Thickening Agent

I thickened this pot of chili-like substance with mashed pork-and-beans. The sweetness works well with the green chili powder from New Mexico. God-damn it is hot. A heaping tablespoon was probably too much. I lean toward too much, a natural inclination, not enough never really appealed to me. The Doors Of Perception, been there, done that. I have to laugh, remembering Harvey, he could have been a great janitor. He'd aced all the course-work, mopped an Overlapping Course that though conservative was effective. The top of his class. I view the stress as merely interesting, I think he took it more personally.

Walking In

Nothing in mind, I just wanted to get to the bottom of the hill and let my reflexes take over. A modest pack, all the food groups covered, tobacco, whiskey, and the makings for a pot of chili. I leave work early, so I can get a fire started before the sun sets, and I'm walking up the hill in my usual manner, doddering, stopping often to see which way the leaves blow, what the tracks of small mammals might tell me; merely curious, and I'm maybe half way up the hill, protected, as it were, in the hollow, when I hear the wind. It's blowing a full gale on top of the ridge, and I know that last few hundred yards to the house is going to be brutal. It's a sonic environment. The roar of wind in the trees on the ridge top. My eyes tear up. The last few yards are difficult. Going home. Where, exactly, to place your step, becomes an issue; mud and various detritus. I'm aware of what I don't say, there's a reason, but I don't know what it is yet. It's easy enough to weather a mistake. Achieving the ridge is always a major accomplishment. Not just what you think. The physicality transcends anything you might have thought. Battered thus. It's easy to be glib, the way reality presents itself, but my foot is caught in the door. Clearly a euphemism for something hot and steamy. A bowl of rice, whatever that means. Listen, someone told me recently that I shouldn't believe everything I see. And that got me wondering. I don't see only what I want to see, but other things too. Wind all night, and still this morning blowing to beat the band. The stick forest sways, dropping deadwood. Too warm for the end of January, sap is flowing and Ronnie is already making syrup. I intend to tap a sycamore (the mackle tree) this year; I read that the Shawnee made syrup from that sap too. I smile to remember the ice storm of '03, when I was without electricity for seven weeks. Back then I took my whiskey on ice and there were so many shattered maples, exuding sap that froze into icicles, that I collected them and kept them in a box on the back porch for my nighttime libations. That drink, "The Ice Storm", was popular with the various electric company and phone company men that actually walked in to tell me I'd be without either service for several more weeks. Tomorrow I need to go to town to do my laundry and I should be able to drive back in with clean clothes and supplies. I need liquids and they're heavy. Started a chili-like dish in the crock pot, based on a pork tenderloin and black beans, with a liberal quantity of chilies and a variety chili powders. Interesting, about the chili powders, people send them to me, and I usually have a dozen or more different varieties on hand, and I haven't bought a single one in ten years. Nor jeans. What the obesity epidemic has done for me, to put it bluntly, is to supply me with free pants. I've decided to cull my denim shirts. I tend to keep them, even after they're worn out, as a kind of installation, on a six-foot rod in my bedroom. It takes years to wear out a denim shirt, if it's in a rotation with several others. They wear out at the neck, if you only wash your hair once a week and only get your hair cut twice a year, and then they wear out at the elbows. By that time there are probably cigaret holes and various spatters of paint. I thought about doing a show that would be called "Retired Shirts" but then decided to just throw them away. Then decided, what the hell, keep them, I have the room and they are historic artifacts. The idea of framing them, for a show, appeals to me, I don't know why, but when something hits me that way, I always have to stop, and consider whatever it was that made me stop. That's why I leave early. Dim-witted, more than anything else. I can't ignore things, I wasn't blessed with that gene; what I have to do is muddy my knees and lean close. It's probably just an effect, affect, wait, no, I can't decide, of all those psychotropic drugs I was sampling at the time. I'm amazed now, that I didn't die then, running into a tree or something.

