialogue really well. Maybe he should have tried his hand on "Antigone". Hegel is just wrong, I agree with Murdoch, he defines himself out of existence. It's weird saying that, because I think about this shit all the time, who I might agree with, whatever makes sense, the various ways you make sense, which Plato would argue down to a twitch, the Freud of his time. Nonetheless, fuck, I'm caught in a loop, half-way between Thoreau and Plato. I'm never sure where I am. Everything is an estimate. The world itself may or may not be bounded. You might have said something. Read more...

Free Thought

Richie Havens talks about freedom, this was before your time, but it was palpable. Maybe it's that open tuning but it made sense at the time. Melanie and I had spent a mad summer, being chased from one place to another. You better find somebody to love. Grace, expressing what we felt. Slick. Concurrent with what we were talking about, AC and DC, and Tesla, electrifying the atmosphere. You and I while I can. Rain. Dripping late green, bad moon rising. Don't come around tonight. I can't stand myself. What I seem to be is not something I choose to be, I merely am. Now I wear white gloves against the stain. D has assigned me reading material so we can talk, Iris Murdoch on Plato, specifically on why Plato banished the artists, and Judith Butler, "Antigone's Claim" on the kinship between life and death. A nice coolish rainy Sunday and I curl up between several rocks and the usual hard places. Much of what Plato says about art is moral or political and not aesthetic. Anamnesis (recollection) is several steps removed from reality. P seems to be saying that this removal interferes with knowing. Yet, elsewhere, he states that learning is recollection. The Muses are all daughters of Memory. In the cave the fire is the sun, the shadows only pass for real. The vision, coming by grace, is the form of beauty, absolutely pure. Which P approaches by a Tantric channeling of sexuality. "Phaedrus" is an intensely erotic text. An embedded irony is that P is a great writer. Human beings are natural liars, and artists are the worst. There seems to be an argument that the 'plastic' arts are disingenuous, that Beauty is too important a concept to be left to artists. Hogwash, it is precisely artists, by their leaps, that expose the sublime. Pulling the disparate threads together exposes the weave. P is much taken with nature, but not the Romantic take on nature, not the reflection of moonrise on a mountain lake, but the simple patterns, that seem to be a test of truth. Artists merely imagine that everything has a place. He bugs me, in his insistence that art is fundamentally frivolous. Arguing for the artist, Murdoch finally says, beautifully, "The artist is a great informant, at least a gossip, at best a sage, and much loved in both roles. He lends to the elusive particular a local habitation and a name." Take that, Plato. But I have to admit, after a couple of days of this (D is getting the degree, not me) that a lot of academic writing is pure bullshit. The explanation, the re-explanation, the explication, it wears on me, I know what I think 'the' means. And I'm bright enough to know that you might mean something else, and that's fine, I can accept that, I can read you with that word meaning something slightly different than what I mean when I use it. Actually, I've taken to going back and eliminating as many as possible. Articles are seldom necessary. I carry a knife, James carries a combo Leatherman tool, I have one close at hand, but I carry a knife always, to slit tape, eliminate the unnecessary. Not in a violent way, just trimming, we might call it. Since I type with just two fingers, less words are better. If you've read me for three years maybe there are a million words, at that point excess becomes an issue. I like the film, ADM fixes my attention. Corn, who would think, it's all deception. Maybe I should reconsider Plato. Whitehead famously said everything was a footnote to him. Consider that. We're still living up to Sappho. The world I find myself in, a ten year cycle that makes no sense at all. Maybe it's time to move to the arctic, or the antarctic, where nothing is ever green and the white goes on forever. Norma pulls in some harmonics and suddenly there's sense. I can't explain it. It has to do with the way notes cascade. Sometimes, late at night, I just listen to the wind. Hot Tuna. Old Dead songs. I'm a creature of habits. The crows only rarely don't make sense. It's always Robert Johnson or Dante, hold that harmonic, I went down to the station. Nothing was the same. I could hear you, but nothing made any sense, despite what you said. Read more...

Food Chain

The extra trip to town, this time, to make one last pick-up for the fund-raiser auction, with which I have nothing more to do except for the clean-up on Tuesday. Pick-up was on the fifth floor of an apartment building and accessed from a balcony walk-way. I now officially suffer from vertigo, and it's getting worse. Falling, twice, into a safety harness from height, has totally eroded my previous desire to be as high as possible. I'm ok with a six foot ladder, that's it. And I used to the free-climb rock walls. You really don't know what life will throw at you. Lunch with D at the museum, to discuss strategy for the upcoming workload. We originate this next show, it's ours, it's Sara's, and this is what it's like, going out on the edge, saying that this is a show. Life is theater. I have a serious argument with Plato here, I think artists are shaman, that they work around the edge to enlarge human experience. I live a life at the fringe because I want to, it continues to interest me, engages me; it's a ego-centric existence, the internal dialog, the voices, but constant contact with the natural world gets me out of myself. I like the current mix, it suits me now, and that's the best that can be said. It suits me now. We change. The world changes. People now drive, talk on the phone, and drink coffee at the same time. There it is: time. When I watch the fox, or a crow, or the napp over the spill-way (a flowing blanket of water) my mind is in that other place and time disappears. In the moment. One hand clapping. Ohio Zen. Pig-weed, a wild mustard I think, has spread pollen across Turkey Lake, it swirls in patterns I don't understand, I make another note to study hydraulics; maybe I'll start tomorrow, drainage is all. Your hollow is all. News is fiction. We live this. You and me, babe. Read more...

