Successfully Home

Way too much to break down in the time remaining, as I must also sleep before tomorrow, but one of those over-filled days that makes you grin to be alive. Started early and finished late. Rock and roll. A raft of Carter 'Artist Proof' prints, that I didn't know we had, that need to be stored in a better way, which we accomplish before setting up the equipage to watch the Wrack film at noon. The movie, I think is great, wishing only that The Tallahassee Lasher had been caught in action, but his work was, the bindings that tied everything together, and it is in our work that we're remembered. Enough, perhaps, that they understand I tied a single knot, and thereby a ship was saved. Questions and answers. Then a quick lunch before starting to prepare dinner. Again, D and I are a perfect team, I expound theory and he handles the mechanics, keeping the grill lit in roof-top wind gusts: I know how I want to cook these ribs, but I don't know if it's possible. As it turns out it is possible and the ribs and sauce are very good indeed, not an act of nature, but simply an act of planning. I defer to anyone. Read more...

Conversation

Screening the movie tomorrow. Glenn and Linda arrived this afternoon before closing time and we took them over to their digs, a lovely studio apartment, then met them after work at the pub, Anthony, D and myself, for a couple of beers. D headed home but the rest of us stayed for dinner and conversation. Witty intelligent conversation is one of the great joys of life. Recluse that I am, I couldn't live without it. I've always found it, or it finds me, wherever I am. Because I'm a southern boy at heart, there's usually food and drink involved. And books, always books. Tomorrow night, for instance, 3 of the 11 know Melville pretty well, 2 of us have read "Clarel", which would be odd in a group of 10,000. No one reads "Clarel", it's just not done. Linda understood my situation right away, that I would have to drink beer while cooking the ribs, and there would be wine with dinner and then drinks after, and I don't drive after drinking, and offered the sofa cushions in their studio; but I have a pad, blanket and pillow, at the museum, and prefer to sleep in a place that I'm alone. I'm pretty sure I snore and I'm really used to getting up in the night and bitching out loud about the state of the union. Makes for a lousy house-guest, even if you are amusing, at three in the morning. And there's the dog, who needs to be fed. Fucking dog, I can't believe I have a dog; she is so, what, energetic, she runs faster than anything I'm ever seen. Going downhill she trips over her own feet, only regains her footing because she can fly and regains her composure in the air. Dumber than a sack of rocks, but goddamn she is fast. Confusing day, in many ways, because G and L arrived and I love them most of all, Sara and Clay were back from their Cape Cod trip, and Jo Etta, who is in the show, came either to look or flirt, and I don't know which, because the music was so loud. In my world we cover the tables with paper, crack the crab claws with hammers, maybe dance a bit, sucking crawdad heads. Read more...

Cool Front

Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 3:26 AM
Beautiful late dawn, overcast, gentle rain. A thousand shades of green glistening and that lovely sound of water falling on leaves. I move downstairs to the sofa so I can watch through the patio doors. I read some Hannah Arendt (continuing the tutorial on loneliness) "The Human Condition", then some "Walden", then some of Joan Didion's lovely memoir on the death of her husband. Clean up and wash my hair on the deck; shave, and make another coffee inside, consider a meal. I harvest some poke weed stalks, which are mildly poisonous, but if you cut them into pieces and peel them, you lose the toxin; dip them in egg, then cornmeal, and fry them, they're really quite good. Probably have no food value beyond the egg and cornmeal, but that's ok. The pith, or whatever it is you're eating, kind of dissolves in your mouth. Like eating Sea Cucumber, or chitlins, for that matter, if they're done perfectly. Whatever that perfectly fried exterior. A sub-tutorial on what's really important. That first bite is really important. A perfect fried crust on anything is a major feat. I set the bar very high, not because I think I can jump it, but because I know there is someone who can. My language is only what I can manage, most everything misses me. Live alone long enough you lose track. The relationship between you and anything else. I think I know what I'm trying to tell myself. Too much vibrato and not enough substance. Harmony can be misleading. Change ringing. That'll be the day. An Irish harp, too much time alone, a bridge to nowhere. A penny whistle makes a kind of sense. Bagpipes. Crossing the moor. Read more...

Ishmael

Poking around in my library, putting a few things away, I ended up spending the entire day on a tutorial of loneliness. Pulled out my friend Diana George's excellent book of essays "The Lonely Other" (I'm a character in a couple of them) and then on to some pages sent to me of the Eyal Peretz book "Literature, Disaster, and the Enigma of Power: A Reading of Moby Dick", a book I must get on inner library loan. Which of course meant getting out Olson's "Call Me Ishmael" and then the parent book, wishing I had the Barry Moser illustrations. Thunder storms moving through and I lost power several times, dark enough once that I had to read with the head-lamp McCord sent. Peretz opens right into the ambiguity of the opening line, if we are to call you Ishmael, who are you really? and makes the argument that Ishmael is actually Pip. Olson discovered, among many other things, that the second draft of "Moby Dick" came after Melville read "King Lear", so, of course I had to reread that treatise on the lonely family. Very muggy between showers, I walk outside in the cool rain, then steam when I come back in the house. Too hot to eat anything other than raw vegetables, cheese and crackers. I need to extend the sauce and concoct a rub tomorrow, for the ribs on Wednesday. Started an interesting extension for the sauce tonight, a sweet onion, run through the blender, reduced in a base of enchilada sauce, with cumin, and a bottle of porter. I'll add some of the drippings from cooking the ribs. Start building a rub. So many dried chili powders at my disposal right now, garlic salt, onion powder, cumin, fresh ground mixed peppercorns, a touch of maple sugar. The ribs will be great, I do them really well, just another thing I learned; but the sauce is actually peaking right now, at that point where a single taste makes you remember a childhood you never had. I was never lonely, even as a child, as long as I could have my books. The world we create, later in life, is a shadow of what we first felt. I sense this acutely, for reasons I don't understand. I'm as close to normal as anyone of us would ever encounter. In that position, what would you say? Welcome to the club. Read more...

Some Thoughts

I wouldn't trust me any further than you could throw me. Cooking grits in a crock-pot is a sign of genius, but I stole the idea, someone always knows more than me. I'm a jack-daw, a crow, I merely hop around. I don't keep track of myself, I just respond. Glorious sunrise, clear blue sky and the morning light stabbing in hard shafts through the thick tree cover. Slow my heartbeat down and move at half-speed, fixing coffee, local fresh eggs on toast with salsa, a two-bucket shower on the front deck. Read some Wendell Berry slowly, marveling that anyone could be so clear-headed. Part of the drive into town, certain times of year, the low light slicing through a road-side stand of young maples is almost painful. Still, get to town, stop at Market Street for coffee, go ahead and get the breakfast wrap Loretta has made for me, go do my laundry, stop at the liquor store, open the museum so I can eat half the wrap while reading in an air-conditioned space, lock up, go have a beer at the pub, have two good conversations, get back and open the museum for real, all before anyone else gets there. I read in the kitchen, for another hour, to enjoy the coolth, then headed ridge-ward with liquids and other supplies. The driveway is drop-dead nasty. Going down isn't too bad (merely terrible) because you can hold a line, but going up is a nightmare because any little thing will throw you into the grooves you were specifically trying to avoid. Not an arcade, though. D and I were talking about taking risks, I'd listened to an NPR show about that sixteen year-old that tried to sail around the world single-handed. I had withheld my opinion about this event for two reasons. One, I didn't want to influence what anyone might say, and, two, I didn't really know what I thought. I've known a lot of sailors, and they're an independent lot. The first piercings were just harpoons the whales threw back. Look at the tape, your guy, Starbuck, was rowing away from the action. It's clear, the runner at third was out. Read more...