Folk Art

Stayed in town because of projected snow (there was none) and today was on tap to be a big push, doubly important with D being on the half-time schedule. Unwrapped the folk art show. It's always interesting to unwrap a show. Surprisingly, of the seventy or eighty pieces, all but eleven are two-dimensional (or at least wall pieces, that hang) but it does look like we'll have to put up a few more panels, in order to have enough lineal feet. It's a big show, Mary Gray, at the state gallery in Columbus, is going to be hard-pressed. While we're unpacking we talk about repacking the show for the road-trip. I seem to be into hyphens tonight, in my continuing push toward being absolutely clear. Thinking about how the true nature of any single moment in time is enormously complex. Unwrapping paintings that are house- paint on plywood panels, some things are falling apart. We expect this with a folk art show, and they've (the lenders) already told us to make whatever repairs we thought necessary. We're trusted, that way, in the area. A couple of the paintings, I'd really like to take out of their frames and do some serious correcting of stupid attachments. Mending plates and stainless steel screws. We get the whole show unwrapped and spread around the gallery, the entire perimeter, lined in packing blankets and strips of foam. Some of these paintings have an insurance value of 10K, so they never touch the ground. We're careful. Also amazingly fast. We're done by three, I go do some shopping, highly prioritized, because I have to carry everything up the hill. The tragedy of this latitude is the limitless extension of the mud season. I have to shovel the place where I clean my boots before I come inside. It accumulates, like shit on a shingle, if you have a flying squirrel problem. Little dams of excrement. Almost cementious, they become a problem. You want water to flow, not to back-up; gaskets, like condoms, fail. Next thing you know, you're raising another kid. Goat-like in your preconception. Just mentioning a few things, so good to be home, stick trees in orange silhouette.

Painting Walls

Wanted to get the walls in the main gallery painted before we unwrapped the folk art show, and today was the last shot at that, so I painted walls all day. Which isn't a bad job if you have everything prepped and exercise a modicum of carefulness. I figure we need ten pedestals, therefore eleven, and I want to get them up from the basement and into the center of the gallery, spaced so I can walk between them, roll two coats of semi-gloss 'Gallery White' on the tops, and touch up any dings on their edges. They take a beating. Maybe get those up tomorrow. I got the gallery painted, which means that we probably won't get the pedestals up because we'll want to unwrap art. Given the choice. When I'm painting walls I tend to drift into thought trains, anything can set them off. Someone comes into the gallery and asks what I'm doing, or there's a commotion of some sort, or a word appears. Most of the photographs have one word titles. And she's clever, she uses good words. One of them is titled "Imminence" and I know the word well, the provenance. Impending, that state of about to occur. Lovely word. Pegi uses me as a word person when, as now, she's writing a grant, or she needs knowledge of a specific thing. She works with a local welding shop to create apparatus that her kids can fly on and she didn't know what tensile strength was. I gave her the two minute lecture on Stress Failure Analysis. What load are we expecting here? And she got it, less French Fries for the high-flyers. Then, much later, she asked me to describe a particular venue, why it was a feather in their cap to be there, and I was able to rattle off a very strong end to her sentence. They keep me around for this. I tend to be useful in unusual ways. Something you could use for not doing something else. Past history is all, it might be a pattern, but I don't care, insofar as that reflects on me. I'm the straightest arrow I know., whatever that means. Went over to the pub after work and there were a lot of people, and I was a little uncomfortable, I'd really rather be alone. Write a few lines. You and your parade. I don't know, the information is confused. Kansas during a twister, right. Whatever that sound was.

Wasted Trip

Whatever I did yesterday, started hanging the photographs, some trouble-shooting, moved a few things around, there was a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, from listening to adults talk like children. I just wanted to get home. Checked the list, to make sure I didn't need anything critical, and I didn't, so a light pack walking in. I walked up the hill because of the mud at the top. Thinking in terms of cross-section, the only place the clay layer is exposed is at the top of the hill; there are 100 small dump truck loads of fill anchoring everything else, but at the very top you have to cut through the substrate. The awful clay is exposed, which eats gravel and is easily damaged. I navigate that on foot, I have a way around, and I know I'm only a couple of hundred yards from home, so I'm a happy camper, maybe click my heels, leaning heavily on a mop handle I trust. Something is wrong, though, too quiet, the electricity is off, no fridge, no light when I flip the switch. I might usually go back to town, but I don't want the bother, temps are supposed to be right at freezing, so I bring my mummy bag downstairs and start a fire, fuck a bunch of discomfort. Today I finished hanging the photographs, made and applied the labels, cleaned up that mess that you make when you drill into drywall. Top of my form, really, what you see. I'm essentially a janitor, which aligns perfectly with my projection of what I might be, though someone else might have expected something more. I don't know, make what you will.