Acorn Pancakes

As advertised, these are very filling and almost tasteless. Anything, however, is good with butter and maple syrup. Beautiful late afternoon, after sunset, high thin clouds lit pink. Pretty much exhausted after a full three days at the work, painting, lifting, walking from one end of the museum to the other. Fetching too, a lot of fetching. Full-tilt boogy for the next eight weeks, then some quiet and I need to go see my folks. The news from Florida not good but not dire, get caught-up at work and go cook for a week. Mom wants the "History Of Crab Cakes" demonstration again. Made a nice batch tonight, honing my skill-set, simple and elegant. Some of the instant mashed potatoes have gotten quite good, the other night I mixed some up and fried a ham steak, red-eye gravy (ham drippings, left-over coffee, salt and pepper, reduced a bit) on everything. Enough left over potatoes, maybe half a cup, to mix with a small can of premium crab, the white part of two scallions chopped fine, that's it. Fried in butter. Red-eye gravy would be good on them too, but red-eye gravy is good on anything. If I have any left-over I usually have it on toast, over scrambled eggs on toast, with crab meat warmed in butter would be really good. Note to buy another ham steak. Thank god we're entering the cooking season, my diet tends toward the seasonal and I've eaten a lot of sliced ripe tomatoes with various cheeses and a balsamic dressing, find myself looking forward to heavier fare. Had an extra twenty minutes at lunch, so did a mini run to Big Lots, looking toward the winter larder. Some upscale Asian noodle dishes, for hot winter lunches when I don't have a soup made, but I'm so ready for soup I don't get that many, even though they're really cheap. I don't worry too much about expiration dates. I start stock piling juice, remembering liquids are heavy and it's a long walk up the hill in snow; tinned pink grapefruit juice (my ex was addicted to this, we bought the stuff by the case when were living remote, which I still am) and several half-gallons of 100% juice, those fucking cocktails are a rip-off, mixtures of pomegranate/blueberry and pomegranate/cranberry. I need ten pounds of Basmati rice and a gallon of cheap olive oil, medium olive oil, I've got plenty of good stuff, but I don't use it much for cooking. Cast a critical eye on the woodpile this evening, and I'm proud of my efforts but there is work to be done. It's in this interface, the connection with the natural world, with the changing seasons, where I feel most comfortable. Where if you're stupid you pay the price. I'm not a daredevil, I'm timid, for god's sake, but I do want something to be on the line. I shot marbles a lot as a kid, I was good at it, something had to be wagered. If you don't take a risk you aren't invested. If your best shooter is on the line, you consider your shots carefully. Pegi, though she doesn't smoke, has started taking smoke breaks with me and Sara. The smoker's lounge, a concrete ledge at the loading dock, has become a happening place. But Pegi does need to be there, because D also smokes just a little, rolls a cig from my pouch so we three can discuss things, Sara, D and me, the janitor, who is trying to keep our collective head above water, and Pegi is the other critical cog. So what Sara said, that I had thought, was perfect, was that Pegi needed to start smoking. Then we could really get some things done. Nicotine all around my brain, and alcohol, and the seeds from a plant that isn't even illegal. A friend that studies these things ask me what I thought. I thought the acorn pancakes were more important. Screw your altered states, reality is more than enough.

Tom

Second thoughts. I'm not sure I wasn't right in the first place. It's a game, I hadn't seen that, you play it, certain pots fall your way, you stack your chips and other people watch. Read more...

Liaise

The Director leaves me notes taped to the kitchen door. Loves the signage wall color. Needs me to pick up a base for the sculpture that was stored in the vault for many years and has now been given to us. The board will accession it at the next meeting. The base is granite, at the tombstone yard. Amazing equipage. Heavy rocks and neat ways of dealing with them. Watching for a few minutes, I know who's doing what, but I don't know why. Polished black granite is bad about fingerprints, after I put it atop a pedestal in the niche at the top of the stairs, I wipe it down with alcohol. Later Sara and I go to a patron's house to retrieve the actual piece, "Daphne", a lovely head and top of torso of a lovely woman with big hair. Carved from a large piece of Slippery Elm. Don't think I've ever seen a slippery elm large enough to have supplied the blank. Very nice piece. I think it needs feeding. Note for Sara to ask Marsea (in California) what, if anything. Wood checks, eventually explodes. New technique for wood-carvers is to soak green wood (before checks) in poly glycol until the anti-freeze has replaced the water in the cells. Never checks but can only be finished in epoxy. The patron, who is either 97 or 98, spry, sharp, doesn't look over 70, requires attention and conversation and we administer same, then also given a lovely much used hammer-stone, several pounds, maybe five inches in diameter, with a nice ground grove running around the middle for attaching a handle. Excellent artifact. We can't put it in our permanent collection, which is closed and complete, but we can let interested people touch, which will add to the experience. She also gives us a tramp art jewelry box, flat sticks glued onto a surface, geometric, folk art, but the hinges are very cool, fingered wood with a tiny rod ran through. Those of us that live out often find it necessary to reinvent the hinge, I've found many a set of natural hinges, walking the woods, they're not uncommon, one thing fits into another, or old shoes make great hinges, either just leather, or, for a self closing twig gate consider the soles from a pair of old sneakers. Old iron single-bed head pieces and foot pieces make great gates. I made dozens of gates in Missip and Colorado, and at the end, finishing the goat dairy, buying sturdy uniform welded things from the co-op, I should have realized the jig was up. I wasn't jigging, I was more the jigee, but who's to throw rocks. I have my irritating habits, I'm too calm and resist panic, I smoke and drink, I worry things to death ahead of time. It bothers people that I'm always early and almost everyone is always late, it doesn't matter to me, I always carry a book, in case there's waiting time, and I'm not making a statement of any kind, I just like to allow an extra cushion in case something interesting takes my attention. Maybe even a step beyond that, I want something interesting to take my attention, I go out of my way to see things. Or hear them, the tugs and barges that I can't see in the fog. If you arrive at 8:05 to catch the 8:07 you'll hardly have a chance to see the dogwoods. I allow time, that's the only difference. If you just stop and watch the spider for five minutes, everything is revealed. Spider now locked in three-space. The spider is spinning web, what, exactly, are you doing? I fall back on performance reviews, pretty sure I'm holding up my end of the stick. If she does that then what are we doing? The romantic hero dies a hero in a video game. I don't have time for this, what I thought I meant. It happens too often. Not this but that. Read more...