High Maintenance

Here defined as ceiling repair. Water damage, the source of which we think is repaired. But first a trip across the street to check out the apartment where Glenn and Linda will be staying, for the Wrack Movie showing next week. Wednesday, the 30th, noon, free. Also needed to see where D and I will be cooking ribs (the roof) and the conference room, where we expect to dine. Must be the most beautiful spaces in Portsmouth. The workmanship is impeccable. Lunch at the pub has been a zoo the last couple of days, soccer mania. They opened early, for the U.S. game yesterday, and there were quite a few people drunk by noon. And again today, another crowd. But they always serve us promptly at the bar, know we need to be in and out, and banter with us in that familiar way that regulars anywhere enjoy. Lindsey, just pregnant, due in February, a perfect barmaid, enjoys our company. We usually sit in the same place, across from where the dispenser nozzle for various liquids hangs. That way we can get our own water, and we both drink a lot of water, so it's a good place; except that occasionally one of the servers will tip over a glass or even spray us or threaten to, if they perceive we're getting out of line. Lunch becomes an adventure. D had dressed for scrapping a ceiling over your head and I had other fish to fry. We only have James for a few more days, so I spent the rest of the day working with him, photographing the permanent collection. Except for three things we haven't found, I've now seen everything in the museum. So D scraped the ceiling in two spots and laid in a first layer of mud. Taking care of business. I have a very clear image of the museum, as a developed life-form, using people to further it's ways. That's why it got me to be the janitor here. Smart move. Good Draft. I was thinking about what Linda said, and rereread the passage, the beginning of 'The River' through wherever you lose interest, trying to find a certain passage. I like that section, it's free-form, it doesn't simply narrate. I expect an excess, really, if I pay any attention at all. What watching the frogs taught me, to admit my own ignorance, is that we rarely take the time to look at anything closely. Really closely. Now I notice everything and I still don't have a clue. Knowledge, someone said, is ignorance, and I might agree with that; my curser is stuck on a 7-10 split, which I've never converted. I think you have to bounce it off the backboard. Phone is out, probably another tree. Power out almost every day between noon and 5 PM for at least a few minutes. God damn goat-suckers, whip-poor-wills, wake me almost every morning before first light. It's like a George Carlin circle of hell. I often just go in early and read in the library at the museum, it's quiet and air-conditioned. Picasso's father was an art forger. Carvaggio fled Rome after killing someone, I knew that, what I didn't know was that the victim was a victorious opponent in a tennis game. Bad dude. D has some things to do and I scrub the floor in the elevator, hands and knees, an industrial orange based cleaner that I'm fond of for really tough jobs. Then scrap and vacuum the tracks the elevator doors run in. Little jobs accumulate, need addressing. I clean the theater, because there's a concert tonight, and just before closing the band arrives, to set up and test sound. They were supposed to perform in the theater, why I had cleaned same, but they like the main gallery, with the art work, and we set them up there. One of them is in the show, and he blows a mean harmonica. I want to stay, but I'm beat, from the preceding weeks, and all I can think about is getting home, changed into threadbare cotton, with a bourbon on ice. Salad and cheese and crackers for dinner. Produce is starting to come in at the farmer's market. A great tomato, I think I recognize it as a 'South Florida Ugly', a cultivar protected by state law there. I didn't say anything, just bought it for 50 cents. These are great tomatoes. Appearance isn't everything. Taste being what it is. Overriding, actually, like smell; being transported without conscious thought. The smells I remember. It's been a long day, a couple actually. I'm going to go have a tomato sandwich on whole wheat with mayonnaise. I can't think of anything better. Read more...

Sundry Items

Nice note from Linda commenting on the musicality of a particular passage last night. I was aware of it too. It's different, writing late at night or early in the morning, when I often do listen to music, usually the blues or The Dead. Writing then becomes more of a jazz riff. I'd started that post late the night before, when the dog woke me up yet again. Interesting conversation with Anthony at lunch today. A ceramic artist in D's next show and D had told him to ask me about the potential mess his part of the show might make. I looked at him with raised eyebrow and said that after 7 years of Janitor College there was no mess he was capable of making that I wasn't capable of cleaning up. We sparred back and forth, he mentioned certain acids, and I mentioned broken bones and the effect of sugar in the gas tank of his prized Jetta. Just so we understood each other. Fucking artists, man, they get an MFA and they view it as a license to kill. In this heat, and this afternoon it was hard to breathe, I look toward grazing cold foods. Bought one of those long seedless cucumbers and a bunch of radishes, make a plate with them, sliced; cheese (a double cheddar), and crackers. They didn't carry the Bleu Cheese dipping sauce with the wings on Friday Night, hard to circulate with a dipping sauce, so I brought it all home, a dozen or more containers: for the next week or two I'll be eating raw things dipped in increasingly pungent sauce. Found a couple of packages of frog-legs, in the varietal frozen food case, and decide to do some Buffalo Frog Legs. Only got two packages, I wonder who else would be buying them, a brace per package, so I only have four. Will have to be one of those meals where we wonder did it really happen, because I will certainly be alone and probably drinking. I go through two or three coasters a night in this kind weather. I can use one coaster for the entire winter, but when the weather takes this shift, I'm steady stealing coasters from the pub. If I start thinking about a particular verb, or dealing with an awkward comma, I destroy coasters as a matter of course. They cling to bottom of the glass, then I walk on them; sometimes I sling them like Frisbees against annoying insects. I killed a large roach, just the other night, with a soggy Landshark coaster, and I think Jimmy would have been proud. Me and my monkey. You probably noticed me, playing on the street corner, turning a crank, while the primate danced? This is how I pay off my college loans. You got a quarter mister? The geese were gathered at the lake, they're going somewhere, the far north, where they'll turn barnacles into babies. Magic, of sorts. I went down to the banks of the Ohio, a few spare minutes before the next storm front, and found a sycamore branch that looked exactly like the missing arm from a Greek marble piece. A good day. Read more...

