Of Course

Whatever you imagine is true. It's the heart of fiction. Context is an issue, what seems to be being said, but mostly, it's what you see that you believe, a deer in the headlights. An artful dodge is what you imagine something not true that you fabricate out of whole cloth. Not unlike a dream or a waking fantasy. In even an almost completely normal day, some things will strike you as odd, something someone says or the way a person looks, a particular bend of hip that reminds you of that time, where was it? Cape Cod? Martha's Vineyard? when you realized there was knowledge in your fingertips that your mind didn't bother to process. Like rolling a cigaret. Mindless. But at the same time mindful. When a task has become so rote that thinking isn't an issue. Increasingly, as I grow older, I don't care about most things. Mid-western Zen, I try to live in the moment, a western-eastern moment. Ivy league with a goodly shot of Irish whiskey. A meditative state or merely almost drunk, I don't care which, that allows a different level of thought. I think about this, how easily I allow myself to slide among vantages. It's probably all those drugs I took when I was younger and knew I would live forever. Another iconic myth. Being indestructible. Of course there are limits, I can never be you and you can never, actually, be me. I hear Glenn, in the background, he's already destroyed 'real' and 'actually' is on the slab. A kind of Hemingway short story, composed completely of nouns and verbs, but our narrator, the docent, waffles, he needs more words. Some long shots, some music over, Barnhart composes some percussive discussion. Everything is difficult, if you're really trying to do a good job, cut to Kim carving scales on a fish spoon, but nothing is impossible. Like I said the other night, nothing is beyond the pale. Wait, what does that mean? Palisades. Cut to cotton candy. Pink, like a dream, something you can't imagine. Pegi, my boss, showed me her toenails, embedded glitter, and I reminded her that I was strongly anti-glitter, conservative, in point of fact, and that I didn't care how flexible her young girls were, that eventually, we'd have to talk. A goat-sucker sets up in the hickory close to the house. I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy. Second day and we get the show set, everything in its place, and start installing. Because of the events, many of the 3D pieces will need to be secured with Museum Wax, all the bonnets need to be cleaned with alcohol, a little touch-up painting, lighting and labels. Great working with Sara and D. If we can get everything hung and lit tomorrow (give that a maybe) then get the labels made on Tuesday, we'd have Wednesday, during the day, to put out any small fires. I probably need to go in Saturday and paint, need to do a load of laundry anyway, get supplies for the holiday. Talking about cooking with D today (we often talk about cooking), I'd like to do some beef short-ribs, but they're so damned expensive. My plan was to cook Sunday and drink Monday. I'll let the Manager's Specials dictate the menu. London Broil or pork tenderloin or beef ribs, mashed potatoes, a stir-fry. I'm not comfortable with two big events when both the main galleries are filled with 3D pieces. Way too many things that are delicate, I've voiced my concern, as has D, and now Sara. I'll certainly be there, for the fund-raiser, I promised Alma I'd be there for her 100th, and thought I'd be there for the wedding, but the wedding falls on my birthday. I have a habit of being alone on my birthday, drinking a good Zin, making a nice meal, reading a book I'd bought myself as a present. This year I ordered a copy of Samuel Beckett's book on Proust. I think I'll miss the wedding. Whatever happens happens, there's nothing I can do to prevent it. I'm better off cooking something and remembering, than I am running interference at a wedding reception, fuck a bunch of bridesmaids. Wait, on second thought. Could be a great chance to hook up with someone who would be appalled by the way I live and demand a ride home. Who could resist that? The crux, at my place, is when someone first asks where do they pee, and I tell them "outside". Pretty much establishes how the evening is going to go. All men all cool with this, but only some women. Go figure. All the women I'm comfortable with are ok with pissing outside. Which either says something about me, or about them. Read more...

The Docent

Almost quitting time, yesterday, and we were done, all in, D had retired to his office and I had started closing down, turning off lights in the basement and working up to the main floor. Five older women had come in together, earlier, and they were going out, through the main gallery, looking at the ODC show, such as it was, spread out on tables and the floor, awaiting installation. My interest was two-fold: first, I'm just a bit paranoid, and the show is unprotected at this point, simply unwrapped; but secondly, I'm beginning to have opinions, to see connections, and I've begun to develop a line of talk, that might help explain some things. The janitor's rap. This is a little hard to picture, but go with me here. I'm dressed in faded black jeans and a paint-spattered tee-shirt, with a feed cap that says SIMPLE, and I actually handle the pieces, speak with some authority, though it's a bit like Daffy Duck explaining the shadows on the cave wall. They all have hair done carefully and outfits that make me cringe, but this is not about fashion. Kate Moss is hardly normal. You see where I'm going. Always bucking up against the real world, where you pay the rent. Like Emily, I'm nothing, three dots in space. Draw a line. That could be a start. I show the ladies what some things signify. It's not difficult, because some things are obvious, what you see, for instance, what's right in front of you; on the other hand, maybe it's not so obvious, what I take to be clear. I need to fall back in my tree-tip pit, and think about that. Painful silences. Nothing if not attentive. They thanked me profusely. The janitor docent. A nap, while the power was out, the fridge and reading light woke me, sleeping on the sofa. I fry the last of a crock-pot of grits and top them with two fresh eggs, basted with hot sauce and wine, a slab of Cincy toast. Drive into town slowly, enjoying the jungle the creek road is become. The green is so intense, so varied in shade, and the dappled summer light is almost blinding, acid flashes, I swear. Roadside flowers are impressionistic blurs of color. There's a one truck accident at the end of Mackletree, a horse-trailer has jack-knifed, and it's flipped (the truck is fine) and a horse had been thrown out. Badly damaged, it had to be put down, and then a bunch of us loaded it in the truck, to be buried back at the ranch. Brutal aspects of life intrude on the everyday. But it's Day One of setting the installation, and I'm excited about that, creating a show out of 96 pieces, that arrived in separate boxes, and can be arranged in an almost infinite set of orders. This is the A-Crew, Sara, D, and me. We move things around, move pedestals, all day; we don't get done, but we get a long way, until, just after four, we three end up on chairs, in the middle of the gallery. We're zombies. Anthony came in, and Carma, and we agreed to go for a beer after work. Sat at a table, which I almost never do at the pub, and they threatened to not serve me. I suppose that makes me a regular. Good to be accepted in the community. Funny pub conversation, Anthony is feeling his mettle, and makes several observations that have the rest of us disturbing the other patrons. Walking back to our vehicles, D and I touch on the subject of attachment. We have to invent some for this show, certain pieces are problematic. Makes it interesting and therefor engaging. Dealing with art, especially, is never the same. Nothing ever is, but dealing with art and artists is even more so. D and I, today, were talking about The Line, and when, exactly, you crossed it; who might be offended, and why, for what reason. My only advantage, as writer, is that I get to place the commas. I've thought about this a lot, and I'm not kidding. The Punctuation Kid, from back east, we don't know much about him, but he seemed OK. Had a laminated ID that said he was a certain person. My research says it might not be true, how he or she might have presented themselves. Read more...

Ablutions

Got everything out of the way today, all that personal hygiene, bath on the deck, washing my hair (so much easier with it very short), trimming the nails. I'll shave and take a sponge bath every day, but I needed to set myself for the week ahead. The week before a major show opens is a lot like the week before your daughter's wedding. There are ways in which I'm a lot like a wedding planner. It's all about logistics. You do the prep, you have things delivered at the correct time, you do the deed. Like with anything, you learn the ropes; a modicum of brain and you get better at it. There will be problems, there are always problems, the secret is solving them in ways the audience doesn't notice, and even that skill is a learned thing. What I knew was that I was prepared, and that I was clean and well-rested to start the week. This is nothing, really, compared to mounting an opera. After the ablutions I make a nice stir-fry with onions, peppers, asparagus and a can of roasted tomatoes, which I served myself on a bed of left-over mashed potatoes, excellent with lots of black pepper and a splash of balsamic. Mashed potatoes are a perfect medium, slippingly on the tongue. I'm hardly an expert witness, can barely defend what I say, mostly I'm deeply mired in tar I want to get out of. Like that mastodon, howling at the moon and trying to move his feet. What is iconic, is only iconic because we notice. Sure, I have a few niches, where I squirrel away gods, we all do, it's a genetic thing. Mysticism is high on the list, even Benjamin is close to incomprehensible. Try to read Hegel. He and Hannah must have had sex, but it's hard to imagine. They must have talked the whole time. Imagine that conversation. Say you'd been holed in the confessional, waiting for some kind of release, but you knew you'd done some very bad things, you, were, in fact, guilty, and you wondered how much they knew. Power's out, I have to go to bed, have we learned anything? I stay up awhile, reading by oil lamp, but still no power, and I can't SEND. Finally, to bed, sleep troubled by dreams of boxes. Up early, I stop at the old Bodie's, now Pit Stop, for a breakfast sandwich and a carton of chocolate milk; go down below the floodwall, because there is river fog. Open up the museum, D arrives, coffee, and we unpack the remaining art, several large ceramic pieces and the rest of the fabric art. The new programmable looms are amazing. D has some errands to run, so I ferry boxes to the basement, must be 60 or 70 of them, and when he gets back we take down all the temporary panels. The space is as open as it can be, which is good, for the fund-raiser and then the wedding. The bride was in today, realizing they had to move the actual wedding out of the theater and into the main gallery because their RSVP number is already 170. That about maxs us out, but I expect the list to grow to at least 200, people will be hanging over the upstairs galleries rails. An awkward show, the art I mean, because it's a 'Best Of" which means that's there's no theme, just a lot of nice pieces (94, I think) and they need to be arranged in one of a great many orders. Infinite maybe, the number of possible orders. There are three of us here, that could do this, a large number, considering, more than twice as many as one. But what we enjoy is doing it together, fun, a kind of game. I mean 'game' there in a limited sense. There are three pieces by an artist we had trouble with a couple of years ago. He doesn't understand loading, We've agreed on a strategy to deal with his work, but I don't like even having to agree on a strategy. If a piece really wants to fall over, who am I to stand in the way? Failure is almost always a good thing, you learn something about limits. In your comfort zone, you learn almost nothing. I know you see what I mean. We need to fail, repeatedly, before we gain any altitude on a steep scree slope. You slide back as a matter of course. What we call "gaining your footing" which is certainly true, that you do, learn how to walk, but it becomes a metaphor for the very way you conduct your life. That I walked thus was therefor whatever. The next step. I have to step back here, because I thought I was making sense. The various conjugations. I have to go to sleep. Read more...