Painting Red

Big year for nuts and the squirrels are chattering at a furious rate. All along Mackletree they do their suicide indecision, counted seven dead in a two mile stretch, stopped and flipped them off the road. Pea soup fog this morning, thick along the river road. Clay going it alone to Massillon, so I can paint the entry and signage walls, tape, cut, roll; ther color is Pittsburg 233-7 Gumball Red, and it is too. The signage wall is hot pink so I should get it to cover in two coats but the entry wall is pastel green and I assume it will be problematic. Right on both counts. Paint for six hours and still have to put a third coat on the entry. Red paint is so high in solids that it goes on streaky and the roller wants to pull paint off the walls at the end of a stroke. Still, with yellow vinyl lettering, it's just right for the Circus Show. Going blind today, painting red over pink (somehow creating purple halos wherever I looked), and the red reminded of the first red Moroccan goatskin I used to bind a full-leather book. Almost too supple, I had to size it with glue water to stiffen it enough for my purposes. Mom was still making costumes for strippers then, and I had taken a small piece of the unsized over to show her. I drove her on her appointed rounds, fittings and deliveries, usually took a book and had a free beer at the bar. The girls would come out and model their new costumes for me. They loved the leather, I knew they would, had brought the sample along. I got Mom a lovely hide for $50 and she made $500 worth of skimpy g-strings out of it. Excellent business. She'd let her very favorite girls come out to the house, usually for a rush costume and once, I must have been a Junior in college, I'd had a few people out from school, we were doing a play together, for dinner and a read-through, and this beautiful woman, Amber, knocked on the door; Mom had sewn her a lovely American flag outfit, with stars over her breasts. I let her in, ushered her upstairs, went back to the reading, a few minutes later Mom stuck her head around the corner, said, Son, can you come up here. Amber had on the new outfit and it was stunning, yes, I said to them both, yes, it was perfect for a gathering of politicians (which was the gig), and that was that, but a while later, when Amber had redressed demurely in slacks and a silk blouse, she came over to the dining room table where we were reading, pecked me on the cheek, said thank you love and left. The rest of the cast looked at me. They wanted me to check the fit, I said, she's a stripper. I could hear Mom laughing upstairs, I'd been played. This a thread, in my upbringing, to learn by example, my father is a lousy teacher when it comes to explication, but he knows things, and shows them really well. You don't need a textbook when the example is right in front of you. I can make a handle for that. Once I understand the function I can probably build a better handle. I've been studying handles. Kim does handles better than anyone I know, but I occasionally wonder what is he thinking? I need him to do a two step, cast-iron stairway to nowhere. Two steps, man, leave the rest to me. My specialty is making sense out of nothing. Perfect, it's just me. It's just me, I wouldn't trust anything further. Read more...

Change Ringing

Cool enough that I can start a fire, roast some vegetables, beets and turnips, a potato, an onion, the vague taste of dirt but in a nice way. Sweet and down low. I don't understand the implications. There's a charm in repetition, like a cheap toy in a box of cracker jacks, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a token. Unless you subscribe to that pesky notion that everything means something. A pain in the ass. That's not a bell it's a fucking woodpecker, the drumming search for bugs beneath the bark. Not a high-school lover but a mangled pillow. Wake up, get a grip. I recognize that guitar, it's Clapton playing Robert Johnson, "Crossroads", you're granted these moments, if you leave the radio on and go to bed. I don't fall for bullshit, usually, but Bach, early in the morning, is a revelation, Double Round Bobs like you wouldn't believe. The extra trip into town was mostly about collecting another load of wood, Osage Orange, serious winter wood. I wish I could play the piano, there's a song in my head that I can't quite access. Nothing prepares you for the late nights, you grasp at straws. It's enough to say you keep your head above water, but we all recognize failure as a clear and present danger. Drowning is a state of mind. Just before you go under, something reminds you of something else and you remember that night on the beach. Maybe it wasn't that important, but you remember. Happens to me all the time, I'm walking down the street and suddenly I'm somewhere else. One thing leads to another. Bach, I think, is the source of everything. Listen closely. It's merely change-ringing, but with that added kick, us talking directly. I admit to nothing, I merely keep the channel open. A janitor after all. Tracked down a cheap copy of "De Re Coquiaria", a cookbook by Apicius, the famed cookbook of ancient Rome, good recipes, though they do seem to have used garum (a sauce made by rotting fish in barrels and pouring off the liquid) a bit too freely; on the other hand I put anchovy paste in almost everything but in almost homeopathic doses where it tends to act like a natural MG and doesn't taste fishy at all. Seriously, keep a tube in the fridge and add a little squirt to any soup or stew, pot of beans, anything, it's amazing stuff. I sometimes spread just a bit on grilled meat. I never tell anyone because anchovies get a lot of bad press. I love anchovies, smelt, any of the very small fish that can be eaten bones and all. I've dined on minnows on more than one occasion and once, other than crackers, they were all I could find to eat. I'd gone deep into a wilderness area and was so sure I'd catch a mess of native cut-throat trout that I'd only taken a tube of saltines, a small skillet and a baby-food jar of bacon fat. Talk about over confident. I ended up making a kind of net from an extra tee-shirt, dragging it with a stick upstream and getting quite a few fingerling trout. Way too small to clean, I just ate them whole, fried, on crackers; oh, always carry hot sauce, Tabasco makes a little tiny bottle you can refill with your sauce of choice, I'm into the nether regions of hot sauce, I actually have a shelf labeled "Sauce Too Hot To Use" and I occasionally use one. I don't foist this on anyone else, heaven forbid, but I do, on occasion, make myself sweat. Habits die hard. I feel it purges my liver. I base this purely on speculation. I speculate more than I know. I wish it wasn't so, but there it is. I'm only always guessing. The world itself is such a mystery. I'm afraid to go outside to pee, or do anything. You know more than me. Read more...