Tom

I don't know, you start leaving out everything, and pretty soon there's nothing, which doesn't work for me, actually.

Closed Doors

Something was going on today, but I never did figure out exactly what. I think Trish and Pegi are pissed at me because I told them the scheduling of weddings and receptions when we're putting up or taking down a show had to stop. A bit of a rant, actually. The art shipper picked up the crate going back to Reno, Nevada, $1,600 for one crate, but it's traveling first class, temperature and humidity controlled truck. Another bid for that same crate was nearly $7,000, but the Kernz Group make the run every other week, thank god. I think TR has the last two crates taken care of. Friday D meets Boggess in Huntington, to return his paintings, then zips all the way across Kentucky, to Lexington, to pick up the last of the folk art, except for some local stuff. Logistics. Started thinking about the packing for the folk art, as it's going to three other venues, need to come up with a few things. The concrete pieces, literal concrete, are fine in blankets wrapped with that stick to itself plastic (which is called flat twine); the carved and painted plaques of Cincy Reds baseball players need better protection than a plastic bag, which is how they arrived. Might have to build a few crates, or boxes within boxes, always a favorite. Pegi and Trish are behind closed doors most of the day, at one point, when I came upstairs to sit down for a few minutes, I pointed at the door and TR shrugged. Despite what Pegi might think, I'm not trying to stake out turf, I'm just trying to install a show, and I assumed the mandate of the museum leaned more toward art and less toward wedding receptions. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I spent most of the day preparing for an event in the theater, tomorrow, a catered event, which means food everywhere. If I could get a corporate sponsor, like Saab, I could have their foot-mats; just take them out and hose them off. Where's my secretary when I need her? And then I have the list D and I made, prioritizing my actions for the next few days. In my spare time I look under parked cars for pennies. This month, I'm already up $56.26, just from looking between parked cars. Old Tom, yeah, I knew him, he prowled the parking lot at Kroger, said he got more change than he knew what to do with. Too many quarters and you end up on someone's radar. And he was fixated, during that period, on being completely invisible. At the end, the last we saw of him, he was fading out, off, into the Everglades. I'm somewhat driven by the heat-death of the universe, not that it will happen in my lifetime. Heaven forbid. But I think about it. A black hole, then nothing. Nothing is too hard to wrap your head around. Great talk with Sara this morning, though I'm not particularly good on the phone. Talked about the office politic and about reading the Carter archives, then, and the reason for the call, we talked about the big, local, juried show, Cream Of The Crop, that we'll be doing in June. It's a mega-show and requires unbelievable planning. She was writing the prospectus and working on the other various publications, and had noticed the glitches in the schedule. I think I know where this went bad, it was when we started letting the office manager run the show. But mostly I put my foot down so D wouldn't have to; he has a temper and I want to avoid a collision between him and Pegi. I'm curiously not expendable (while D is in school), so I can throw myself across the tracks. Trish had never seen this side of me, where I ranted that a specific thing was impossible: and please, don't tell me how to do my job.