Idle Day

Rain all night, all morning, and into the afternoon. Astounding, the amount of moisture that falls on this watershed. Enjoyed the Thomas Perry novel, "The Informant", but after a big meal, about 2:00, I turned to "An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory" and read some very difficult essays by Foucault and Derrida, then finished the reading part of my day by rereading what is a pivotal text, Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility". Nice to have the leisure to pursue several threads. I think about installing the ODC show. Prepared pretty well, almost ahead of the game. One problem will be running out of pedestals and bonnets: all the jewelry and small items have to be covered. Most of the painting is done. Pegi has enlisted aid, for the two large events that happen within four days right at the opening of the show. We've actually opening the show opening three days early, to catch the first event, which should be a significant fund-raiser. I don't involve myself, much, in these things, other than setting up tables and chairs; but I'll be at both of these events, talking with board members and patrons. Not exactly my stratification, but I can hold my own at just about any level, and it's not a stretch for me to talk about opera or theater, or the Cello Suites, clamping techniques and modern glues, quantum mechanics, or social theory generally. Opinions are cheap, not unlike sweet onions, which are now sold individually, like baking potatoes, I can't believe it. I buy tomatoes, now, at the farmers's market, the last time I grew them, it only made the deer happy. You make something out of nothing, holed up somewhere, based in an overlook or cave, maybe a tree-tip pit. You're feeling good about things, because you killed something large yesterday, and you're roasting parts of it today, idle time, because your belly is full and the next meal is on the spit. You wander back, into a difficult recess, you have the advantage of time, and a mouthful of some pigment. You're holding a torch of some kind, fatwood, or an oil you've extracted. You find a place to put your hand and spit an outline. Your hand, your cave; not unlike pissing on the compost pile. Yes, it says, I've been here too, killed something, ate well. I slip so easily into that world, where what you eat is what you are. I'd rather just go to sleep, but that isn't an option. I have birds to deal with, a train in Kentucky. That train in Kentucky is just an idea, a blues note, the birds are actually in my face, goddamn three note signature. I have to go, squall moving through, consider your last decision. Did you really mean what you said? I'd better go. Read more...

Something

A noise in the night, a snag falling to the wind or a mouse in the wall, who knows? Another squall, thunder, maybe lightning close to home, something woke me. Not on the clock I get a drink and roll a smoke. Fuck a bunch of politically correct, I can sleep later, I'd rather listen to the blues, late at night, on the radio. I really should invest in better speakers. Going back to Memphis, everything will be all right in the morning. Pretty girl in a small town. I screwed up, Marsea came in with Alma, and I should have dropped everything, and just been with them, but I was unwrapping art and totally involved. Marsea is very California cool, and hot, in ways that seem beyond my simple self, and there's a connection I can't identify. When she leaves, we kiss on the lips, and it seems to signify. I don't know, maybe something is nothing. D and Alma are all over this, like it's a tangible thing, that if she and I connected it would make a kind of sense. Rarely does someone make a point of kissing me on the lips. Read more...

Handling Art

All day unpacking, and get it almost done, still maybe 8 boxes left, out of ninety. Fun and interesting, but it is actually very tiring to handle delicate objects for 7 hours. The packing was as wacky as expected. My favorite note, with explanation points, writ large on the top of the box, was to not lift an untitled object by its handle. The handle was not a handle. The object was a kind of wooden teapot on a cast iron base, the handle and the body were laminations of Baltic birch plywood. It's a interesting object. Something else today, I forget what, was wrapped in several layers of used pantyhose that still smelled, faintly, of womanhood, in a nice, a little grassy, a vetiver, maybe, salty sea-side air. A pleasant surprise, and I wonder if it was meant to be sexy. Surely it was. Another problem with artist packaged art, is that it's sometimes very difficult to unwrap. So many layers, so much tape. Many ceramic and glass artists use a large box that they pour a layer of foam peanuts into, then set the piece, wrapped in some sort of foam or bubble-wrap into the center, then pour the sides and top full with more peanuts. We've developed a two-person approach to this: one of us, usually me, holds the top flaps upright, and usually D attempts to pull the wrapped piece up through the peanuts. We've gotten pretty good at it. But when we repack those pieces, we have to take peanuts out of the box, in order to pack the piece correctly, and that always means loose peanuts, no matter how careful you are. I hate loose peanuts. However, several people have discovered that if you put foam peanuts in gallon zip-lock bags, you suddenly have an excellent packing medium. A lot of jewelry in this show, and jewelers, almost universally now, wrap a piece in cloth, inside a zip-lock bag, inside a foam lined plastic food storage container, inside a foam lined cardboard box. They are the hands-down absolute champs when it comes to packing, because they actually think about it. Many of their boxes only require that you slit the tape, fold back the flaps, remove a piece of good blue foam that has a opening cut and marked for exactly where you're supposed to put your fingers, and you can then, without removing any packaging, remove the food storage container, and get to whatever the piece is. It's our mandate to become Art Critics on this day, when we unwrap an installation; I make a few notes, about things I'll need to mention, when I docent this show. A problem with a exhibit like this, The Best Of, is that there isn't any logical theme. There are ten thousand ways you could install this show. Also new, this year, were diapers, and cat-food bags stuffed with wadded newspaper. I intend to repackage those pieces in bubble-wrap, because the newspapers are last year's, from Chicago. I love reading old news, when I'm starting a fire in the cookstove, mid-winter. A habit I've developed over the years, because it amuses me, that I'll stand there, sometimes throw a blanket over my shoulders, really needing to start a fire, and be deeply engrossed in some Congressman's sexual scandal from a year ago. Where I find myself. Listen, I don't even care anymore. Where anyone fabricates meaning. I have issues with this. I'm not sure what fiction is. Read more...

Power Outage

Again last night, broken record, the power went out before I could SEND, on again now, 2:21 tomorrow, I sent whatever I'd saved. Lights coming on and the sound of the fridge kicking in woke me from a fitful sleep on the sofa. Night Magic, indeed. Painting a medium blue over a strong orange will certainly require two coats, but I'm exactly, oddly, right on schedule, if my projections represent an actual schedule. The ODC show arrives at noon today, from Columbus, and that should allow enough time to get a second coat on both the signage walls. The very idea that I'm still on time, given the various disruptions, amazes me; some extraneous shit that I need to accomplish, get to the court house and pay my land taxes, pass an eye test to get a new driver's license, but I'm, remarkably, up to speed. It's a matter of habit, I think, that I can juggle as well as I do at my age. It would take a minimum of three people to replace me: a janitor, a preparator, and a mediator to calm the warring groups. I look back at the last week, and I realize I'm carrying the museum on my back, everyone else is distracted. Something isn't right, but I can't put my finger on it. I know I need to step it up a notch, later today, paint a couple of walls, take delivery of the next show, and I'm fine with that, probably the best person for the job, given the requirements, my tool-kit is almost unique, I'm good at this and nothing fazes me. I admit I look at ankles; and the way a narrowed waist flares into hips that takes my breath away. I merely manage the facilities, barely, and some questions arise. Whatever. John solved the problems with the Belhaven Lager on draught. Anthony and I were the beneficiaries, I got a glass of foam, which eventually becomes beer, and then we split the first good pour. Got the second coat on the entry wall, unloaded the ODC show, then beat it home to miss the rain. Power was out, again, when I got to the house, but came on just after I walked in the door, which was good, because I needed to run the window unit for an hour to cool the place enough for my Black Dell to be happy. More rain coming, I'd better SAVE. Seem to be in an endless cycle of squalls, the ultimate result of which will be a very large harvest of blackberries. I like to juice them, add some to The Sauce, and freeze the rest to use in marinades. Great with pork and lamb. If I have a lot, as I will this year, I just drink it, mixed with orange juice and protein powder. The ODC show is always a treat, because the artists pack their own work. It's usually safe enough, but the packing materials are always a laugh, everything from egg cartons to padded bras; old towels, pillows, blankets, always lots of foam peanuts, boxes within boxes; two years ago, when we last did this show, shredded paper was the big deal, and that shit is almost impossible to deal with. We have to repack the show, when it leaves here, so we save what we can, using a lot of garbage bags, and generally improve on their attempts, with bubble-wrap, which is God's gift to the shipper of 3D pieces of pottery and glass. I have a green footprint, generally, compost my shit, don't have running water, but God forgive me, I use a lot of bubble-wrap. More than any of you, more than you can imagine. We buy the stuff in huge rolls, 60 inches by a hundred feet, you have to compress them to get through a three-foot door. D and I once, during the halcyon years when there was a budget surplus, completely rewrapped a traveling show of painting, because they had been so badly packed for shipping. We sent a show of ours, a Clarence Carter show, to Cleveland a few years ago. Cleveland crates, when you get a painting of their's, are too much, they have rubber seals between the lid and the box and weigh hundreds of pounds. We built the crates, because these paintings had never been loaned, and duly shipped the show off. A couple of days later Sara gets a call from Cleveland, and they say that this had been the best crated show they had ever received. One of those Preparator compliments that might be hard to understand. I like being good at what I do. A habit Herbert developed, in those first years I spent in professional theater. If you're going to do it at all. Might as well learn all you can about it, and, then, do it as well as you can. If I've been eating well, and had enough sleep, I like being challenged, it keeps you awake. I went back to sleep, this morning, I think it was, and I couldn't remember where I was, when I woke in a start. Often, I don't make sense of my self. I assume a little doubt in everyone, there by, extended, whatever. I notice we often come to a hard stop, probably just because you're married. I'll get back to you later. Read more...