The River

Bug and frog noise. Enough cool breeze that I'm comfortable. The darkness is deep and oddly welcoming, a small death, like sleep, that promises oblivion or at least respite from care. True nature, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, what we feel innermost. Flowers and garbage. Nothing everywhere. A train, across the river, is a sad sound, a country music song. Suffering nourishes compassion, what we are, what we become. Tomorrow is a can of worms, I'll deal with that in good time, but right now, there is only the black hole of the present. An event horizon. Heat lightning. No sound, but a light show that may or not be real. I roll in my bed and clutch a pillow. The nature of reality is called into question..I wouldn't want to be misunderstood, I try to be clear, what I think I see. Still, there is doubt, what happens, what I perceive actually happens as opposed to what seems to be happening. You and yours, me and mine, the actual nature of things.The river figures in because it merely flows. A metaphor for everything else. There's you, and then there's the river. It's all drainage. Tallahassee, from Kim's posts, sounds the same as here, over 90 degrees, thunderstorms. D and I both useless at the museum today, walking around like zombies. I did get the floor semi-cleaned. Many spilled drinks is all that I can imagine. A lot of the finger-food was on toothpicks and I must have picked up 50; seems the protocol was to take one something from a cute serving girl, eat whatever it was, and just drop the toothpick on the floor. Several artists in, to pick up rejected work, and I resisted telling anyone that their work was rejected because it sucked. Proud of myself. Nearly killed Little Sister tonight. I was grilling a steak and went inside to get a drink, she knocked over the grill, ate the steak, and started a small fire. Fucking dogs. She ate the baked potato too, including most of the foil, and I ended up eating cold beans on toast. I grill three or four nights a week in summer, and this is not acceptable behavior. I'm not used to fighting for my food. I've never had anyone knock over my grill, except that once, when Marilyn thought I was paying too much attention to the ribs. I don't understand, ask anyone I get along with and they'll tell you I'm easy to get along with. And I'm attentive. What more could you ask? Yet I live alone, without running water, at the end of the grid, losing power every day, in my tree-tip pit. Actually, the people that do know me well understand that I'm almost completely transparent. Language, you have to laugh. How did we get this far? Look at the pictures on the cave walls. Everything is there, up through Bi-polar Disorder. I'm always amazed when people I know kill themselves, it would never occur to me that suicide was an option. I'd rather bitch about spilled drinks on a gallery floor, cut my hair, or something. I was only ever in one fight, couldn't believe we actually had to fight for a grade. I hit this way superior dude with an uppercut, hard right hand just as the round opened. I broke his jaw. Suddenly, I had a reputation. You know how that goes. I never fought again. I'm blessed with a second sight that always points out the bullshit. I usually think of it as a curse, that I can understand; sometimes I just surf., looking at letter forms. Meaning is a whole other kettle of fish. Don't get me started. Read more...

Dogs

The down side of having a dog or two is that they run everything else away. A sterile world. No rabbits, no fox, no deer. The trade-off is having someone to cook for. The opossum stir-fry, is good, but not that good, and yet the dogs are very excited. Hard not to share their enthusiasm. Like controlling the flow of liquor at an opening. An odd place to find yourself. When D came in with Carma he assessed the situation, immediately stepped in, I was already gone, having bartended beyond my mandate, wanted to flirt, had the music not been so loud, barring that, just wanted to go home. The drive itself was not a problem, the things I thought about were merely hurdles, but I did wonder why I was jumping when I did. I'm always suspect when I go on a late night rant. Falstaff. It's true, that I pretend, no excuses, simply what I find in front of me. After the incident in the night I finally got back to sleep. Up this morning with a sling-blade, clearing a path to the outhouse. Breakfast and coffee, then switch to clippers, working until a late lunch, sweating like a race-horse. A severe thunder cell moves through, dumping an inch of rain in 15 minutes. I take a shower in it and get chilled to the bone. Lose power, the automatic relays switch on and off a couple of times, and still the power is out, which means Adams County Rural Electric (I get my power from the next county east) will have to send a person to the sub-station to flip the breakers manually. I know from long experience that if a pole had been hit by lightning or a vehicle, the lines would be down, and I'd never have seen the flash that the automatic relays cause, ergo, power should be restored with an hour. Which it is. The display of lightning was impressive. Whenever I watch such a thing I always think about capturing the energy generated by even a single storm cell. Billions of volts of electricity and temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun. No small thing. Containment is the problem. Then, of course, attachment, which is always another problem. And it all happens so quickly. Need some sort of a passive system, either a very large battery, or something to store the heat, so you could charge a battery later, or run a turbine to run an alternator. I just think about these things, the same way I might design a house in my head, on a whim, some quirky idea I might have. In the back of my mind is the idea of putting together a installation of staircases. I keep dismissing the idea, because it would be difficult and involve a lot of hard physical labor; but I like it, because it would be so cool. Pegi would have to be equal partner, and the show would have to be in summer, when her students would be out of school, because every day, at a certain time, they would slither through the treads and around the railings. This would be a good show, I see it in my mind's eye. I'd need a significant grant, and don't want to do it, but could. If you know me well, you know I usually speak the truth. Interesting that I never learned to lie. I stay awake nights, thinking about that. If I'd only learned to lie. Napp, water over the dam, is a clear indication of flow, sometimes I venture out on the slipway (spillway), to measure the actual flood. I'm anemic and have balance issues, but still want to know. If I measure the depth of flow and the distance across, I can estimate how much water over the dam. Numbers are important to me, they carry information. I'm just trying to make sense of the world. I saw I great mushroom today, a Russula Emetica that was vibrant orange against the leaf litter, and I poked it with a stick, to spread the spores. I do what I can. Read more...

Saturday Duty

No one else wanted to work, so I was staff at the museum. Didn't do anything but slump in a boardroom chair and read, and, besides, the museum is air-conditioned. Have to get a small unit for the house because my computer is complaining about the heat, even with the ice-pack and fan arrangement. Brought a vat of left-overs home for the dog and culled a couple of meals for myself, enough shrimp for a fried rice, and enough meatballs for a meal of some sort. Too hot to think and too tired to care. The show looks great, I walked around all the galleries, straightening pictures, knowing I had installed everything and remembering very little about the actual process. The last two weeks is kind of a blur; a ship on the ways: you do everything you can, double check the math, and finally just launch the damned thing. At the Market Street Cafe, Loretta had left instructions on how to prepare my breakfast burrito, and it was perfect, breakfast and lunch, as it happened, because I just had a Stella on tap, with chips and salsa, later, and beat a path home. Meatballs on toast for dinner. The music was too loud for casual flirting last night, or I might have brought someone home. Such are the wave-fronts of chance. There was another party, after, but it was in the wrong direction and I was peopled out, too much music and too much idle chatter. I'd of had to sleep on their sofa and pee in their yard, in my green jungle not a transgression, but I've noticed other people frown on my habits. Can't SEND as the phone line is down. Sleep for nine hours, wake to the hottest day of the year, breakfast on home-made polenta and eggs, plop on the sofa, after 12 straight days of work, and finish "One River", ethno-botany of the Amazon, then the power goes out. Take a wooden chair out on the front deck, pour a gallon of tepid water over my head, dry my hands, read until I'm dry. Can't call Dad (Father's Day) because the phone is out, and can't write (I make some notes) because the power is out. Not really a conspiracy kind of person, but I keep expecting large guys in black suits and bullet-proof vests to pop out of the woodwork. Finally get electric and phone back around seven tonight, and fix a nice dish of party leavings, a shrimp bisque, with some little garlic-toast rounds, and a side order of avocado with lime juice. Comes down to how you live your life, what is a minor inconvenience for me might be cataclysmic for you, or the other way around. Living without things, for long periods of time, makes you sensitive to the needs of others. Like Saturday, I wasn't going to do anything anyway, so I might as well read at the museum, where there is air-conditioning and I can at least be comfortable. No one else could work, so I did, reading in the coolth. Fuck a bunch of correctness. People were picking up rejected art, and I had to keep a game-face, I deny any accountability. That world, out there, is your imaging. Mostly what I do is write in the dark. Read more...