Later

Try walking in my shoes. I went in to the museum today to see where I was going Tuesday. Not that it matters but I wondered where I'd be. I suppose it's expected, I need to handle more, when it comes to logistics. I just need to know it's my responsibility, and it would help if I had a phone. My office is actually the kitchen, with hot and cold running water, and a closet with a bucket bracket where I fill my mop pail. There is no way I'm looking for a girlfriend but I like Tammy's ankles. God help us, I like the staff at the museum right now, we get it done. The upcoming change-over looms large but Sara has booked enough time, I could do this by myself, but I need to engage James, as an installer. Pass the mantle. He's a natural, does the math in his head; I knew he would. I award myself a day off. Quite a bit of new information on Balanoculture. Seems you can practically live on a diet of acorns and a little green stuff. Balanophage, acorn eater. Odd side-bar is that I'm always tasting acorns, the Euell Gibbons influence. My Field Guide Edition of "Stalking The Wild Asparagus" cost $2.95 in 1973 and since I first read it I've searched for the illusive sweet acorn. Found two trees, one a huge first growth white oak on the farm in Missip and the other a rangy gambrel oak in Colorado, growing at 6500 feet. Both of these made a decent bread and it, as Mom always says, sticks to your bones. A couple of slices for breakfast and you can skip lunch. Evidence is that the 100 plus tribes on the west coast all lived pretty much an acorn centered life for a very long time. This is interesting reading and I almost wish I was as little bit better plugged in, as there's a shit-load of information on the net that takes me forever to access, inter-library loan is faster. Did read an article from U.S. Dept of Ag on the use of acorns as food, past, present, future. Informative but very dry. Dense mass of carbohydrates and fiber and high protein, even when the tannins are leached away. Perfect marathon food. I should set up a booth in Boston. Street food for the highly motivated. Western bean curd. Acorn jerky. Say what you will, you are what you eat. Read more...

Conceptual Stairs

The idea of ascent, movement from lower to higher (and the other way around, by implication), the means thereof. I remember some staircases, I imagine some others, then I think about some specific people and the stairs they might build for a show. Kim, Michael, Dennis, Tom Howe. As it happens I know a lot of people who build stairs. Can't remember how many sets I've built but the number is large. In one fantasy the gallery would be almost crowed with steps and stairs, all free-standing, all unique, this particular fantasy takes the place of another one, where several staircases accessed a common platform, the railing for which would be a bolted or notched system of natural sticks. Sara, listening, said she needed a concept, to hold it all together, then mentioned Carter's paintings and prints of almost try to reconstruct. Read more...

Goose Attack

Geese are on my side this morning, and I've brought scraps and left-over corn bread for them. Scary bastards. I feed them from the truck window, having been treed by them before. But I feel that these seasonal passers-by, need to be made welcome. Every year I swear never again. This year's drama: maybe three dozen of them, in a large half-circle, I throw well and I have them spaced out nicely, when a giant male jump/flies up onto the hood of the truck and starts pecking at the windshield, pooping on my ride. I hit the gas and he goes tumbling over the cab and lands in the bed of the truck, I stop and he makes a very undignified exit over the side. Have to stop at the self car-wash place on 52 near the Dairy Bar, pull into the first slot, closest to the change machine, get my four quarters, clean my wheel wells (they get caked with mud so badly that it throws off the alignment) and just fixing to clean off the shit, when a good-old-boy walks by to get his quarters, he drove into the second bay, a new big Dodge pick-up completely covered in mud, completely. He stops and looks at my little trucklet, then at me, and says, goose shit, I hate those bastards, and I have to ask how his truck got so completely covered in mud, he grinned, iconic, missing several front teeth, he's in camo, brush cut, and he grinned again, Forest Service roads at midnight, man, it's a rush. Seems he and a buddy like to take a twelve pack out in the forest at night, and hit the puddles as fast as possible on the intricate network of dirt roads in the 64,000 acres. You look ahead, he said, because until the wipers can clear a view, you're driving blind. Right, I thought, I want to do that. D was in and I am assigned to bring him up to speed on the weekly staff meeting. Being a liaison is not unlike being a docent. I swear I just saw the face of Richard Nixon on my damp coaster and it made me spill my drink. Fucking Republicans, excuse me Pegi, I struggle with this. This happens to me before I get to work, and I'm early, thinking to read for half-an-hour in the library, and everybody is already there. It's early enough in the cycle, the change-over cycle in the main gallery, that I don't have to prioritize, I can just do anything on any list, so I start doing things, D and I get a cup of coffee, roll cigs, get up to speed. We do a few things I need him for, and I'll be the judge of that because I'm still learning the ropes. In the permanent collection gallery, where we'd rehung everything, the lights were wrong, there are nine combinations of wattage and spread. Watercolors require low wattage and narrow spread, oils require greater wattage and wider spread. What you're trying to achieve is a balance. Glass and plexi-glass are different. Everything is different, the values, the colors. We joked then talked about a possible Stair Show, and I'm reasonably excited, I have to wrap my head around this. If we did something, it would have to be interesting. The day to day is interesting, but who gives a shit really. I want D to teach James how to cut mattes, so I wouldn't have to learn another thing, I'm tired of learning things, it's almost boring. Read more...