Not Funny

These god-damn goat suckers at five in the morning are not funny. This one sets-up in the hickory tree closest to the house, 97 repetitions of that shrill three note "song" that might well and truly drive me crazy. I'm pretty good with a rock, I've been throwing them my entire life, and there's a place, where Mackletree Creek flows into Roosevelt Lake, that the flow drops rocks of a perfect size to fit my hand and arm. I keep a lard bucket of these by the back door, use them to roust coons from the compost pile, scatter packs of wild dogs, and attempt to relocate Whip-O-Wills that have gotten too close. Daylight breaking, longest day of the year, a blue-gray light that filters through the darker silhouette of black-leafed trees. I can hear a train, in Kentucky, maybe five miles away, across the river, black birds singing in the dead of night. Not unpleasant, moonlight, a few clouds, but I am a tad lonesome, wondering why I should end up this way, a cold bed, and no one to talk to. Fate, of course, or what passes as fate, you pick your own path without ever making a conscious choice. Can't keep track of where I'm writing, and a great many power outages the last few days, so I lose things. This beginning I wrote at home, Tuesday morning, went to work. Got stuck at the museum last night, by incredible thunder showers, squalls of intense rain and very high winds, with some hail, and lightning that was extremely dramatic, especially striking over in Kentucky. The tallest trees on those lovely limestone bluffs that front the Ohio were taking a beating. In one intense period of time, maybe five minutes, there were 15 or 20 hits. I hadn't meant to, didn't want to stay in town, wanted to get up on the ridge and watch the show. I'd had a wonderful day at the museum, painting the main gallery, and intended to go home and write about white, again. Gallery White specifically, because I see so much of it. It's a soft, tanish white, easy on the eye. I understand white, finally, at this point in my life, and I had made some notes, during a long day of painting white on white. Closed up at five and headed home, got a couple of miles when the deluge hit and my windshield wipers wouldn't work. I pulled over and read for thirty minutes, Steven Havill's latest, "Double Prey" and it's good, he's a fine writer. Headed back to the museum, during a lull. Dark skies, more high winds, I went over to the pub, to drink a pint and wait out whatever the weather might bring. There was another lull, I thought I might get home, but another squall hit, harder than the first. I'd never get up my driveway, and my power is surely fried. I could walk up, with an inverted umbrella, but what's to be gained? I don't feel like suffering the discomfort, grab a footer and fries at the Diary Bar on Second Street and go back to the museum, watch Hulu and run the sump pump in the basement. One time, in Mississippi, I saw it rain like this, had to take the pigs to high ground and the ducks were drowning. Today, the temporal problems, I finally piece together just the last couple of days. It's all so confusing. Just my life, without the added confusion of 'other'. Maybe it's the white on white, maybe there's a cover-up. I think about this while I'm covering up the damage from the last show. I'm base coating the two signage walls today, that is my mandate. Careful taping, ladders and drop-cloths, roller covers and certain brushes, I can do this, it's not really (=)'s a problem. More like a bad date. I get it. I'm completely involved with the pattern and that's not actually the issue. I don't know what the issue is. I just try and stay below the radar, it's a habit, as well as anything else. The color was called, I kid you not, Night Magic, and I had to think about that. Read more...

Best Interests

Nothing if not aware. Watching water over the spillway. Napp. It might appear I suffer a disorder, something unnamed but commonly assumed, an illness of some type. In the Diagnostic Criteria, as a footnote, I appear as someone who watches water flow downhill. Mesmerized by almost nothing. Lately I sat on a five-gallon bucket of rainwater I had collected for a bath and watched a spider spin a web. One of those giant summer spiders, I don't know what they are, maybe four inches from foot to foot, the body about the size of a piece of pencil, colored weirdly, in yellows and green. I'd be paranoid, but I've seen these spiders before, and they're harmless. I can move them from one place to another by picking them up on a stick. Not that relocating a spider is any kind of a big deal, but I don' have to kill them, which is my first impulse, and it strikes me as a kind of mid-western zen, like taking box-turtles off the road, you assume which direction they're heading. Plagues me later. Which way were they heading? I'm not sure it matters, but I always move things downhill. It seems logical though I know logic is a trap. Still, downhill seems better, because uphill is always a slog, and you track mud inside. Truth is, you always track mud inside. No matter what. Best interest is served by attending the common good. Face turtles into the grass, away from the road. That's almost always downhill, I check my notes, pretty sure about this, the way water flows. Yes, water and gravity; runnels, riverlets. Rains all day, off and on, sometimes hard. Dark. Finish the Mankell novel, then immerse myself in Kit Smart and John Clare for several hours. Power off again, for a couple of hours, and I actually need an oil lamp, in the middle of the day, to read. I work out a rough schedule, for I what I need to get done next week; the show comes in on Friday, and I'll unwrap it on Saturday. Need to be as prepared as possible, because there is no extra time. Opens early and two events in three days, then cleaning up and restoring order, so I'm out of pocket until the second week in July. Terry wants me to cook, one night, over at his apartments; and Brenda would love for me to be in Florida, the first week in September. That might not seem like a very full calendar, but for me it is. Several things in two months is an overload. I'm used to watching eggs hatch, things that take a lot of time. I usually carry a thermos, a pad to sit on, and several interesting sandwiches. Don't ask, the explanation makes no sense. Read more...

More Rain

Hard rain wakes me, staccato pounding on the roof. The Allman Brothers, Statesboro Blues. A deep, thick black, the shades of hell; I have to find the edge of the back deck with my toes so I don't piss on my feet. So dark I can't see my hand. Cave dark, but electric, then lightning blinds me and I stumble back inside, grasping familiar handholds.The power goes out and I light a candle, make some illegible notes. Hen scratch. Just something I do, it doesn't make any sense. Pegi is so stressed she asks me to do the impossible and I agree that I can, but wonder if I should. Life assumes the guise of a country-western song. Harmonics, a high soprano on top, almost painful. I plan breakfast, I can't get any further than that. A cup of coffee and maybe an omelet. Most lyrics are insipid, I have to turn off the radio before I throw something across the room. Rhyme is a useless device, keyed to an oral tradition that's been dead for several hundred years. End rhyme. Internal rhyme is OK as long as you make it subtle. Send somebody, send someone. You'll never win, if you try. Love lost. I can't turn it around. What you see is what you get. I just walk in the woods, listen to the bugs and birds, it's a solace against, or maybe with, the rain. Picture in a frame. Father's Day ushers in with a bout of hard rain just after dawn. Still no power, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Got up when it was light enough to read. A Henning Mankell novel. "The Troubled Man" which is a good way to pass a rainy day. Power comes on about mid-day, 1:12 actually, as I had to turn the computer to reset the clock. Fried a potato patty, and made a frittata with leftover veggies, a big wedge of Cincy toast. In a lull, on a trip outside, I find the first ripe blackberries, the earliest I've ever harvested. A nice bowl with a little brown sugar and cream. Wrong time for me to eat, three in the afternoon, because I probably won't eat anything else today other than some olives and cheese. Another hard rain at five. But no lightning, so I just SAVE and keep the computer on. Samara calls, they're all at the Telluride Blue Grass Festival, getting situated to listen to Robert Platt, talk to Rhea. They both sound great and I get off the phone oddly disconnected. Me, I mean, not the call. The girls are good to me, they understand why I live like I do, understand my commitment to reading and writing, but sometimes I get off the phone, I don't field a lot of calls, and I feel there's a world out there, that I know very little about. On the other hand I'm not a total recluse. There was a janitor at Janitor College, Utah, that lived in an artificial cave he'd fashioned from scrounged bricks. Crazy as a loon, but he was a good janitor; no one, ever, found out anything about him. No paper record, nothing. Wild child of the plains; and when he died, my senior year, there was no one to notify. He caught a drunk freshman, falling out a dorm window, and was killed by the impact, the drunk lived. Such are the wages of sin. I was assigned to clean out his den, because I had befriended him, taking him the occasional bottle of whiskey and plug of tobacco. He stank, lord knows he hadn't had a bath in years, and he was pricky, taking offense at everything. His cave was a model of organization, all of Faulkner and Hegel. Can't argue that. And some letters he'd written to an estranged sister and never sent. It's possible to know way to much about someone. Utah harbored feelings for a certain stripper. From the record I can't ascertain if they actually fucked, certain recordings indicate they did; but that could be a red herring. Every record can be altered. Really, I don't know anything about you, and your fucking questions. Read more...