We Open

The show opens, D and I are exhausted, we have no relation to the natural world, everything is merely something else. I throw flags and yellow cards. We're so exhausted we can't even talk, I have a tree tip pit I can retreat to, I assume everyone does, maybe a tarp, protection against the rain. Once, in Janitor College, we were truly lost, this was before GPS and we had just the sun and a stick, we predicted a certain direction, and we were correct, that way did lead out. We argued about rather or not something could carry meaning. I remember you flinched. It's only my close friends I care about. I really don't have time for anything else. The show opens. I don't get to mingle as much as I want because I end up the being the bartender, which is cool, controlling the flow of liquor, and drinking for free. I find a last reserve of energy, to get me through the night; the Cirque girls help, they're so damn cute, and I end up leaving the bar to D and Clay, eleemosynary. I hate dealing with money, and I've done way too much math in the last few days, so I trust people to tell me what they owe. The band is way too loud. When D relieves me at the bar we decide "Kind Of Blue" on loop, in the background, would be more appropriate. People want to talk, not be blasted by aging doctors with way too much equipment covering Jimmy Buffet. I could tell you a story. Having been almost everywhere. But I fear being boring, a last Hershey's Kiss late at night, another box of chocolates, I'd rather be remembered as that janitor you passed in the hall, the quantum mechanic, with a speech impediment. Nothing prepares you, everything satisfies. Several of those moments, entropy, epiphany, suddenly you stop dead in you tracks. Time to go home. D asks if I'm ok to drive and I tell him I could do this in my sleep. Read more...

Sweet Melissa

Late, and something woke the dog. I get the shotgun and a flashlight, slip outside without turning on a light. Little Sister is cowering on the back porch, turning circles. Something has turned the compost pile inside out. Something large enough to cower the dog. Do the math. Probably a black bear. I can live with that. Retreat to the house and roll a smoke, turn the radio loud and it's the Allman Brothers, "Sweet Melissa", which I consider one of the most beautiful songs ever, then The Dead, "Fire On The Mountain", get a drink, consider this place in time. I am in this moment, ephemeral, nothing really matters, what we might think of as the larger picture, though within that we live our lives of quiet desperation. Whatever cry against the darkness is just a holding pattern, then you die. I've looked at this closely, but the fact is. Given that, what do you do? Retrace a drawing on a cave wall. The best you might accomplish in that life given you to live. I'm just a janitor, I know, but I say don't do anything you don't enjoy. Finally back to sleep for a few hours, then awakened by a glorious sunrise, orange and blue, and the green all around is a glowing jungle. Stop to pick up litter on Mackletree because it offends my eye. We do the vinyl signage, then hang the final pictures on those two walls, get half of the labels dry-mounted, then do the lighting. Another long hard day, but the show is nearly done, we can see it in front of us. I've half-a-day hauling equipage to the basement, getting the floors clean, setting tables and chairs for the gala opening party, for which I will stay long enough to have a couple of free drinks and some finger food, chat with the artists, which I do really enjoy usually. A certain percentage of people are just pricks, it's not to be helped, but artists do tend to be interesting. There'll be much air-kissing and more than the usual amount of casual flirting because the wine will flow. Art, considered reasonably, seems to open emotional channels. On a good night, doing a play for instance, Linda might give us Emily in a way that makes us remember things we hadn't thought about, maybe ever, and we allow ourselves to feel. It has something to do with dropping your defenses and allowing a response to happen. You have to be vulnerable, to learn. I called Zoe because her stick-lady was sagging. Just because you're an artist, doesn't mean you're an engineer; and she added a couple of props. One of the interesting things about her piece, is that it thrusts forward and actually cantilevers, part of its charm, because of that becomes a dynamic feminist statement. I like it. Ephemeral, too, which I also like, and I told her today, when she was adding some props, that I liked the way the hair, which is a spread of natural grass, would age. Because my name is Tom, I'm allowed the occasional time to feel like a pinball wizard. I get this, I often understand what people are saying. It's not something I ask for, it just happens. You need to listen. I need to listen, as a word of advice, because if I don't listen I don't have a clue what's going on. I love that artists come out of left field. A board member, with a caustic wit, was commenting on 'Outsider Art' today, Sara, D and I were outside smoking. I thought one of us would choke to death. James (the board member) had told John, his partner, that they should save the tub of dogshit, because he might need it in the future. Hard not to like where that might be going. Maybe I qualify things too much, but I live alone, and you have to cut me some slack. Time is elastic. If you don't own a clock things are different. I consider myself reasonably regimented, I sleep when I'm sleepy, eat when I'm hungry. Tonight, coming home, stopped at a wet-weather spring, drank a cup of clear, cold, hard water. It was a breath of fresh air. No mediation, me and the aquifer. I could just as well post on that narrow fit where you slid into the lock. But I'm way to the left of even being liberal. So far left I become dangerously close to being right. Or correct, or whatever. First there is a mountain. Paradigms shift. Next thing you you're walking up a scree slope, twisting your ankle. You have your own life to live, I just have to install a show. Read more...

Installing

We need to hang 40 pieces and we get to 57 before we make a mistake and stop. 4:30 in the afternoon. We don't like to hang art after 4:00 because we always start making mistakes. Too many numbers, too much serious attention. The show is hung tight and that makes any small mistake glaring. And it's 50% framed and rigged for hanging by nonprofessionals which translates as badly and means we'll have to make some minor correction. We only stop for a couple of short breaks, a cigaret in the alley, a quick lunch. This level of intensity, most people don't ever experience it, nor would they want to. Thunder in the west, another line of squalls, I should go but, but I want to stress the focus. 57 pieces in six hours, slightly more than nine an hour, slightly more than one every six minutes. Try this at home. I'm sure we're not the best ever, but we're very good at this, and we make jokes and laugh while we do it. Gotta go. Serious lightning. It passed over. I think I'm clear. Rain like a drumming through the leaves. The lightning has moved south and west, but it's raining so hard I feel like a tadpole in a shallow dish. Read more...