Cutting Edges

I've done so much painting of walls that I take short cuts. One thing is that I cut edges without taping, Helen always said charge the brush fully and pay attention to the flow; and when you're pressed for time, taping is laborious, and the tape is expensive. I cut from right to left, from up to down. I'd been saying for several months that I wanted to paint these walls, they'd been re-hung without much attention, and I finally get my chance. I use Tammy, the new-hire, to take the art off the walls, feeling that if you work in an art museum you should handle art. I'll tell her tomorrow we moved paintings worth 100K. Suffer through a necessary staff meeting (so much on our collective plate) finish painting walls in the permanent collection's gallery at 4:30, after patching, filling, sanding, and feel good about that, on schedule if there was one. Because ham is on sale I decide to make a ham and bean soup for the staff tomorrow. I know Sara likes it, and I want to help curb her rising anxiety about the upcoming Circus Show, and I want to cook a meal for the staff to create a little complicity. The family that eats together. I enjoy putting a pot of this together, comfort food, nothing special, but I do caramelize a large onion and red bell pepper, pre-soak a pound of Great Northern beans, add garlic and a pound of ham chunks, several goodly grinds of fresh black pepper, can't really fail with this, if you've got an hour to put it together. I start a hot quick fire in the cookstove, heat the soup to almost boiling, damp everything down and just leave it on the stove until tomorrow morning. I do short ribs this way, or pork back bones, when I've cut out the loins, with cabbage. We're entering the cooking season and I can hardly wait. I'm ahead on wood, noticed a large dying chestnut oak today, loosing leaves early, a sure sign, marked it with crime-scene tape. Don't know where I got a roll of that. Now that B is not part of the equation I need to buy a small gas chainsaw, I need to drop a few trees, in the woods, alone. I'll be very careful. I'm good at careful. Got way more done than I thought I could be done. One foot in front of the other, slogging away, and I have the thought, sometime during the day, that if this is the worst they can throw at me, we're fine. My tool-kit allows for almost anything. Big storm and I had to shut down, lightning, thunder, no rain, still. I've already done the labels for the 'new' paintings and use them to pull all the replacements from the vault, set the order with Sara, get the road-box wheels, which contains 99% of anything needed to hang anything anywhere. Lovely drive to work this morning, huge flock of Canada Geese befouling the beach at the lake, three crows at the spillway, eating worms left by a fisherman, pristine, emerald green trees, cleaned of their dust by last night's storm. Get the soup to town with only minor spillage, not as good as I'd hoped for, old beans, several years is my guess, because I've often kept beans for years and they require a much longer cooking time. I cooked this soup for over twelve hours and it wasn't very good, a bean should keep its integrity, then explode in a buttery way. I'm particular about my beans, ten years in western Colorado, pinto capital of the world, made me thus. For a rare treat, raise a patch of pintos, and pick them when fully formed and still green, cook them for a scant hour, a wonderful meal. Thinking about it, while I eat of a bowl of not very good soup and some delicious cornbread Sara got, to go with lunch. I sliced the little squares and toasted them, a daub of butter on every bite. Thinking about the varieties of beans and peas that I've raised, I quickly get above twenty, christ, thirty before I stop that line of thought. The stand-outs, all heirloom, are an unnamed black crowder pea (I still have seed for this one, makes the most amazing juice), an African cow pea, a delicate tiny lady pea (hell to shell, but god they were good, almost a jasmine aftertaste), and a pink-eye purple-hull from Texas that made grown men weep. Pintos usually win my bean of the year award, I love them so many ways. My bean rhapsody. Part of me says get a life, and the other part comments on what a good life it is. I knew I'd hang paintings today and I'd prepped the walls and was ready, anxious, even. Hanging part of the permanent collection alone. Valuable stuff, but that's not the point. This is a fully engaging interesting piece of work, and I want to do it well, want it, really, to be almost perfect. I strive for almost perfection, I know it's the best I can do. I run the math for each wall, then do it again, arrive at some numbers that locate a piece horizontally and vertically and establish an icon that identifies who's where. Simple system, a number inside a circle. Hang ten pieces and only have to re-hang two, not bad, actually, going for almost perfection. In both cases a pesky conversion of quarters to eighths. I can predict my failures, it's good to know yourself. For me, the only odd thing happening at the museum right now, I accept the chaos of a auction fund-raiser, Sara's panic mode concerning the Circus Show, it's her show for god's sake, her name is writ large across the face of it, the clogged toilets, all of it, I love it. Mostly I really like installing shows, it's fucking magic. I fully intend to work here the rest of my working life, unless they fire me, for apparently trying to take control. I don't want control, I'm happy with my slice of cheesecake. I like what I do here, I hang stuff on walls. Read more...