No More

The myth that there is actually something, out there, greater than your own self-interest. We're all so deeply involved in self-interest. This has always been the case, I think. The only way you can survive, is to be intensely interested in where the next foot falls. These past weeks, the moment that stands out, I was in the woods, looking for morels, which involves a kind of intense looking, in which attention is tightly focused. A passion, really, which, by definition, excludes everything else (a perfect use of really, in passing) including whatever the next thing might be. Assume the worst: you're caught between a rock and a hard place. Caught in a back-drift, wondering why you should be the one that had to shoulder this load. Surely there's an immigrant we could foist this on. Bad mood, I can taste the bile, but I don't know why I feel so pissed. Caulk it up to mere accumulation. Thank god there's a ridge I can retreat to. But, you know, life is too much, confronted straight up. We have to relegate things, depending on their import. I seem to have to charge language, a mandate from the other side, and I have no clue what that is. You probably have to do a load of laundry. Where was I go going with that, right, looking for morels. Serious business, looking closely. What I've learned in the last dozen years is that the more closely you look the more is revealed. But you do need to glance ahead, every once in a while, to avoid the monster rattlesnake that's six feet in front of you. Read more...

More Clare

Walking away from the asylum, literally, just walking away, Clare was convinced he was going to see his first love. Mary Joyce, and wouldn't believe she had died three years earlier. He stayed free for five months, then was readmitted between Xmas and New Year 1841. Stayed until his death, 1864, in his 71st year. Dr Fenwick Skrimshire entered on the admission form that his stay had been preceded by many years of poetical prosing. That'll do it to you. Of course I have the bug now, and I want to read everything by and about. Could take a while to track it all down, but I can probably get D to inter-library loan through the University system and find most of it. On the book sites I use to buy, esoteric books like these are either very expensive or very cheap. Another thing about the inter-net, I wondered, yesterday, who this woman was that was quoted, in an article about the latest disgraced Congressman, and in one hit, ONE HIT, I was on a porn site. Though I suppose I got the information I was after. Final prep for painting the pedestals and various walls not quite finished, I still have maybe an hour sanding, but tomorrow I start slapping on product. The floor, as you can imagine, with all the repair and sanding, is a mess, but there's no reason to do very much about it until the ODC show is installed. The nature of museums. The first two weeks of July, I increasingly see as a nightmare, but that's OK, sweet dreams and honeysuckle can lull you into a false sense of the world. And I'm used to the push, it's like theater in slow motion. Even Janitor School drop-outs can do theater in slow motion. Pegi's big spring show, with the Cirque, is three nights, starting tonight, and she is out-of-pocket, I need to go, watch, but I really hate being in an audience, I'm more a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. Or a stay-at-home kind of guy. I don't lightly give up an evening for anything other than intimate conversation, an unspoken rule. Most of my rules are unspoken, which is part of what makes me hard to live with, you never know. Rolling thunder that sounds serious, I save, and shut down. It rains for maybe ten minutes, like a pregnant cow on a flat rock, and then that line of showers is through. Perfect timing, because at the end of day, the heat is carried away, I have to go, it's fairly violent. Lightning just cleaved a tree not a hundred feet from my house. A roll of thunder shakes my house, that's fine, I don't have anyplace I'd rather be. I make a very nice omelet with store-bought mushrooms and a scallion. With a piece of that bread from Cincy, smeared with butter and a honey-ginger jam, this is may be one of the great meals ever. I don't really care what D says, like Anthony he'll soon have his MFA and talk funny. What I'd like to do, is install a show. Eat dinner, go to bed. My requirements are fairly simple, a pallet on the floor, a couple of shots of Irish whiskey, silence; I tuck into a fetal position, fold the blanket between my bony knees, and rest. The world is so much stranger than anything I might imagine. Read more...

Toward Madness

A Clare day. I down-loaded some things, and a few books came on inter-library loan. Also a Clare day as it started sunny and cooler, but there was the smell of rain, clouds in the afternoon, then rain. You could view this as a metaphor for poor John's life. Another complex person that went crazy, and there's something oddly modern about the ways. I get that far before work, arriving at 7:30 after a slow drive in, stopping often to look at some particular thing, a large white trillium, an arbor of honeysuckle that induces a coma of smell; stop twice to move box-turtles off the road, three times, on Mackletree, to remove road trash. I got to the museum early to watch a TV show on Hulu, but I was side-tracked by the ease of accessing information with a high-speed connection. It's addictive. D arrives at 9:00, we go get a coffee and scone, and I see he has remembered the necessary tools. To me, this is a funny story. The ladies, Pegi and Trish, had decided to cover the inside of the new (an improvement grant) back window, a large three-paned thing, maybe 120 inches wide by 60 inches tall, three units mulled together. It had been single paned glass, and now it's argon filled thermo-pane with insulated mullions. Money well spent. To tint the glass, so that, from the outside, you weren't looking at the back of a projection booth, was going to cost an astounding $687, so the ladies were trying to stretch a piece of black scrim across the inside trim, so you couldn't see in, and were trying to attach it with duct tape. I believe in duct tape, I've used it in life-or-death situations, the tensile strength is amazing, but it really wasn't the solution for this particular task, and they just drop the whole mess on the floor and defer to whatever we might think. This is Problem Solving 404. For this simple task, to make it look OK, we require a compressor, a pneumatic stapler, two drills, one of them a hammer-drill, lumber, and tap-cons. We build a picture frame, on the inside, and staple the scrim; it isn't perfect but it's a thousand times better than what you formerly saw, and then we apply museum signage, in vinyl, on the outside of the window, and it's cool, you know, the transformation. Suddenly, even from the back, you know this is the museum. Personally, I wouldn't have used red for the lettering, it's a little Goth. Her lips and what I don't want to know. Maybe a green or azure, as it rises in the mist. Red is so confrontational. My Jimmy Buffet stories, or my Carly Simon stories, sound so contrived, but those are the real stories; mostly I make things up, and avoid reality. Clare didn't punctuate well, used a lot archaic words, not unlike Emily. Make a note. I'm sure someone is keeping record. I just want to go back to Memphis, marching back to hell. Night train. You can hear me coming, right, down by the river, when the levee breaks. Take a number. Love might be beauty, but that doesn't mean you won't be slogging through shit most of your life. Clare tended sheep, means he dealt with the odd prolapsed uterus, field amputation, pulling the occasional dead fetus by hand. It's part of the package. You buy nature, you buy the whole dark back-side. The bone pile. Where we hide the failures, the mistakes, the various genetic disasters; inbred mutants better left on the hillside to die, and go about our lives as if nothing had happened. What he wanted (CLare) was a life in London, among the literate. But he was a fucking janitor, for god's sake, he didn't have a doctorate degree, he verbally assaulted a Shylock, and that's so politically incorrect that they really had to lock him up. Restraints are an option, but I've learned, the hard way, it's better to ere on the side on containment. Cuff everyone and ask questions later. As a matter of course, people hurt themselves and others. Best nip that in the bud. Wet sheets are good for this. If I were completely loony, and you were reading me closely, what would that make you? Just curious, because of something someone said, about my stability. I'm fine, actually, wouldn't hurt a fly, but I do have dark thoughts about killing anyone who doesn't agree with me. Clare was like Pound, I have to think about that, the way he targeted an audience. An odd couple came into the museum this afternoon, I walked them through Shane's figurative show. Both professors at Kent State. He was a German, who taught accounting, she was an American who taught German, I'm no longer surprised, so we get along famously. I show them the vault. We talk about Clare, and madness, about that desire to be other then we are. This is the best job ever. Read more...

Three Foxes

I think it's my old lover and her two kits, but I'm not sure, all those foxes look the same. "Jubilate Agno" and the most blessed cat in history. Foxes are more like cats than dogs. Madness is a relative term for what we don't understand, or think we do and really don't. Tesla and that pigeon. Who's to say? I knew a goat once, but we don't need to go there, it's not what you think, we really cared for each other, it wasn't a case of taking advantage. Robert Plant plays a guitar like it was a dulcimer. Open tuning. Sacred heart. A choral effect. Hold on, keep your eyes on the prize. Paul Simon does an African thing, something simple, about human kindness, it almost turns my stomach, but I love his harmonies. Richard Thompson without the anxiety. I have to turn off the radio because it strikes too close to the truth. Absolute silence always brings Bach out of the woodwork. I hear the Cello Suites in the subtle scraping of carpenter ants. That slight sound, of wind in the trees, is Dido calling Troy to destruction. One thing must die before another is reborn. It's the rule, right? The way things are constellated. A Mayan sense of time. Your sense of time, where I rip out a bleeding heart and hold it up to the rising sun. A metaphor, but you get my drift, how useless we are. Like a leaf on the ripple. Nothing, really. Sorry, I can't help myself, given the chance, I'll always be at least ironic, if not sarcastic, it's just the way I am, the natural world is just a target, something I can hold myself up against. You make some assumptions. Maybe some of them are correct: I'm what you imagine I might be. Shipping day, and I get to the museum early. 7:30, to meet the first truck at 8:00. On time, D shows up, we get the Modernism show loaded, signed off, and they leave for Wisconsin. Second truck arrives, we get the 7 crates of glass loaded, and the two paintings being returned to the Cleveland Museum, because they don't let their collection out of the state. Not noon and we had loaded $2,135,000 worth of art and shipped it out. Excellent feeling. I bring peds up from the basement and they're in terrible shape, start repair. D and I strip signage from the two walls, and this new generation of vinyl is thinner and stickier and must be scrapped off, which damages the walls and will require patching and sanding before painting. At that point in the turn-around where everything you get done adds three more things to the list. Ohio Designer Craftsmen show isn't in until the end of next week, so I have time for a pretty good list. A good day, nice to have all of that art out of here. The main gallery looks like what it is, a job site, my playing field. The first ten days of July promise to be over the top. I look forward to it. Responding to the call. Pegi's big show is at West High School, three performances, and it's a big deal, I give her set person paint and advice, finish rebuilding the follow-spot. Kim said, when he was here, that it would take two or three people to replace me. High praise from one of the other great problem solvers I know. I know several, actually, any one of those people from my last years at the Cape Playhouse and especially that first year at the Opera Company of Boston. We were amazing, not the least because we were smoking Syrian hash that had the state seal impressed in the middle of six-inch rounds, and taking every psycho-tropic drug that wasn't illegal. And there were a lot of them, the birth of ethno-botany. I ran a perfect show, it's really difficult to run a 'perfect' show under any circumstances, for one of the three performances of Beverly Sills' last "Traviata", after having eaten several leaves from a tree, that I had been told, might kill me. And she was effusive, this was the best performance ever. God. I'm thinking. I should get high more often. Read more...