Setting The Show

Whereby you shuffle everything until it makes a kind of sense. There is no theme, merely the best from a given sample. It's a crap shoot, really, and we need to install it, so we move everything around, searching for a certain harmony. Sara is the diva of this, she could put a show together from house-hold trash. At the end of the day we have everything where it goes, sitting on the floor. Tomorrow we start the actual installation, hanging everything centered at 57 inches, equally spaced, a nightmare of simple math and instant solutions for particular problems. 133 pieces by 77 artists in three days, we need to do 45 pieces a day for three days, six or seven an hour until time runs out. It's not an option to fail; I actually look forward to this, working with D, counting off the numbers. In my preparator mode I have to leave my janitor mode behind. I trust someone will mop the floor. I hate placing my faith in amateurs. Meaning only I know how to mop and brook no failure. I'd rather mop than teach mopping because I'm not a very good teacher. I'd rather mop the fucking floor than try and explain a theory of mopping. I was bogged down in meaning and a pileated woodpecker flew into the scene. Looking for bugs, a simple mandate, I watched him for an hour, the way he listened. Half of all conversation is just listening, what's being said, what you might respond to. Usually I duck below the radar, pray I won't be recognized, sometimes I make a fuss, often I just stay quiet. D and I communicate in a series of grunts, we're done, toast. We've talked through the next sequence of steps and see a way through. We can do it, but right now we're all in, go back upstairs and tell Sara we're done for the day. Long and winding road. Tomorrow is another day. As we're leaving we meet Anthony at the back door, decide to go for a beer at the pub, where Holly, after a call, agrees to an early Happy Hour. There are only a couple of other patrons and we're loud and very funny, one of the owners gets a beer and listens from the end of the bar, agrees to sponsor our Curling Team, which will compete in the alley, after we steal a car and smash a fire hydrant, mid-winter, such that the surface will be a sheet of ice. We'll compete, sliding those concrete geese that are lawn furniture locally, using the neck as handle, sweeping the path with Swifters. The few patrons in the bar were crying with laughter. Even exhausted, we're the best act in town. I could hang this show no matter what. Posit your end-of-world scene, a pig's ass or sheep in the mist. It's nothing if not interesting. Read more...

Judging Day

Phone out since last night, another tree down on Mackletree, saw it on my way to work, early this morning. Won't be able to SEND this until tomorrow night. Only two phones in a three mile stretch so it's not high on the Sunday Verizon repair list. Too bad, as I actually wanted to make a couple of calls and keep you posted. The vagaries of isolation. Happening day at the museum. D and I fiddled around a bit, moving a few things, then Sara arrived, then Ken and Mary from Columbus, to do the judging. They walked through everything, before making any decisions, then back around, eliminating pieces. They worked quickly, with little banter and very few disagreements. What banter there was was choice, "lose the crow", "don't step on Jesus" (the wooden crucifix is in, and the damned Appalachian shrine), and, from Mary, "someone gave me a little press-mold that allows me to put the Virgin on pancakes and toast". Lunch over at Clay and Sara's loft, Clay had prepared a very nice spread. Excellent conversation, but D and I bail back to work, to get the rejects cleared away. Storing them in the downstairs classroom, alphabetically; so we walk many miles, up and down the stairs, dozens of trips. As we remove pieces, we spread the other work out, along the walls, and the extent of the show takes form. Almost all of the 3D work makes the show. Because there are so many photographs and watercolors, the competition there is fierce. We dog it around all day, shuffling stuff. The Best In Show and other awards was a great dialog between Ken and Mary. We had put the three works in question against the front wall, in decent light, and they sat on a bench maybe eight feet away, we three were in an outer circle, eight feet from them. Perfect, because we could both listen and whisper. A wonderful day but oh so tiring, and on the way home I just get a footer with chili and cheese. More severe storms forecast, and I walk up the hill. No way I could call in the driveway excuse for the next couple of days. D looked at me, we were outside having a smoke, said we had a lot of pieces to hang, yes, I said, 133 in three galleries before Friday, 45 a day for three days, and then we have to light and label. This is only a problem if you think of the merely possible. What happens happens quickly and then is past. Time is the factor. If I was holed up in a cave, because of bad weather, I might make a drawing, something to fill the time, maybe over-draw it a few times, I didn't mean to start a revolution, I actually cherish my solitude. Read more...

Ozone

Certainly clears the air, when lightning shatters the sky and thunder is right on top. But my power comes from almost due west, and the worst storm cell was already northeast before the fireworks. Other than feeling like a tadpole in a eyeglass, I'm fine. The house shook in a way you wouldn't understand unless you lived in an earthquake zone. It rumbled and moved my chair across the floor. I wasn't afraid, exactly, but I was anxious. The air was so electric it took my breath away. My phone comes from the east and Mackletree is a nest of snags, so I don't know when I'll be able to send this. Raw nature is an awesome thing. My breathing is still ragged. Time stops, there is nothing but the actual moment. Bam, then you ring it home, like Bach in a Partita, or a salsa that knocks you off your feet. I fell in love twice today and that's a record for me, consider dating, what's involved with that. I don't need anyone else in my life right now, but I do enjoy the banter. Everything talks to me, I'm merely a vessel. Had that thought strongly when I was holding Zoe's stick figure in a particular position and she was re-gluing the joints. Realized I was empathetic to a large degree, work well with people that have a focus. Get to work early, final day for submissions, and it's always a zoo, rains all day, so there's a lot of damp art. Some of the best 3D work comes in, several installations, some great ceramics. We end up opening early, snag a late lunch, and by closing time there is artwork everywhere: the gift shop, the library, all three galleries, the entryway, close to three hundred pieces. Tomorrow will be a zoo, the judging, until enough pieces are eliminated to start making sense of what the show will be. The next six days, in fact, stack up as a circus. The next two days, judging, and then setting the show, D and I will walk twenty miles, up and down, back and forth. At this point (D, Sara and I, stayed for a while this evening) I think we could call 75% of what will be accepted, but don't have a clue about Best In Show or the various other cash awards. There are six or seven pieces that might be 'the best' but it's a judgmental call. I want to turn Zoe's stick lady around and give her a light. Tomorrow is another day. Read more...