Logistics Again

I've started three lists because I have three time-lines to bring together. I think I need a clipboard because the folded sheet of paper in my pocket can no longer contain the nuances. Pulling a sizable chunk of the permanent collection tomorrow, several paintings for the Circus Show, downstairs, and that will leave some orphans so several walls will need patching and painting then re-hanging with other Carters from the vault. Started painting downstairs but ran into a couple of problems there, one, that the signage wall has begun edging out of it's corner, because every time you tape and repaint it, it moves a little further onto the adjacent pilasters; and, two, that I'd done some patch and fill in the gift shop and when I tried to touch-up the paint discovered that the wall was painted in an eggshell finish we no longer use. So I have to tape off the signage wall in reverse, to back-paint the corners, and will need to paint an entire wall in the gift shop. Fine. Study the list of paintings to pick up in Cleveland, seven paintings, five venues. Four will not be wrapped. Make a list. Note addresses, Google maps. Clay wants to go next Tuesday and Wednesday, make three of the pick-ups, rent a motel room, wine and dine, then hit the Cleveland Museum and Berea (some small college) on the way out of Dodge. I'll have to contact people at all these places, project an ETA. Thank god it's collectors and museums, if it was artists, five hits in two days would be impossible. They always forget, and when you arrive at the correct time at the correct place they're off getting their teeth cleaned, or getting a new tattoo. Time to handle the arrangements, so not too concerned, but that means leap-frogging chores I was planning. no problem, I was expecting this, the priority is the trip to Cleveland. It gathers the last of that show (Circus) for which I'm responsible, still two pick-ups being made by art shippers and I need to check on them. All of this has to happen before the Auction Benefit, because as soon as that's down, we have the movie premier, then installing the Circus Show, with the patron party pre-opening. Before which, somewhere, I'm looking for an extra week here, I really need to be helping Kenny matte and frame photos of the next show upstairs, from our photo archives, tying early businesses to actual artifacts. I was thinking about expectations on the way home, stopped at the lake, drank a very good porter and rolled a couple of smokes. The next month looks impossible, too many events, too many openings, too many clogged toilets, too many trips, and I have to break in a new person to help me install shows. There must be some appropriate Yiddish phrase. That's the way I feel. Still, it is doable, I think, with a little cooperation. There are still stops I can pull out, stays, but to push that sailing metaphor, when you're running before the wind, a spinnaker, above twelve knots the hull rises, planes, and all sound is behind you. I got this from people I sailed with, that they always wanted it behind them. I wondered what that meant, but I was really interested in not capsizing so I didn't ask too many questions. Your job is not be obnoxious and ask the right questions. Never mind what you thought you meant. Read more...

Lovely Thing

It had been raining all morning and everything still lushly green, washed; then in a lull, a flock of maybe a dozen goldfinches flew into the yard and flitted about. Then they're gone, an eye-blink away. I don't know where they spend the rest of the year. So beautiful against the green. Big fox grape year, the rains exactly correct for a big crop, there'll be many a drunken bird in the next month. 3 or 4 years ago was the last large crop and I managed to catch a drunken grouse, skinned (because I hate plucking) and barded with bacon, drizzled with Calvados, maybe my favorite fowl, though that's a hard call because I really like game hens, roasted on a rack above a drip pan, so I can collect the drippings, and I eat the crisped skin, and then the bird, with my fingers, try to have an artichoke with this, because you also need both hands for that, dip the leaves in the drippings, and you don't have to stop and wash your hands, just eat with your fingers. Wash my hands in dishwater and blot my mouth. It's a meal the fox likes, I know, because I see her tracks at the compost pile. I'm happy I please more than one of us. Back against the wall, it's good to know someone's covering something. Your backside. Buckeye was right, I was wrong, we are all accountable, I think I meant something else, but I can't remember what it was. Probably, he's right. Or left, whatever. Read more...

Frotteur

Some lovely textural pieces, like sunsets or moonrises, rubbings in various colored chalk. Can't remember where I saw these. Frottage, which sounds like a paraphilia but might mean nothing more than stroking a lover's foot. Sometimes milking a goat is just milking a goat. Living on a farm or ranch you find yourself doing strange things. There is a large pill, for instance, a bolus, and to get one in an animal you need to shove it down beyond the gag reflex, then stroke it through the gullet into that first stomach. Easy enough, once you learn how, like turning a breech calf or digging a post hole. There's a major disconnect, now, between feeling your way through and avoiding physical contact, you can't not touch what needs to be moved, and you're liable if you touch it. Tort is not a tart, first thing you know you're in bankruptcy and the wolves are clawing at the door. You what, stupid asshole, stood behind her, and corrected her grip on her putter? Her butt nestling into your crouch, your hand over her hand holding her putter. Class action case. Everyone whoever. I have a problem with labels, it's a hierarchy, and if I'm to play that game give me my due, I'm not an assistant. I'm not accountable. Read more...