Splitting Kindling

A chore I've done for decades, but I never fail to delight in cleaving large splinters off a billet I'd put aside because its grain was perfectly straight. I use a hatchet and a 24 ounce framing hammer and work inside an old wheel-barrow tire, to keep things from flying off, kneeling on a foam pad. There's a zen aspect to it. I'm after pieces that are an eighth up to a quarter of an inch thick and six to eight inches long. A lot of the kindling, maybe 40%, comes, naturally, from the process of splitting serious logs for the night-time fire. When you strike a round of wood with the maul, you often have to hit it one more time, and you rarely strike it in exactly the same place, so there are splinters. I save these. I have a trash can I picked up at the Goodwill I use for kindling; when I'm splitting serious wood I keep it close at hand. The bark from a young red maple makes excellent kindling. Next, on the fire, is either an oak chair or parts of a pallet (often cherry or black walnut) then a stick of red maple, then red oak, until, at the end of an evening, I put on a stick of Osage Orange and go to bed. It sounds like a color field, but it's really just the cost of doing business. Delicate dirty business. I have to, confront may be to harsh a word, confer, with Pegi, about two scheduling conflicts. I'm not sure she knows they're impossible. A text-book case of impossible. I can make almost anything happen, whatever illusion you require, but I'm old enough to admit impossible. So these two glaring errors bother me, no way I can correct them, I'm the fucking janitor for god's sake, I don't plan, I merely mop. Someone has their head screwed on wrong, this is an art museum, not just a venue for wedding receptions. I haven't lost my temper in 30 years but I'm on the brink of a melt-down. I refuse to see how an office manager could run the show. Spare me all the bullshit. If I could sell this place, I'd move further south. I'm tired of being cold and I'm tired of illiterate assholes telling me what to do. Maybe that's the way of the world, but I'm not happy with it. I'd rather eat grubs and live in a tree-dip pit. Better to not be answerable than to be a pawn. That may be too strong, I'm just pissed, not like I'm going to shoot up a wedding reception or anything, but this path sucks, the potholes, the way the centerline isn't actually centered, and that edge, where the blacktop goes to verge, could use some work. Three things, right? compose a list.

Appearances

Hard rain and thunder wakes me. Lightning and the stick trees of winter, like a dream, noir, everything is either black or white. I'm not afraid, exactly, because I can see this storm cell is tracking the river, several miles south of me, but I do sit up and take notice. I catch the cook stove perfectly, to rekindle a fire, and the oven is hot, so I make a pone of cornbread with some milk that had gone sour. Which, with a ladle of bean soup, is a lovely repast at whatever time of the morning. Still some raindrops falling, the occasional staccato drift across the roof. Otherwise a deep winter night without any other sound, once I kill the breaker to the fridge. In the curious world of signs and signage, whenever I kill the breaker for the fridge, I lean a coaster I stole from the pub against my espresso maker to remind me to turn the breaker back on. Currently, it's a Stella coaster that I quite like. Pone, by which I just mean a loaf, but I need to look that word up, I don't know where it comes from. By which something comes to stand for something. The coaster leaning against my coffee-maker means turn on the breaker for the fridge, simple enough; the symbol, whatever coaster it might be, is clear. A mop, rampant, with the cross of Saint Steven. A pone, in my case, is a small circular cake of cornmeal, made with an egg and blinky milk. Buttermilk is sour, and that sheen, on the surface, must be transfats. Blinky is a word I've only heard a few places. That sheen. Certain satins, you know what I mean, bounce light. Silk, in certain circumstances, comes alive. That play. Not unlike a double-rainbow, or sun-dogs chasing the last visible glow into tomorrow. Took the day off completely, read mostly, one short walk outside; eating bean soup and toasted squares of cornbread slathered in butter. Very quiet except for the wind, blowing hard from the northwest. I listened to NPR for a while, but I can't concentrate on my reading and listening at the same time.. Because of the clear-cutting, there's a new batch of photos of the geoglyphs in the Amazon. More evidence of Oz (I hate that name) and of how large this previously unknown civilization was. Makes sense, when you think about, and the fact that it was essentially an organic culture in a jungle, means there's not very much left. What we need is a cave, with drawings. Wooden huts with banana leaf roofs don't last long; however effective, in the short term, for keeping off the water. Someone stole the enameled metal signs from the outhouse. I'd had them a long time. I'm sure I'll see them at an antique store in town, they're a hot salable item. Hate to think I'm enabling a meth freak with my outhouse art, but at least he didn't break into the house. The five signs were all he could carry, thank god I'd given B a duplicate of my favorite sign: CRANK CASE SERVICE, white sans-serif on a dark blue background. I'll see it whenever I go over to his place, usually because I'd gotten my truck stuck someplace, and B is the best when it comes to stuck vehicles. He has a knack for doing what is necessary. Case in point, you, and a bunch of your friends come over later, you expect what. Exactly. Everything is squeezed. You, and an imagined companion. Whatever you thought.