On Reading

My predilection is for the printed word, let me say that up front. I love books, I'm almost literally surrounded by them, thousands and thousands of them. What I do know, to answer Montaigne's question, I've learned from observing and from reading. How do we assign value? Who I am is because of my reading, and I like what and whom I am become. Seldom bored, usually happy, enjoying both the work I do for a living and the time I spend alone. A comprehensive whole, the hermeneutic circle. These three-day week-ends, that I'll be resuming now that D is on summer break, allow me 24 hours of reading time. Just finished "The Gutenberg Elegies", a very good book on reading by Sven Birkerts in which he argues that "The medium matters because it defines the arena of sentience." I listen to books on tape, occasionally, on long car trips (I try not to fly), but it's really not the same as hunkering down in a comfortable spot, with decent light, and physically opening a book. The smell is missing (many of the books I read are old) and that tactile sense of actually turning pages. I love the access to information a high-speed connection permits, but when I'm at home, I look up Phillip Sidney in the 11th Britannica, and read it with the magnifying glass from my two-volume OED, because my set is small, on bible paper, printed in 8 point type. A printed book requires physical attention. Move too fast, or without consideration, and you can tear a page; people who love books hate tearing pages, and tend to be more careful. I've watched people, at the bar in the pub, tearing through the APS of their IPhones, and I wouldn't loan them a book. They wouldn't know how to treat it. A young hawk glides in, settles on a branch, an immature red-tail; she, I think it's a she, from my reading, is looking for small rodents. Her eyes are black holes. She sees things I don't see, which upsets the balance of reality: what is really there, for instance. I was reading Lewis Turco's "The New Book of Forms" today, and came across the word parecnasis, which is a technique of digression. Where you leave the main argument, for a time, to talk about other things, that don't seem to be related. But, of course, they are, and then you bring your whole argument in from left-field and look like a fucking genius. I hate to really (Glenn is right, correct, to latch onto that word, universes) draw conclusions, but we're all getting dumber. I finally have to call him, because I can't remember, that it was Kit Smart who wrote about his cat. A long history of crazy writers. That push the envelope, make us think. Really, you know, we should offer health insurance, and dental care, there's no reason poets should have bad teeth. What we had talked about later was probably the issue, something symbolic and important, I don't remember exactly, it involved what we were talking about. Nothing, as it happened. Read more...

Believing, Seeing

My ex always said she'd see it when she believed it. Remember what Hume said about the limits of empirical observation. A show, after the run, packed and crated, spread about the dim gallery, is sort of sad. Looking for a venue, wanting to be unpacked. But Tuesday, after lunch, the main gallery will be empty; I'll bring up all the pedestals, for the ODC show, and they'll need patching and repairing and painting. There will a time, a week or so from now, when all the walls will be repainted, and, scattered around, will 15 or so pristine semi-gloss peds. It's exactly like a show, but there is no show. I think about how interesting it might be to draw a show, in string. Hardware on the walls and panels, and on the peds, so you could loop the string around. The string would go from the lights, to the peds, to the walls. Sight Lines could be the name of the show. Gruber uses some words that I had just learned independently. I brought a dictionary of art terms home from the museum library. I'm allowed. A word that I had marked and studied was oubliette, which is a hole in the floor, a trap-door. He has it conveniently in Venice, where the tide disposes. They also existed in various keeps and castles, a one-way trip, drop the screaming client down the hole, a few days later, throw in some lime. We've always been very cruel. There's been a war going on my entire life, cold, or otherwise, and I'm amazed we mostly train people to kill other people. The largest industry currently hiring in our great country. You can fly drones, and never leave home, kill whole families in Afghanistan AND draw benefits, retire early. Double dip into some black ops thing in North Carolina. A signing bonus, very good pay, full insurance. This shit mystifies me, maybe why I mention it. My concern is just fitting words together. I don't care who gets where with whatever degree. What interests me is the way the light falls, late in the afternoon. I'm just a painter, is all, maybe a jazz guy; maybe I don't do anything but imagine poses. The world is mostly illusion. I fit right in. Read more...

Defenseless

Awoke in a cold sweat. No mean trick, when it's this hot. A really bad dream filled with sepulchral imagery, a maze; a tracery of escape (a line of grace, a gentle 'S' curve, illuminated from beneath, like the path to hell, down alleys, threatening shadows) and the sound-track is ricky-ticky harpsichord imitating a Whip-O-Will. I'm sure I'm going crazy. I drew up a will with Clay, last year, so I'm not intestate. There are instructions, somewhere in my papers, that I don't have to be embalmed, in Ohio, and that I should be buried in a Lazy-Boy box from Covert's Furniture Store, in a tree-tip pit Booby would excavate with a back-hoe. No illusion that death is anything more than merely dying. Clare and Christopher Smart are cartoons at an opening reception where all the guests are hollow-eyed and vacant. What are you going to do? I get up and roll a smoke, pour a neat whiskey into the glass on my desk. I see where all this is coming from, insofar as understanding is necessary, not that that makes it any more comfortable. That that seems a poor choice of phrase. 2:22 in the morning, and I don't have a clue. I'd rather be awake, than mired in that dream. Clare knew he was crazy. Maybe I read too much, but I don't know what the option is, would I rather be bored? No. A thousand times no. I'd rather be rocked in the cradle of anything alive. A personal choice. 2:48 I get out several things I need to read later, when I can see. Lonesome whistle blows. Don't feel like doing anything, so I read Gruber all day, "The Forgery of Venus" does require two readings, a lovely thing. Chaz did the deed, the trucage. The description of matching 17th century pigments and techniques is fascinating. The channeling of Velazquez is terrific stuff. A good book to spend a day with. Steady looking things up. Grazing on finger food, nuts and berries, cheese and olives, through the afternoon. At some point I drifted off into the whole mortality sidebar, thinking about family dynamics, how the situation was moving into even more difficult waters. Every family navigates this. If you have a lot of money, you pay someone else to do some, or even a lot of it. As it is, I'll have to go down, a week, here and there, cover for my sister so she can get a break. I'm southern, it's family. I'll be paying off the rental cars for years, on my VISA, but it has to be done. One visit I'll get over to Kim's, to see the brickwork on the Carage. He's a consummate craftsman, one of the very best I know. Don't know why it's like that, but most of my friends are the best at what they do. Like we had a club and a secret handshake. We don't. I rarely see these people, when I do see them we pick up the conversation, exactly where it was. It's weird. How your brain can do that. First thing I do is lay face-down, put my hands behind my back. I know the drill. I don't want to blow my cover, a country dufus in a denim shirt. Everyman, more or less, Mister Levi, we have on tape, leaving in a hurry, I think it's connected, but there's nothing I can prove. I think of several red herring. But I choose to say nothing, and see what happens. Read more...

Terminal Mass

Two new elements, can you believe it. These things don't exist for a nano-second, I've looked at the trace, hardly there and very heavy. The term 'bar sinister' is a heraldic impossibility. Take a tip from one who's tried. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand doeth. Sidney Lanier comes to mind, below decks, dying, playing his flute. The skipper's daughter had been his student, recognizes his phrasing, has him hauled up out of the hold, and instead of Andersonville, he ends his days in NYC, playing for a appreciative crowd. I still read his poems, laugh at the silly rhymes, but I still read them. There's a force there, that's in touch with something. Whip-O-Wills and hoot-owls in the night. A veritable concert, a virtual song. Whatever keeps you awake. For me, right now, one of those birds moves within thirty feet, and I can hear that clucking sound, on the intake of breath, and the notes are loud. Fucking awful, really, but just when it reaches that point that I must either kill myself or shoot off the shotgun out of sheer desperation, the bird flies away. The silence is overwhelming. Yes, she said, what you imagine might very well be true, certain Korean condiments could make a difference. Consider that in context, make a few notes, look up a few words. A joggle joint is dovetailing in stone. Another slow day at the museum, D and I do some repair work, fix one of the (important) six-foot tables. We organize the load-out, on next Tuesday early, two large trucks arriving at the same time, taking shows in opposite directions. We're good to go. I spend some time, with a high-speed connection, reading John Clare and about him. Friend Skip is guest editing an online mag and wants me to do a piece, recommended Clare. Interesting dude. British rustic poet, a kind of Thoreau, who suffered severe depression and spent his last dozen years in a looney bin. Skip gave me some slack, and I'm leaning toward Christopher Smart. Who also went nuts. There's an underlying theme here. I could do a Clare piece, in the naturalist vein, but if I did a Smart piece it would be more a Janitor College type block; I mean paragraph, I think of paragraphs as blocks. I compose blocks of text is how I perceive what I do. I use them to build stacks of paper, it keeps me busy. Most of this rain is missing me to the north, a bare spatter is all I get, and I was so prepared. Made a sausage and bean dinner, a good chorizo and chick peas. So good I almost faint, a combination rarely bettered. At the very end, I added in some shredded poke shoots. Excellent. Another modified idea. Supposed to be kale but I didn't have any. Provincetown bar food. The summer I saw four Eugene O'Neil plays, at his theater on the water, I'd slip out and have some soup and a draft. Those plays are endless, you can actually get drunk and sober up during "The Ice-Man Cometh", probably your best plan. I'm not sentimental, nature teaches hard lessons, what lives, what dies. You can compost anything organic, at least make dirt, on your way to Santa Fe. Maria S. yes, four people responded. I thought it was a poor showing, I thought someone read me closely. Linda does, but I knew that, and Neil. I actually think of myself as transparent. Read more...