Avoiding Parades

Slight miscalculation, forgetting that River Days opened with the Labor Day Parade. Back way into the library, then around the promised route to get to the museum, talk with D about his MFA orientation, bring him up to speed on priorities and requests. Thought to just wait-out the damned festivities. Out back for a smoke and we can watch from half-a-block away. Three buzzards circle the parade, which makes little sense at the time, but by the time the thing ends, two hours later, certainly something or someone will have died. Patient buzzards. Nice phrase which I think I might start using in a variety of circumstances, it seems to hold possibility in tone and intent. In line at Burger King, for instance, the crowded entrance at the quarter-mile dirt track, first night crowd at an opening. I sent D back to his work and read a book on Initial Letters. As a book designer and printer, I always learned toward a conservative tract, same font, maybe two points larger, a second color. The work has to speak, the text, or it's just an object, a book-like thing. I think it's the drugs, but I also ate well today, and have already had a couple of drinks. And I feel good, wanting to get on with things, needing to do physical work, prepping for winter. And something else. In my reverie, writing you, I carry on a running monolog, must of which is connective tissue, which I discard, and the thoughts bifurcate, again and again, and I'm familiar with the space and my voice. Happened tonight, and I remembered other incidences recently, where the voice itself bifurcated, and I was listening to several fictions at once, characters in the play. My god, I thought, that's fiction. But thinking about it later, I'm not sure. I think I'm on the brink of a non-fiction novel, make a note to get up real early and go to Wal-Mart, I need a fucking printer. Writing in the dark is hell, some circle of hell. I only do it because there's nothing else I'm qualified for. I appreciate the compliments, but what are you going to do? Put out a spread of readings. It's the next day. Had a couple of drinks and fell asleep on the sofa, between sentences, as it were. Get to reread myself. The buzzards over the parade, and they really were there, were a surreal image. I dreamed about them last night. In the dream there was a gleaming 18 wheeler, with it's 53 foot flat bed draped in black cloth, in the center, on a plinth, was a small white coffin, red roses strewn everywhere, randomly; parade watchers, on both sides, bulged out in two standing waves, to toss more roses. Excellent visuals. Didn't seem sad, but I'm little concerned with the meaning of dreams; the tone of them, the mood, is generally more problematic for me, indicating a level of emotional involvement. When I'm concerned about something I often dream of falling. I prefer Erving Goffman over Freud. I had always avoided reading any sociology, because of a sidebar in Olson somewhere, where he said sociology was a pile of shit, so I didn't read any, then thirty years later I'm building a staircase in a house, somewhere, I forget where, and there's a very good library, actually organized, and there are 10 or 12 books by this guy Goffman, who I'd never heard of, and I thought, what the hell, give him a read. Blew me away. He nails many things closely, his book, "Stigma" should be required reading. Germane to my ongoing point, what we think we see. Therefore the nature of reality. When you look at someone with webbed hands, what do you see? Read more...

Perfectly Packed

Week from hell, really. I'm feeling better, keeping food down, massive quantities of plain yogurt to keep some bugs in my gut. Three more days of antibiotics. Slept on the sofa last night, so I could learn the patterns of this new slanted light, and I needed to be in town early, to rent the truck, open the museum. Sue and Brent, a couple from the cirque, driver and navigator for the trip to Mansfield, arrived, James came in to help load. Everyone brought me boxes and I packed the truck. This is an art form. At Janitor College, there was a required course in packing, taught by a wizened retired Merchant Mariner: "No Wasted Space", and the final was to take the contents from a truck packed completely full and fit them into the next size smaller truck. In the Merchant Marine, they learn how to pack. 10 or 12 boxes were labeled Fragile: Nothing On Top, which I could pretty much ignore because I knew what was in every box and knew how it was packed. So many very light things, some boxes with a large footprint didn't weight a pound, you could rest them on a pier of eggs. The front two-thirds of the bed I stacked two and three high to achieve a level and carefully wedged surface, I covered them with packing blankets, tucked at the front and draped at the rear in a way that the next boxes, the final third, wedged the blankets in place, securing that part of the load really well; then the very fragile items at the rear, spaced with folded blankets where necessary, topped with the rolled goods, which spanned many boxes, and were therefore almost weightless. The footprint is all, look at the way the load is distributed, the last ten minutes spent finding the correct solution with the last layer so that the door would open. It was so perfectly packed there was no place to put any straps. It was a lovely thing, I wanted to keep it, as an example of maybe my best work. It was like a block of fiction or that first all white canvas that Russian did. There was no applause, but everyone said, "Jeeze, that's perfect." I like moments like that, work toward them. Last night I agonized over getting them on the road by 10, they were off by a quarter till. Good when a plan comes together. This week, maybe it's the drugs, I want to assume more responsibility at the museum, stage-manage a transition, but I don't have the authority, AND I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, nor overstep my bounds, and, because this is this best job I've ever had. Being surrounded by art all the time, like it's your job, you know? Putting on cotton gloves and handling artifacts. I had a friend once, maybe I make friendships too easily, make a note to think about that, but this friend knew a great deal about mushrooms, whatever you call those guys, and he had a theory about lines of latitude. I understood nothing he said, but we shared a similar taste for walks and bourbon. And he had a great deep voice: Now Tom, he'd say, did you really expect they'd cut you any slack? I believe I'm back, rereading to see what I was saying. Of course there's a thread, my job is to do this, think about that. Consider that there are a dozen people that read me closely. That's fine with me. Read more...