Painting

Painting a straight line on an uneven surface is a thankless chore. Cutting-in a different color on plaster walls, for instance, in a corner; you can't tape it, so it has to be done free-hand, and the closer you get, the worse it is. Mandelbrot edges. Like painting a shear line on a lap-strake skiff. Say that ten times quickly. I don't compose sentences specifically to be difficult to say, I'm just working it out in my head, what I actually mean. How to describe a simple thing, like eating an artichoke, becomes if not difficult, at least convoluted. There's been a shifting of the order at the pub, new hires, Lindsey is gone, to a new job at the bank, where there are benefits. She was the glue, that held the lunch trade in check, maybe the best waitress in the history of the universe. She knew what you wanted before you did, and got you in and out as quickly as possible. I was waiting for my check today, and realized I never had to wait for my check when Lindsey was there. D and I considered opening an account at the bank and ordering lunch, in the lobby. A Monty Python routine, but we don't want to get anyone fired; the new servers are cute, they just need training. How would they know it's always Happy Hour for me unless the owner told them? Breaking in a new waitress is a formidable task. Which is why I usually drink alone. Fucking social conventions will drive you crazy. Consider the last time you dated. That I"d rather write you than interact with actual human being. People are so flawed. The world in which we beat each other with sticks. I'd gone down to the Second Street dairy bar, and gotten a couple of corn-dogs and an order of onion rings, a fall-back position, but with chinese mustard, not a bad place to be. A good match, in fact, between the inside and the outside. Then D came back to switch trucks. Folk Art tomorrow but not until the end of the day, so I'll have a chance to unwrap the photographs. Which is what I did yesterday. They were all wrapped in bubble-wrap and way too much tape. Mummies. Would require knife work. I loaded them all in the elevator, sent it up and walked up the stairs, I almost always do this, use the stairs, I climb three sets of stairs 10 or 15 times a day. I just locked the elevator open on the second floor. Everyone should use the stairs unless they're handicapped. These are large, digital, high quality prints, uniformly framed in a simple white aluminum frame with which I am very familiar, two feet by three feet and larger, and they are taped to spite the devil. I take them one at a time over to a table I've padded with shipping blankets, put them face down, and do battle with the tape. In every case, after unwrapping, I stand the image up on the table and look at it. I put the table in good light because I knew I was going to do this. And I lose track of time, at some point I went over to the pub, for lunch, I don't remember what I ate, but I had slaw as a side, and Astra told me she was Astra today (yesterday) and not her evil twin Ashley. Good to get straight on that. These photographs, one thing they're saying is that they're not merely an image, that now, narrative is involved. My favorite, D agrees, and it achieves the primary spot, the anchor spot on the main wall, is an extraordinary shot of a concrete bunker with empty book-shelves, and through a far doorway, there's a young girl, dancing. Dream-like, mysterious, I tell white lies all the time, I'm familiar with the terrain. Nothing is what it seems.

Confusion

Mary says, in a letter to her mother, that she is ''too busy to swallow". Looking at the calendar (Diana sent a lovely Outhouse Calendar) and penciling in museum business, I sense enjambments in April, May, and June. A few extra days work, still, doable. One problem with getting good at something is that you usually get faster; D and I (and now TR) are incredibly efficient at installing and uninstalling shows, so they keep cutting down the size of the window we'll have to accomplish those things. Perfectly natural, good use of man-power, but a couple of the turnarounds are going to be difficult. D goes after the rest of the folk art show tomorrow, in Springfield, he went northeast of Columbus today, to get the edgy large-format photography show for upstairs. I'll move it upstairs tomorrow (he came in just at five, needed to unload the rented van, so he could take it back and get the rental truck for the folk art) and unwrap it. I'm anxious to see them. Large scale digital plotting. The technology is amazing. The prints are drop dead beautiful. There's a fairly large movement in photography now, and maybe it's the technology that makes it possible, to make pictures that have, or seem to have, a narrative. They're often, the images, not quite creepy but mysterious, look at the work of Gregory Crewdson. So I'll have that to think about that for the next eight weeks, as I make my rounds. The Night Watchman. TR, to his credit, correctly understood that there would be a confrontation between Pegi-Trish and D about the scheduling; TR and I, over a beer after work, discussed ways we might defuse the situation. We both like our jobs, but Pegi has a temper, and is a bit of a control freak, and D will not bend, and if there is a rift, where do we fall? If they fired Darren it'd have to quit. Sell my timber and move further south, where there was fresh-squeezed orange juice and a different raft of shit. I have to go, a friend stuck in a ditch, and I'm the nearest guy with chains. I'm better off alone, less accountable. No forwarding address. It's easy, actually, to get that car out, it's just another stuck vehicle, you use some chains.