Quiet, Late

Bug noises, with a base note of heat lightning. Not a whisper of wind. The quiet and the darkness are a blanket on the world. They muffle sound almost like six inches of new powder, mid-winter, but the fact that I'm nearly naked, places me in my season. 3:33 in the morning, I heat water for a sponge bath, check myself carefully for ticks. When it's really hot, if you rinse your hair with cool water and sit under a ceiling fan, you'll be significantly more comfortable. Churrigueresque is a kind of baroque Spanish architecture with a lot of frills. Gaudy springs from this, but there is a long tradition, a profusion of ornament. Broken pediments and embedded shards of glass. Clunch is a soft limestone, used as a building material, an in-fill. Enceinte is that inner-most enclosure in a fortress. Even when I stop, I keep going. It's a disease, I think, my obsession with dictionaries. Propylaeum is the entrance to a temple. I love words. They're the other thing, other than reading, that keeps me from ever being bored. To reference a word, if I need the OED, I have to move a pile of manuscripts, various print-outs, a pile that's twenty inches tall. A printed ream is two inches, so twenty inches is ten reams. 5,000 pages. A million words, easy. I have to think about that. Back to bed and oversleep for the first time in forever. Slow day at the museum, slogged through some paper work on the permanent collection. Too hot to eat, can't even finish a kid's meal toasted cheese at the pub. They're back re-paving on 125, a second layer of asphalt. I'm stopped first in line where it goes one-lane for about a mile. The flagger is a thirty-something woman, dirty blond, good looking in a rugged way. I'd picked up some hydrating liquids at Kroger, and stored them in the fridge at work. Handed her one out the window. A look of sheer pleasure. If I had to do it, I probably could, but my days of being outside in the 95 degree sun are hopefully over. Ellen she said, I said Tom, and she said that it was an award winning kindness. We chatted about ticks, until her radio squawked, we waved, I headed home. Guy behind me passed, on the first of two passing straightaways, and gave me a big thumb's up. Odd, thumbs up is also correct there. Takes the window unit two hours to get the house down to 82, when I can turn on the computer. Another huge spread of afternoon thundershowers moving in for a few days. I need to bring in supplies tomorrow, three days on the ridge with no trips out. I need a piece of meat, and I think I'll get the smallest pork butt I can find, and a turkey breast. Cook them in the smoker, with the turkey breast under the butt. That way I get pulled pork sandwiches for lunch, and smoked breast, with gravy, in several different guises, for dinner. Mashed potatoes at dinner every night, as I need to gain some weight, make a batch of the crock-pot grits and eat a lot of eggs. I still have three half-loaves of the bread from Cincy. Good to go. Picked up a pound of butter and a block of very good Vermont cheddar. Got that Michael Gruber book, "The Forgery of Venus" out of the library, again, to read it, again, to see if I can really figure out what happens at the end. The ending is ambiguous. It's a beautiful book, lovingly constructed, the language so nearly perfect that, at times, I'm jealous. Then it's quiet, and late, again, and I'm staring into the middle distance, remembering a phone call with a former lover; rolling a smoke, getting a drink, remembering how badly I felt, that I really couldn't be there for her, that I had a life of my own, that required attention. Self-centered arrogant bastard, and I admit to that, that also expects his toast to be buttered. I don't expect someone else to butter it, I'll do it myself, but it still needs to be buttered. Marlon, "Last Tango...". What was her name? Read more...

Spontaneous Eruption

That Mega-Volcano under Yellowstone, whatever turned the Mississippi backwards, the sand-flats still belching. Look at this from an overhead vantage. GPS, all that, the calming female voice telling you to turn right. How far along are you willing to go? I turn left, as a matter of course. A sore spot I try to make actual. Here's a thought, what if everything you see is in a mirror. Backwards. But you don't know that, you think it's forwards. Beating against the wind. You can't even pee off the poop deck, because it flies back in your face. Reduced to a kind of nausea you might experience on a fun-house ride. Or, again, you're standing on the banks of the mighty Ohio; it's flowing at a goodly rate, a million cubic feet per second, four knots, you figure, using an algorithm that is probably incorrect; and notice a backwater, an eddy, where the water is flowing upstream. There's an half-assed jetty, poking out into the river, and it takes part of the energy and turns it back on itself. I don't understand fluid dynamics, but I can see. Kim and I talked about theater, how it was the best possible education. do a couple of seasons of summer stock, at a really high level, and you'll never again doubt what's possible. Working with Herb and Helen, it was never a question of whether, it was only how. With that particular team, in that place, at that time, we could do anything. It was years later that I realized how good we had been. For a few years in there, we were probably the best. The impossible was merely a difficult thing, no sweat. Like when Herbert requested we destroy Troy and reassemble the whole damned thing for another performance the next night. Impossible, on the face of it, but if you break it down into discreet units, it might be done. You have to remember, we were the best. We could take a sheet of plywood and turn it into the birth of the universe. Herbert would make these drawings, on waste scrapes of upson board. They were exquisite. We'd do whatever it was that needed to be done. Not a problem. The difficult was merely a hurdle. Simply lift your foot a little higher. Nothing was too extreme. Finally back to sleep. Lovely drive in this morning, but already warm. I remove the rest of the hardware and the walls look like Swiss cheese. Spend hours patching. Days of painting ahead. Mindless work, and my brain is mindlessly firing. A delightful flippancy of questions and answers. Psychotic art is always subjective. Jordan, at the pub is slightly outree and subtly wanton. An aedicule is the niche in Roman houses, from which the lares and penates watched over the place. Anamorphosis is a distorted projection. Haphomets are grotesque stone figures covered with symbols of the sun and moon. Camel hair is completely unsuitable to make brushes, camel hair brushes are usually made with squirrel hair. German word for the day: Gesamtkunstwerk, which is the idea that certain universal characteristics transcend time and place, and are common to all works of art. I'm not sure I buy this. But I think about it. Regardant, in heraldry, is looking backwards. A sallyport was an entrance to a castle from which defenders could rush out on their attackers. The main gallery is on the ground floor and I take my breaks in the library; a normal day for me, I look up a dozen things, one place or another, in the museum library, or upstairs, where there's a pretty good dictionary, or after I get home, where dictionaries seem to be breeding. Still 90 degrees at eight o'clock but I finally get the house cooled down to 82 and can turn on my computer. Now it's 81, a couple of hours later, and stripped down to a threadbare sleeveless tee-shirt and my boxer shorts, I'm really quite comfortable. Kim was comfortable at 83, but he's from north Florida. Comfort is just a matter of a few degrees. Another check, on the positive side, for tree-tip pits. A few feet down the temperature is quite stable. In winter you might have to run one incandescent bulb to heat the place, in summer you would accept the relative cool. You could grow greens on the roof. Think about it. I've built several of these houses and they work just fine. We should all live underground, but we still have that cave image in front of us, and we want to be out in the open, to see the stars or whatever. I live above ground and have 27 windows. My house is impossible to heat and impossible to cool, but I like the views. I'm not willing to compromise anything, what I see is what I get. I like it that way. An implied connection. What do you mean, exactly. Read more...