Artwork

A flood of work in for the show today, 60 or 80 pieces, too many to keep track, and much of it very nice. The year of the watercolor, several of them quite edgy, and some 3D stuff. Some etchings and lithographs that I like quite a lot, but then I'm a sucker for impression, having spent decades as a letter-press printer. A magnificent graphite on paper, maybe four feet square, of just a young girl's head. The hair is phenomenal. It may well be best-in-show, in my opinion, which counts for nothing, and I stop and look at it closely, every time I walk by. All the detail is achieved with cross-hatching, and that's difficult even on a small scale. Power and phone out last night. Knew it meant trees down so left early this morning to help clear the road. Sure enough. Major thunder storms scheduled for tonight, flash-flooding, 50 mph winds. May have to shut down early. Another big day for artwork and though we're still missing some top artists, by late afternoon we knew we had a show. I pretty much just shuffled around, moving art, unwrapping, talking with artists. Woman that two years ago brought in a huge hand (3 feet high) that was shooting the finger and was completely covered in cigaret butts (it made the show) brought in an interesting life-size stick figure, literally made of lashed sticks, with grass hair, nice hooters, great spear and woven shield. But on the ride in, in the back of a pick-up truck, it suffered some damage. I helped with the repair and the banter was sublime. A real and awful Appalachian Jesus shrine arrived with a truly obnoxious born-again person. Sara got stuck with him and I felt terrible for her. D and I walked away. Another lady from two years ago, does fairly classic clay heads, air-dried, unfired black clay. I like them. She's attractive and interesting, runs a cafe/gallery in Huntington, and I think she asked me over for lunch. I'm sure one of her pieces will make the show, so I'll see her at the opening gala. The schedule for the next seven days is absolutely impossible, therefore I fully expect to barely finish in time; fucking impossible, man, it just takes longer. So when I see these people again, Jo Etta, Zoe, Alan and Todd, I'll be wiped-out, toast. Tomorrow, we spread the pieces out, and we can influence the jury's decision by how we place things, in a few cases we might adjust the lights; we're devious and have our own opinions. Sunday the judging, and I look forward to that, the art talk, decisions and justifications; and then on Monday we set the show, where everything goes, and then we install it, and label it, and light it, in three galleries in three days. We can do this but it's a close thing, I don't even like people that much, but I like fondling art, and really, it's better than digging ditches. Thunder storms from the west, the house shakes from lightning strikes, my usual example is I appear naked, expounding whatever. Nothing is what it seems. Read more...

More Rain

Rained all night, thank god I'd parked at the bottom, then rained all day, often hard. Minor flooding, but the Army Corp had dropped the river level and this ridge-and-hollow terrain drains quickly. The box turtles are on the move, their burrows must be flooded, and I stop to move four of them off the road, guessing they're headed to higher ground. Nearly rear-ended by the Park Ranger, who apologizes profusely when he sees what I'm doing. We talked turtle for a few minutes and he looked at me strangely, asked if I was a biologist, I laughed, and told him no, I was just a turtle-hugger. A good day at the museum because we took in some interesting work for the juried show, AND I got the red wall repainted in what might be a single coat. Unbelievable, but whatever this new generation of primer, and it is high in solids, is amazing. The wall is almost perfect and I thought I was looking at two more coats. Caught Terry on the sidewalk, coming back from lunch, and we discussed my cooking on his roof. It's a gas grill and I'm not that used to them, and I explain that the ribs will take two hours or more and I'll need that much gas. Several great water-colors have come in. The bar is set higher now, for this show, the quality of work is better. Samara calls and we talk about the future: my future framed by several cords of dry firewood, her future is unlimited possibilities. Last rumble of thunder from the tail-end of a long line of storms. I set up the candles and an oil-lamp at my reading station on the island just before the power fails, put a small flashlight in my pocket, either the quality of mercy, or what passes as preparation. eat a cold can of beans and a can of Mandarin Orange segments. The frogs break out in an ear-shattering chorus and I know the weather is past, but I sit in the dark for a long time before I ever strike a light, considering what constitutes a life well-lived. The high point of my day, other than a couple of short conversations with Sara about the nature of art, was when I had two box turtles on the passenger seat of the truck, searching for higher ground. They were both beautiful, orange and yellow and black, washed by rain, radiant and withdrawn, and I'm trying to decide what they intended. Obviously, I can't. I'm not a turtle. I guess at turtleness, turtleology, but I don't have a clue. I stop and put them where I think they want to be and imagine myself a superior being. I should imagine I have the sense of turtle because I have two of them next to me, on the seat, but they're not talking. Fucking turtles. Read more...

Minor Chord

I'm divided. Looking at any thing, the thing itself, is high on my list; still I defer to anyone who has looked closely. What print provides is a track record. Storms are forecast for later today, I watch them inch across my map. At least hail, maybe another tornado, surely heavy rain in a short period of time. A deluge. I make what preparations I can, assume I'll loose power, park my truck at the bottom of the hill, make a pot of cheese grits. Life is just a sequence of events and the answer is how you respond. A lightening strike might seem merely normal. Drowning in a sea of oil. Art work arriving for "Cream Of The Crop", some very good, some mediocre. The judging is next Sunday. I've patched, repaired and painted all the galleries. Must prime and paint the entry wall, where signage goes, and it's bright red from the Circus Show, so will need priming and two coats of semi-gloss; taped the edges today, ordered the paint, a Porter color called Gray Flagstone. Would love to have the job of naming paint colors, though I'm sure I would be fired the first day, someone taking offense at Naughty Yellow or Fucking Blue or Shit Brown. Parked at the bottom of the hill again, more storms tonight and tomorrow. And there's something wrong with the truck, left-front wheel bearing I think. Awful noise, and I didn't want to chance the driveway. Nice to walk up, completely hemmed by green walls. Cooking ribs on the roof of Sara and Clay' apartment building, dinner for 11 it looks like, but I've farmed out everything to willing participants and only have to do the ribs. May need to stay in town, because it's impossible for me to do ribs and not drink. Not until the end of the month, when Glenn and Linda are here to screen his Wrack Movie. Screening is June 30th at noon, all invited. Mike? Drew? Be nice to have a crowd. It's a very good documentary. I'm the aging janitor, and get a lot screen time, mopping and such. Fucking Whip-O-Wills are driving me bonkers. They stop, at first false light, I can usually count on getting some sleep then, but with the woods so close around the house, 30 feet, they often wake me in the night with a few hundred repetitions. I would put them, as part of the punishment, not as wrong-doers, in one of the inner-most circles of Dante's hell. If you were to loop a tape so that it ran continually, no one could stand it for 24 hours. Last night I listened to 116 perfect repetitions, before that particular bird stumbled and flew away in embarrassment. Not that long, really, a couple of minutes, but it seemed to go on for hours. And then another took his place. Finally got up and tuned the radio to a good blues show out of Athens, Tracy Nelson singing homage to Janis, cranked it loud, drowned out everything. Sometimes you need to forget. Memory is a can of worms. Read more...