Lousy Care

Not eating enough and taking drugs, I have what you might call antibiotic tummy. Unpleasant, but in most other ways I feel better. We get 20 or so pictures framed, which ain't bad, but I had to leave half-an-hour early, feeling dizzy, with a large container of plain yogurt and a bunch of fruit. Once home I eat those until I get tired of swallowing. Better almost immediately. Big day tomorrow and I must be at work to get the truck packed and shipped out, the ODC Show to it's next venue, north of Columbus. Reset my internal clock to get up at very first light, which will work for the next month or two, then timing becomes more difficult, getting up in the dark, then most difficult of all, leaving home before first light. I manage this without a bedside clock. There is a clock in the house, buried behind papers on my desk, that I reference every few days to verify the existence of time. I'm rarely late, usually early; and there's a street clock, a wonderful, ornate, cast iron thing at Market Street, on my way in to work, which tells me if I have time to go down to the river, or read at the museum before anyone else gets there. I always carry a book and enjoy a first smoke watching the fog on the river, and the museum is heated in winter, AC in summer, a treat I've almost never enjoyed. Starting in maybe two weeks I can build a fast hot fire in the cookstove, to fix dinner or heat water for shaving. Won't really need heat until around Thanksgiving, maybe later. I calculate I need one more fairly large dead tree, to cut and split for early winter, and with 25 acres of woodlot it shouldn't be a problem, push comes to shove I could buy some wood, $57 a ton, and I've contracted to get the driveway graded, so the dump truck load of dry, cut and split wood, could get to the ridge. Make a note to get some candles and lamp oil, I have to be able to read, for several hours after dark, so I need a few dozen candles and maybe 6 quarts of lamp oil. I'm fond of the 1 inch utility candle I can get at Big Lots for 59 cents, a package of five, which allows almost a week of reading, with the brass lamp to which I added a mirror. A couple of cool nights and I'm already projecting 'worse case scenario', I can't not, I can't afford to be caught with my pants down, my ass would probably freeze, There's not a lot of margin living this way. It's still summer, for god's sake, and I'm lining up cans in my pantry. Because I need to prepare, need fall-back and other positions that I can't even foresee. They had mowed the verges on Mackletree today, and it was a beautiful thing, a manicured edge leading into wildness, the crows and squirrels were beside themselves, I drove slowly because squirrels are so stupid and I hate that thump when they land in your wheel-wells. Read more...

Keep Moving

Don't get between a male lion and his pride. So much to do and we're coming down on crunch time here, tempers will be frayed, best to nip these things in the bud, get enough done ahead of time to hold the beast at bay. I'm feeling a little better, but mention I need a round of antibiotics, and the new hire, our Educational Director's ex-husband is a doc, she makes a phone call and he phones a script into Kroger's. Then Sara and Pegi, in a brainstorm, enlist a Cirque couple to make the Friday delivery, which frees me up for another whole day, things begin to look possible. So like theater, it's ridiculous, make it happen, the number of times I've been told that. James (my new helper) and I get out tables, bring up the benefit auction items from the basement, then set about framing 25 photos, my goal now to have these done by Friday and make two Cleveland trips in the next two weeks. Several things need reframing, including a major painting. Crates will have to be built but that's months away, another show upstairs before that, if we don't die before then. We're stretched, and I end up picking up the slack, nothing for it, and I don't mind, as long as no one yells at me or suggests that I could have done something better. Find someone better and hire them if you think that's true, I'm replaceable but not for what I'm paid. Anyone else would laugh. D rolled his eyes when Trish was explaining something to a prospective client, her grammar was so bad, I went downstairs and cleaned toilets, humming a Neil Young song. "Southern Man." Read more...

Somewhat Later

Say what you want, Jesse Winchester is great, ducked to Canada and that's no sin, avoiding a war he wanted no part of. No time to read between the lines. Back then, you did what you had to. I stayed up for a week and snorted benzedrine, looked like shit and was the first person out the door. Probably means I can't be a Supreme Court justice, but doesn't affect my life in many other ways. The devil in details, I don't want to be in the position of killing someone. Even if it was unavoidable. Take a cab somewhere else, China Town, underneath the bridge, where they sell sates in stalls and you don't ask what meat you're eating. Yes, I should be more aware, but I'm stupidly asleep, come a little bit closer, there's something I need to say, because I'm still in love with her. Could you just dance again? Something in the toe-nail polish, a message. I thought I saw something. I'm sure I'm wrong, nonetheless, under the cloak of darkness, you resemble someone I used to know. Relapse into sickness. Feeling as bad as I have in years, bad timing, but I do take off an hour early, nap, drink some chicken broth, nap, sweating, then chills. Shaping up as the week from hell, because I have to be on the road Friday, taking the ODC Show north of Columbus. Two more road trips the next two weeks, collecting the last of the Circus Show; the auction, the movie premier, setting the Circus Show. I want to enjoy this stuff, not feel like shit and barely slog through. Hard labor, in this condition, breaking rocks into smaller rocks, I can barely lift the hammer. I make a note to get a new book on Corvids. If you'd ever watched a wake crows held over one of the recently dead, you wouldn't doubt their intelligence. They recognize me by sight. I'm beat, I have to go to bed. I haven't eaten enough but I'm exhausted. Being sick is hard work. You got to move a long train. Carry me home. That same old song. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. See what tomorrow brings. I need to sleep. Read more...