Some Questions

How do you deal with the dead and dying? What do you say to the living? Is there a simple response to the idle question 'how are you doing?' Can one pone of cornbread possibly be better than another, when each is made exactly the same way. Yes, of course, everything is always different. Hey, just saying, the process changes. The exact temperature of a cast iron pan, the precise amount of buttermilk, the relative humidity. The nature of things is that they change, that water in which you place your foot. Running downhill, I stay ahead of my mistakes, easy enough, if you keep moving. Dancing the scree, we call this, staying one step ahead. whip-o-wills be damned. Something I wanted to say, but I've forgotten whatever it was. About staying the course, bearing the curse in mind, slipping on the loose shale. All the explanations are full of shit. The Diet Of Worms is a bunch of smug assholes deciding what we need to hear. I don't buy it. The fucking equation is shot through with holes. What I believe is blackberries setting fruit, because there's been enough rain. The honeysuckle is blooming on Mackletree, and it smells wonderful. I've never felt more special, than to not have air-conditioning and drive slowly, with the windows down. Does smell really matter? I'd argue that it does, but I'm an empirical guy, always looking for blackberries on the cane. Simple cause and effect: rain, open ground, it might be a good year. Talk with Glenn about the movie we're thinking about. We have to do this. Docenting the rain. These appear to be mere puddles, but if you look closely. Looking closely is the key. You start to notice things, and the view changes. Simple Venn Diagrams become a pattern. Kaylee's ass becomes one of the wonders of the world. Like that. Kim was here last night, on his way to an F1 race in Montreal. Met at the museum, I'd gone to town to do my laundry, then ridgeward, where he parked the rental car at the bottom of the hill and we drove up in the truck. The laundromat was a laugh, 13 other people there, all ages, and all of them seriously obese. Seriously hot day, 95 degrees, so I spent a couple of hours at the museum, in air conditioning, watching Hulu and finishing a decent book on language and the printed word. I made us a good dinner, ribs and mashed potatoes and slaw, then we talked into the night. He actually had a couple of small drinks, which I don't think he ever had. Brought a bottle of Jim Beam Black, for me, and a couple of bottles of his brother's mead. Kurt is a home-brewer like Marilyn and I used to be, cases of something coming out of the rotation every week. This batch of mead is labeled 520, being the 520th five-gallon batch of alcoholic beverage he'd brewed. I'm probably close to that, but I never kept very good records. He knows what all of them were, too, which is amazing. All my notes might fill one of those horrid spiral notebooks that catch of the edge of your pocket. But for years I've just used a folded piece of paper. I'm precise in my folding, I may be one of the best folders ever; and I always have, in my pocket, a sheet folded to eighth's, and a pen. I could make note. But I don't, very often, keep any record. Mostly there are lists, of things to get,or things to do, maybe the occasional word that caught my fancy, sometimes a mention of some process that I wanted to know more about. Every day is a mind-field. Where to take the next step. Linda intimated, by something she didn't say, that it was possible to make sense. I accept that as a given. Otherwise there is no reason I'd be spending this time writing you. I really must justify my existence, however weak the framing. You mean more to me than I mean to you. I see that. Makes it hard to talk directly. You with your puppets and me with mine. Read more...

Patterns

Like silk.That blush of color, a sparkle in the light; it could have been night, I don't remember. Something. Maybe you just poked me inside, I'm allowed great liberty with an elbow. Maybe it was the cat, or trailing my tongue along your pelvic bones, who knows? I'm allowed great liberty, because I'm a nice guy and I get things done; occasionally I get a small sample of beer, in a coffee cup, to see what I think. It could get me fired, so I spit it out, and talk about hops; where they grow, how they grow, what we might graph on them. I know too much about this. I should recuse myself. But I can't. This is what I'm a part of, that world, out there. Kick me in the nuts or welcome me as part of the family, here I am. Listen, I don't hear well anymore, so you should make sign. A single index finger means you get the point, two fingers means two guys with guns, and I hit the floor, shooting where I think the shots are coming from. Assume a fetal pose under a desk. I have to finish this paragraph tomorrow. If I don't, it would mean I spend way too much time thinking about you. Which, of course, I do; what did I say recently, writing is hard work. I've dug ditches, and post holes, but nothing prepared me for writing you. Read more...

Family Issues

Didn't write last night, stayed in town to listen to some music at the Pub. Blues, very good. A good crowd and I sat with the owners while they ate, at the far end of the bar, where it makes a little 'L' beside the fireplace. Friendly crowd but too noisy for me and I went back to the museum and watched some mindless TV on Hulu. Woke up early, did some grocery shopping for Kim's overnight visit, back on the ridge early. Made a quad-espresso and rolled a couple of smokes, and just when I was going over to the phone, to call my parents, it rang, and it was my sister, calling with a up-date on the various situations. Difficult to even outline the complexities. That point in the life-line when things turn awful. Mom had a pace-maker installed (telling word choice) and it doesn't seem to be working, she sleeps 20 hours a day. Dad can't see and his knees are failing, in pain all the time. That's the good news. They know they can't move back into their house, Dad can't deal with even the very few stairs required for life there, so they're living with my sister, as planned, and that's OK, except that my sister and her husband have lives too. I'm not there, but I agreed to come down in September, if not before, to give Brenda and Bill a break, so they could take a trip. Meanwhile my brother, 55, has lived with my folks for the last five or more years, which has been a very good thing, because it's allowed them to stay in their house, but now they can't live in the house, and my brother is still there, and he doesn't have a job, because he's been taking care of them for years, and we need to sell the house, to satisfy some debt and provide a little money for the end-game. A mutual dependency thing had developed, which now becomes very one-sided. Kevin needs to move on, we need to sell the house (I say we, this is mostly my sister who will handle the actually logistics, but there needs to be some kind of consensus, thus the call). Most of the debt has accumulated because of the expenses Kevin has incurred as caregiver. They don't drive, he needed a vehicle, he needed insurance, he needed a high-speed connection to the inter-net, so he could play his games; gas money, cigaret money, money to take his current squeeze out on Saturday night. At some point it got out of hand. Now, with the parents at my sister's, my brother feels he needs a surfing vacation, as his due, and he should be able to use their credit cards for a trip to Costa Rica, and maybe Puerto Rico. Wherever the surf may be 'up' from some tropical disturbance. This is why I live alone, without a television and running water. I can keep things simple. I refuse to fly and don't want to travel. My idea of a good time is finding just enough morels for an omelet. Even before the call is over, I'm in a kind of meditative immersion. Family stuff does that to you, it happens to almost all of us; except maybe those that are adopted and those few that are really psychotic. Comes down around your ears. Like slicing your retina or bursting your eardrum, not something that allows any relief. I hear, in my Dad's voice, that he would just like to end it, for he and Mom, just end it, lives fully lived; but there's a hint of religion, or ethics, or morals, or something, that doesn't allow that; and medical science has advanced so far, they can keep you alive almost forever, not matter the pain you suffer. It costs a lot, and pays for a lot of research. Quality of life is not really an issue. There I am with 'really' again, a mantra. What I'll do, if a heart-attack doesn't take me, is just walk down the driveway, just beyond where the fresh-water springs flow into the grader ditch, and drown myself in an inch of water. Easy enough, no mess, no fuss. A simple bloated body. The vessel, the corporeal manifestation, is nothing, it's a role, a disguise you might wear, to fool the world, what you really are is something you keep well hidden: an amorphous shadow. I'm not being clear, and I'm trying to be clear; I want you to understand what I say. But it's so difficult, the way language is charged. Doesn't matter what I say to you, it's pregnant with meaning, because I say it to you. Even if you try and back off that, you're in the cheap seats, looking from afar, but still the pattern emerges. And when the pattern emerges you start making sense. Right. Signify. Right. Meaning. You make it, you can't help it, Venus On A Half Shell, whatever your fantasy, your hand on her thigh, maybe just some music in the background. I didn't know anything about what I was going to write tonight, but I knew I was going to write. A feeling I get in the small of my back, sometimes I smell vanilla. Maybe it's nothing. But it's enough to keep me from killing myself. Read more...

Perfect Loading

When you make something that needs to stand upright, you have to carry the loading from the top right down through the base. Elementary. Otherwise, it falls over. Balance becomes the issue. In any three-dimensional medium, loading is critical. Building a house, or a concrete dancer, a blown glass vessel, or a simple pile of rocks, you have to get it right. Keep it upright. Anything straight is relatively easy. But it's the not straight that becomes difficult. In the not so straight, you find a line that carries the load down through the base. You need to visualize this, must see the way the load is carried. You can cheat, fool the eye, use a hidden threaded rod or anchor an armature in something heavy. I like rocks for this, or cast iron, maybe a large chunk of live-oak or any dense wood. Point being that you can off-set a tendency to lean. Thereby creating a dynamic. Often, this is the point. I'm a little pissed, right now, because of assumptions that have been made. I don't fall easily (if there is a point) into what anyone else thinks about the way I work. There's a comfort zone for me, that I achieve by dint of a long process of trial and error. I don't like seeing a new picture when I open a file, as if someone thinks they know what I need to see. Almost everything is a distraction. I thought I was clear on this, then K makes some (minor) changes on my computer at work, and I'm thrown for a loop. My Home Page and how clever everyone is, I had a way that I worked, and it's changed. No one consulted me. I was mopping shit off the bathroom floor, and when I came back I was reconfigured. It's not fair. Bad form. I had a working relationship and now it's gone, new hardware, new software, and I'm not comfortable. The point was, continues to be, that I should be comfortable. I'll make the choices. I might rather have the Swedish Bikini Shooting Team than some mixed race kid drawing with finger paints. Maybe control is an issue. I can't ever even begin to speak for anyone else, but I don't like being told what to do. Late night radio. Slack guitar. The blues. Woman, woman, you done took my life away. My momma didn't raise no fool. Robert Johnson. Come in to my kitchen. Here I am. Mary Louise, I don't need your kind of love. I'm sick and tired of your kind of love. A Robert Cray break. Harmonics. I get stronger the longer you stay away. Something a lot like Janis, don't worry about me, cut to just a silent view of the river, flowing down. D at work today, but he was working on the newsletter, so I finished packing the show, except for the two massive crates, one painting each, that we'll do tomorrow. Computer is fine, K straightened me out. I've been a little testy because of the back. Everyone left me alone today. Kind of a Kafka day. Introspective and roach-like. I'll probably use that kid, Leo, to help with the clean-up, after the two shows we're holding get out of here. Then the ODC (Ohio Designer Craftsmen) comes in. It's always a good show, interesting work, but the artist pack their own pieces and you wouldn't believe what they come up with. I'll be seeing a lot of styrofoam egg cartons, they're a big favorite, and old bath towels, which I occasionally replace with bubble wrap when that show leaves, and replace a couple of my old towels, which are way worse than the ones used to wrap art. I also have scored articles of clothing, and on one occasion, several books. I frown on using books as packing material, even though there is a lot of crap out there, which would serve no better purpose. Mostly I chuckle, at what some artists consider decent packing. It should be part of the course-work, even if you're rich, and pay someone else to ship things for you. Then you hire someone like me, and that's good for the economy. I understand that's the way it works. Insofar as I understand. I need to hire K, for a day a week, $100 cash plus dinner, to come out and help me get my house in order. She's an amazing cleaner and organizer. I have to get a manuscript together, the Janitor College stuff. I need help, really, I actually do. It's beyond my powers. I can generate text, but only if I'm not doing too much else, often nothing. Strange and Stand, of course, I just glanced at the address. It was Glenn and the Pfluegar. Should have known but Aralee writes that well too. I know a plague of writers, a disease with me, a cluster-fuck of writers. And on occasion, I get several together, feed them, and we talk. These are the best times in the world, polymaths who remember every book they've ever read, and like me, they average reading a book a day, so the conversation is spirited. During the course of the day I think about backlash. What that means. A pregnant word if there ever was one. Backlash. I cringe to remember. Early spinner technology sometimes backlashed, but I kept an extra cylinder of line, a magazine, that I could punch in, if I needed to. Afraid of that. Didn't send this Friday night. I'll send it now, so it doesn't get too long. Read more...