Corrupted Materials

A great deal of scientifically worthless material was duplicated in the first century of print. Corrupted copies penned by scribes who didn't know the language, spurious crap to begin with, lousy translations, you can imagine. Took a while to sort things out. A cooler day, and I work outside, cutting brush, and hour on, and hour off; during the off hours, I start plowing through the second half of "The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change", which I had expected to be quite boring but actually is very interesting. Mid-afternoon I need to clean up. I'd put several gallons of water in a dark blue canning kettle out on the front deck, to heat in the sun, and it's a perfect lukewarm; strip out of sweaty clothes, drench myself, soap down and shampoo my hair, rinse, come inside to dry under a ceiling fan. Read an article online about pre-historic art that pushes fired ceramics (not pots, as I would have suspected, but small animal fetishes) and some of them, bracelets predominately, were imprinted, before firing, with textiles. So they were firing pots and weaving, and this was 26,000 years ago, at Dolni Vestonice, in what is now the Czech Republic. This is 15,000 years before the first agricultural societies. I don't believe everything I read, but I'm becoming familiar with the drift of study on pre-historic art, so I have a sense of relevance, what figures where, within what context, and I'm coming around to the point of view that's it not so much corrupted material as it is a corrupted interpretation of what's being done with that material. When I think about the Romans, and I almost understand their language, all I can think about is concrete. What I think of is viaducts and arches. Critical mass is a relative thing. Depends on what you think you're using. Doing. Deposit. Deems worthy of something. Keep your head down, wear a scar. I don't know anything much beyond actual description. At Janitor College, it's what we were taught, sinks, toilets, it's all drainage. I carry the algorithm in my head, a quarter inch per-foot carries shit downhill, over a ten-foot span. Pace it off, do the math. The combined arts suck, because everyone else is always late. I like working alone because I'm always early, gives me a chance to figure out where I am, and what the odds are. I'm not a betting man, but I wager everything, all the time. Small chance to pay. Read more...

Funny Scene

At The Market Street Cafe, Susan, one of the owners, is there, but Loretta, who usually fixes our breakfast burrito is off and we try and explain that whatever Loretta fixes for us is what we want. But Loretta is not there and there needs to be a formula or recipe or something. Susan asks us to come back later, when someone else might know what we mean. We come back later and no one has a clue. Thought it was an item on the menu, but evidently not, and we have to try and remember whatever the fuck we're there for. We're just short of taking over the kitchen and fixing our own damned burrito when reason intervenes and we back off, being; all the while, very funny, comparing a trip to the coffee-shop being not unlike a trip to hell. When D and I are together we make people laugh, we both do this independently, but when we're together, we can be seriously funny; tears down your cheek, wet your pants funny. In my imagination, during the imagined take-over of the kitchen, there was a scene where we were wrestling for a particular pot, and I was winning, but called for a foul. Rules are for sissies. The natural world is live or die. Art work started coming in for "The Cream Of The Crop" and I'm an instant critic. Becoming an art historian caught me off guard, I read about things, it's what I do, if I have a free moment, look up something in one of the dictionaries available, and I have a lot of dictionaries, but suddenly I know a lot about specific small things. The way tadpoles become frogs, for instance. Who cares, really? But it seems to have meant something. I was hanging on the edge of my seat, probably it didn't mean anything for anyone else. A Non-Moment. For me it was major event, the real world exploding in my face. Tuck everything away, you're still left with a residue, doesn't matter how you play your cards. I have to go eat, I have a great dinner planned. Big storms rolling in. Losing power for sure. Power still out in the morning, then mid-morning some serious thunderstorms, power off again, back on a hour later, breaking clouds by mid-afternoon. I pretty much stay on the sofa through everything, reading Michael Gruber's new one, "The Good Son". He's really a wonderful writer. James says that the way I pronounce Tchelitchew is not quite correct because one of the Cyrillic letters doesn't have an exact English equivalent. I go online and read about Baltus for a while. Still don't really like the paintings, but I haven't seen one large and in my face. Late afternoon I go outside, select a couple of trees right on the upper, flat, section of driveway, and girdle them, chopping a goodly groove, maybe three inches thick, all the way around the trunk. When the sap is up in a tree, if you kill them like this, the moisture is wicked out by the dying leaves, they'll be ready to burn next winter. Ended up eating just an avocado and some cheese last night, in the dark. Lit a couple of candles later, but the light seemed too dear and romantic, and I finally just sat in the dark, with a drink, smoking, considering whether my successes and failures had balanced out. I go through the next couple of weeks at the museum, in my head, wondering if I'm really on top of it. But I think so, insofar as one prepares for the impossible. I try to sleep whenever possible and eat a lot of carbs. The impossible is just a little more difficult. If then, then that. I see the logic but it's an ephemeral thing, a wisp of fog. You want me to do what? Read more...

Loaded Out

Met Mid-West Art Shippers at the back door bright and early. He was on a tight schedule and we got him loaded and off in just over an hour. Once the crates were on the truck our responsibility was ended and we turned to matters at hand. D had a flyer to design and I have a list as long as my arm to accomplish in the next week, then the going gets really difficult for another week. It's all theater, life is, if you look at it from enough remove. D agrees to a labor swap, I'll help him frame his addition if he helps me re-insulate (new and improved) the floor at my place. If I can control heat-loss, I can make my life easier. I need to control heat-loss because last winter was way too difficult. I'm going to buy a back-up load of wood, cut split oak, a dump truck load for $120, approaching two cords, for next winter, because I can afford it, and because I need the peace of mind. If I catch the flu, next year, I want to be able to push a wheelbarrow load of wood to the back door, sniffling and sneezing. Crap had accumulated in the drain, various hairs, and fibers from the carpet; they seem to indicate something, vectors for disease, but I would be able to survive, no matter what. My fall-back position. A final circle of hell. I think about selling the tree farm and moving to town, selling the truck and getting a bicycle with a basket. Simplify. Stop shaving, let my hair get long and greasy, mutter to myself in public.

Biggest fool I ever saw
Came from Arkansas;
Put his shirt on over his coat,
Button his britches up round his throat.

"Perhaps it's just true that Faulkner, if he had been born in Pasadena, might very well have had that universal quality of mind, but instead of writing "Light In August" he would have gone into television or written ads for Jantzen bathing suits." William Styron. John Lee Hooker, "Sail On", my little want-to-be, sail on. My little honey bee, coming back home to me. Forgive me for saying maybe it's a good thing we can't sell our house. We've had our share of heartaches, the janitor's ball; the janitor's ball as crazy as can be. Check the cadence. Where else could I deposit myself? What's right? Read more...