Midnight Rambling

I enjoyed that post last night, working several layers in, got up to pee, and there were a couple of replies. Aralee Strange, who some of you know, had me grinning and remembering in equal shares. Talking about her Dad's Pflueger. An open reel casting rod, pre-spinner, that was a nice piece of equipage. The constant danger of backlash unless you stayed attentive. My Dad leaned toward Shakespeare, another fine open-face. I still have one, in a box somewhere, with the mother of all tangles in situ, waiting for the more dexterous of the next generation to tease it out. Dating myself here, but I'm pretty sure I remember a time before monofilament. A kind of flattish casting twine. I might be making that up. Aralee is a fine writer. Google her. Then a post from Barnhart. I'm sure you can down-load some of his music, he'll be working on Glenn's next film, a master of percussion. He was talking about his mother. I want to meet her. K asked me this morning if I'd gotten laid, because I was grinning and moving smoothly, and I said no, I was just happy to be alive, handling paintings and being a critic. It suited me, really. Sitting in the back of the boat, untangling, while everyone else was, were, pulling in three pound crappie. One trip, to Lake Destin, we brought home 42 crappie over two pounds. Serious fishing. At the beginning, we just rented a boat, then a boat with a small Western Auto outboard so we didn't have to paddle, we could get to those spawning beds where the bluegill roiled. One of those beds was a peculiar drop-off, where two creeks met, and I'll never forget the way my Dad would triangulate the spot, using a dead tree and a rotting dock to find the precise spot. Probably couldn't find it now. Another spot lost to history, because the tree is rotted away, and the dock is only a memory. If I had a cave, I'd draw you a map. What these replies mean, is that someone understands. I'm dumb-founded, really (had to include that), by the apparent precision of memory. Knowing full well that what I remember is not exactly what happened, but it leads someone else to remembering. Shocking, actually, makes you wonder if memory is a game the universe plays to perpetuate itself. What signifies isn't always real, that's the problem; sometimes we invent. That is a Whip-O-Will right now, I guarantee, but it reminds me of so many things. Love lost, a missed meal, that trailing smell when you passed through the room. Gass says that three things make a list. A working definition. Lightning up toward dawn, I really should go sleep a couple of hours. I love smoking and drinking in the dark, everything is revealed, but I need to sleep, had no idea you cared. I need to wash my hair, maybe get my cage-mate to pull off ticks and eat them. We're all just monkeys in a cage. Just another movement, I don't want to call it post anything, as a label, a handle, we need a phrase, call it, god, naming, American Naturalism, or Birdsong, or Sweet Release. Boz Scaggs, late at night, can turn your head around. Whatever takes your fancy. Just saying. It's already tomorrow. A great many people write better than me, but I write all the time, so I tend to make up in volume what might fail in the particular, or maybe the opposite of that. I have to go wash my hair. A little late for work, but I've booked so many hundreds of extra hours, it's fine. Plenty of time to finish packing the show. Nearly finished today, but took it easy with the back. Worked alone, which was restful. Drifted, all day, enough focused attention to do my job, but thinking about dozens of other things. Payday, so I walked my check over to the bank, half-a-block, and saw seven women, all of them obese, all from behind. The word steatopygia came into my mind. Had to look it up, but couldn't spell it, took me 15 minutes to find it, always a good time. Wasps are terrible out on the front deck. I went out for the gallon shower and came right back in, need a can of bug spray, or a CO 2 fire extinguisher. Harvested wild honey in Missip by freezing the bees. Thought about buying the Raven map of Ohio, a beautiful thing, saw it online, but I don't have a wall for it; maybe upstairs, maybe change things around. Ohio has 312 miles of shoreline on Lake Erie, then falls off into the Till Plains, one of the most fertile places in the country. Watched some clips from Liza's movie "Refuge" on Pegi's computer, hadn't remembered that Linda Cardenelli was quite so attractive. Have to admit my back hurts, when I get home I self-medicate. Better now. Eat a can of room temperature beans right out of the tin. This passes for a life. There's plenty to read, and that's what, as Anthony pointed out, keeps me from being bored. I read all the time, at every meal, at every break, long days when the weather is inclement, and even when it's not. I can read all the time now, because it's too hot to do anything else, a few months ago it was too cold. I'm a sensitive guy, what can I say? I've gotten older and I no longer do roofs. Janus at the door, I screen callers now, what can I say? I don't have time for nonsense. Then I think of Lear, or Gorey, and realize, yes I do, have time. Read more...

Really

Major Mopping used to say, outside of class, he was a real Stoic by the way, a Prussian whose sense of humor leaned toward killing cats before they could piss in the corner, that we should never allow ourselves to become involved. We never knew what he meant. He had an odd relationship with a lady who leaned toward leather and whips. If I 'poach' a bit of cod, what have I done, really? I know, I know. Language in flux. Often, when I'm extending this argument, I'm actually mopping the floor, not quite pretending to be a janitor. We could open with a scene of him mopping, we can see the modified chevron in wet patterns on the floor. The Bach Cello Suites in the background, maybe he hums a few bars; cut back to him, the night before, a drink in hand, pontificating about birds in the night. He's either hung-over or still drunk, or maybe this is just his natural state, quick cut to water flowing downhill. The next day he's packing paintings, shipping off a show. Nothing, really, means anything. God forgive me, I stuff shit in boxes. He does. Not to take myself too seriously, that I am, really, a janitor. A couple of posts would prove that, explosive diarrhea or vomit in the stalls, depending on how graphic you want to be. Then maybe a creeping light, he walks us through the dawn. Beautiful drive in this morning, they'd mowed the verges on Mackletree. I stopped a few times, to pick up trash, flushed a couple of woodcocks in the clear-cut. Park Ranger stopped and applauded my efforts, we chatted about the under-story and available light, and he agreed it was the worst tick year on record. At the museum I just started right in on crating paintings, about 11 one of Pegi's Cirque kids, Leo, came over to help, and to start learning the ropes. We worked well together, which surprised me, but shouldn't have. I'm easy to work with, and a good teacher, one on one. And we worked hard all day, with a break for a noon time talk by the sculpture artist. Afterwards, I took them (he and his wife and their little boy) to lunch. Anthony went with us. The table-talk was delightful. She teaches drawing and has a show upcoming in Springfield, Ohio, that I fully intend to see. She loved the Carter nudes. Then back to work, wrapping and crating, until the very sound of tape coming off the roll was driving me crazy. Every painting is wrapped at least twice, with plastic and bubble wrap, and each layer requires at least six pieces of tape, and if it's a watercolor, under glass, requires that the glass be taped as well; rolls of tape, more tape, probably, than the average person uses in a lifetime. Linsey, at the pub, knows I hate waste, and boxed all the leftovers for me to take home, a simple but odd dinner, a piece of this, a piece of that, and that's perfect, or I probably wouldn't have eaten dinner. I've lost weight, and really (!) need to eat more, but I simply get tired of chewing. K said that if I could market that, as a pill, I'd be rich. I don't care about people's eating habits, most people carry too much weight, I can't be bothered with their problems. I look like a starved victim from some purge somewhere, but it's not an act, I just get tired of chewing. Put the radio on low, in the background, and it's Sun House; I met him once, he really liked my sauce, I gave him a starter pint and directions. Maybe I'm not really me, but just a sauce, struggling toward awareness. I'll, it, comes to doing anything. Notice the way I avoided using the word 'really' there? I think about this. One thing I hate about language, is the way they keep taking words away from me. Gay used to be a fine word, for instance. I'm not careful in what I write, a little bit, in the interest of propriety, but usually I don't really care. Really. So I use words in- correctly. And I get into trouble. I'm that friend of yours, that lives in a tree-tip-pit and eats leftovers from the local pub. On the face of it, not something to be proud of, but if examined closely, maybe a good thing. Next you'll ask me about my use of 'closely' and 'probably' and we'd argue. I'll leave it up to the thesis committee, I rested my case a long time ago. What you read is what you get. A simple equation. X equals Y plus Z. Do the math. Read more...