Tchelitchew

Thomas Hart Benton became an anti-modernist, but early on he dabbled with the Expressionists, the various abstract groups, Jackson Pollack was his student. Artists move toward things, you can see the drift, less of one thing, more of another. Too much time in the tanning booth. Consider the name Tchelitchew. Both of the T's are silent, and god-damn silent letters to that last circle of hell. And what's with this modern style of wearing a baseball cap straight across the brim? I was good, generally, with the former family, this trip. Went out of my way to be, what? friendly, open. I'm a world-class conversationalist because I'm shallow, and cover a large field. Don't know much about anything but cover quite an expanse, a superficial knowledge. Kate, the former sister-in-law, noted, as I had, this particular characteristic. I'm easy to isolate, that last monad, covering his ass. Silence is an issue, solitude, being alone, how you deal with that. I conform the brim of my hat to meet the light of day, it takes weeks, that bend of brow. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly something. A straight brim seems to say you don't give a shit about anything. Tchelitchew (more or less Chilly-chew), brought to my attention by a Davenport essay, did some interesting paintings. Curators don't like him but the public does. The painting "Hide And Seek" is amazing. I take a book home from the museum library every weekend and am enjoying the tutorial. Ant attack. They infected the house while I was gone, ant traps and poisoned bait everywhere. Piss-ants, as my Mom always calls them, and they do smell like piss, if you crush one between your fingers, formic acid; pregnant women should eat ants. There's one in my drink right now, one of those large black ants, an LBA; I don't know ants very well. Who knows, if you drink enough insects, maybe you don't need any supplements. Walking down the driveway this morning, using a long-handled shovel as a walking stick, so that I could stop at various obstructing damns in the grader-ditch and indicate a path the water might flow. I flatter myself I could direct the flow of water. I'm lucky to stay in clean socks. There was a large beetle, a palmetto bug, and it offended my senses, struck at it with tip of the shovel. I'm not that good with a shovel, but it was a lucky shot, and I cut the insect neatly in half. Then I felt bad about being so accurate. Who am I to kill a beetle? Read more...

Packing Up

Nota Bene: bad wheels are sometimes worse than no wheels at all. Also, in that vein, large crates, that hold several pieces, tend toward too heavy. Just saying. So, James had tagged everything, he worked the Condition Reports and pointed to the next piece or called it by name. I never learned all the titles, this show, for the 62 pieces; I liked looking at the pieces, but artists get weird with titling and it can get it the way. I always look at the piece before I look at the title, it should be common practice, or a rule, or something, because creators are incoherent. I considered just numbering these postings, but the one or, usually, two word titles tend to keep me focused. The rat works well on a treadmill, generates just enough electricity to power a flickering bulb. But if I had just numbered them, there would be a lot of "679, I think", (,"), equally confusing. I choose to ignore almost everything. Neil chimes in, on exactly where I had read a certain quote. Now it (the fact) triangulates, and I'm sure I can find it in Thoreau's Journals. 45 pieces crated yesterday and the last 17 (four large, overcrowded crates) today, stripped hardware from the walls, patched. Distracted last night by the dogs tearing insulation from under my house, so furious I couldn't write. Recycled a bunch of trash, and there was a stack of women's magazines, Redbook, Glamour, and I ripped out the fragrance strips. There's a Britney Spears scent that is one of the worst things I've ever smelled. I forget the name, I threw it away (again), this time wrapped in fast food wrappers (death to any scent: it's the grease, I think), a weird amalgam of bubble gum, a white flowery thing, and a hint of synthetic musk. Like a bad white wine, aged in stainless steel tanks. So bad it made me trip and look like a drunk in the noon-day sun. I'm usually the first one in at the museum, and I was sweeping the back hall, saw Pegi pull in, held the door open for her, and she said "Tom, you've got to help me, can you put taps on these shoes?" "Sure", I said, because I can do anything, really, when it comes right down to it, make a few phone calls, plot an escape. maybe something you'd done at Janitor College. I had never attached taps to shoes, and never imagined I might need to, and here I was, attaching taps to shoes. I thought this was done at the factory, but it's not, because every dancer has different criteria. Exactly where the tap is. A line of storms are building toward the west, I'd better go. Read more...

The Posture Of Dancers

I'm a sucker for good carriage, the elegant rhythm of movement through any medium. The dance department, as is usual, was under the umbrella of the theater department and I met some of those people, the dancers, at Mesa State. Kaylee, in jeans, made my heart swoon. I had to sit down and remember to breathe. The trope is: movement, through music, to words. Thought about this for hours, contained within my cocoon, a black Chrysler Sebring, a comfortable ride that actually made me feel I was in the Secret Service, or some clandestine organization that sacrifices baby skinks on the fourth of July. I was confused, but the windows were tinted. I often just sat in the car, replayed a recent scene in my head, wondering what people thought they were saying. And who was I to judge, clearly a ringer. Double Round Bobs. If you want to do something right, hire a couple of Hungarians. If you study the batting averages, you'll see what I mean. At the pub today, watching NCAA women's softball, we watched a lady steal home. Not an easy feat. She beat out an infield hit, and stole the other three bases. Amazing. I remain fleet, mobile, go where I need to go, as often stopped by a particular bloom, as any mandate of where I should be, but I could never steal home. Maybe once or twice, a wild pitch, a situation where the ball hits the ground and skips away. No one ever tells you everything, there's always the closet, and a final corner. Read more...

Congeniality

Roughly, affinity with the soul of a place. What Picasso experienced at Altamira. Reinterpreted as cubism, the movement back (or forward) into form. The beginning of the modern buried in the archaic. Spent most of the day, reading, thinking about that duality. Modern/archaic. Look at that famous Altamira bull that turns up in "Guernica", the way the lines are over-drawn produces that same vibrating edge that Braque explored. Read more Agassiz, trying to aline a particular night he and Thoreau dined at Emerson's house with a specific mention in Thoreau's Journals. I know I can find it, it's an iconic night. Emerson left the table because A and T were talking about the mating habits of something, turtles, I think. A said he had discovered that the haddock was viviparous, which he found strange, for a deep sea fish. Thunder, I have to go, fucking weather. Took my truck down because I can't miss a day for the next two weeks. Crunch time. Pretty well prepared. Problem is that everything needs to be done at the last minute and I'm in what you might think of as the default position. I told Pegi that I had it all under control, and that was true enough, if nothing went wrong, but the truth is that some things will go wrong. Poised, on the brink. Nothing like a certain dynamic tension to affirm that yes, you are alive, at this particular moment in time. Now, get on with the game. Thank god someone else is transporting this show because it gives me a day to patch and repair the main gallery. The impossible just takes a few extra hours, bring a blanket and a pillow, buck up. Never find the peace you seek. Silence is a relative thing. Empty space. Is anywhere better than nothing? Anything? Here comes another morning, Natalie Merchant. I'm cool, the Janitor's Ball, I saw it coming; I'm sweeping a modified chevron, deep in my own thought, washing away, and you imply that I should be aware of something else. Of course, the index, meaningless footnotes, sense is a various thing, nothing means much anyway. A storm cell moves through and I'm impressed with it's raw power, a single lightning strike could power a major city for a day, but you'd need a new kind of battery. One that could bear the shock. Read more...