Reading Day

Occasionally it's necessary for me to read all day. I did a year of Mary's letters (1931) and spent all the rest of my time reading in a giant compilation D is using as a primary source for his thesis. A monster volume "Vertigo, A Century of Multimedia art" edited by Celant and Maraniello. It's captivating, draws a good timeline, and all those Dadaists, and Post-Dadaist, and Neo-Dadaists are very interesting people. Found Art, urinals and bicycle handle-bars. Bricolage, from the French for trifle, a kind of recycling where you use an old door as a table. There's a sense in which Levi-Strauss's grand view of mythology is based on a kind of bricolage. The time flies by. Everything is closed down for MLK Day, including the pub, but I see a light on, inside, and when I get there the door is unlocked. The owners are there, and they wave me in with big smiles. John asks what he can pour me, and says up front for me to drink hearty, because he can't charge me, because the bar is closed and the register is turned off. They're having a meeting of the Celtic League later, in the closed bar. I always enjoy conversation with them, I do love good conversation. And after a couple of pints and several shots of Paddy, I was essentially wasted. One of those winter storms, maybe 42 degrees, heavy rain, thunder and lightning; I wanted to get home, but I'm not driving in weather that begs the question. An odd incident, later, gives me pause; I'd gone back to the museum, made a pot of coffee and I was in the library, looking at Pop Art, trying to figure out why I should like it, minding my own business. The alarm system is turned off, because I'm in the building, and I go outside, now and again, for a smoke, and I don't want to trigger a rapid response from the local PD on the occasion of my enjoying a cigaret. But that is exactly what happens. The alarm system is turned off but then the alarm sounds. This isn't possible, a system that is turned off should not response to anything, I'm thinking as fast as I can. It's the thunder storm, I think, so I run to the keypad, punch in RESET and the code, and it's cool, the lights go from red to green. It's a malfunction, I get that, check the front and back doors, make sure things are secure; then realize the police will come. Takes them four-and-a-half minutes, which I think is pretty slow, and I've thought of several ways I could greet them. First, I don't want to get shot. In their defense, I haven't shaved and I'm dressed like a bum. It's a lady cop, that finally comes to the back door, she's more surprised than me and doesn't draw her gun. I explain myself away. It's not that hard, really, people want to believe. I'm just a hermit, but I'm OK.

Manipulation

Reading Mary's letters, how revealed she is in how she manipulates, especially her mother. It's like a game of chess. She should have married either the lawyer or the doctor, Jim or Bob, but instead chose Cartie (as she referred to Clarence) because he was touched with something different. And it is something different, that slight psychosis that drives you to express yourself with paint on canvas or words on a page. You could be out drinking with friends or bowling, or huddled in a tree-stand, waiting to ambush a deer, any one of ten thousand things. It's interesting to me, the way the mind comes to focus. I'm never sure what will draw my attention, fucking top tray of the job-box, I was gone, what can I say? What I said to D, when he was leaving early, to pick up some boards to put up some shelves in the kids' rooms, was that the job-box was now a beautiful thing, so organized that it brought tears to my eyes. Something about everything in its place. Make a note. Make it short, because I hate transcribing. I never learned to type, so transcription is an enormous effort, hunting, and pecking, as I do. A new dusting of snow, everything is white, one shade or another. White is never really just white. It always leans in a particular direction. Warmer or cooler. Why would I call the word white into question, spare me a whale, unless I meant something? Maybe it's just the punctuation, nothing to do with the actual words. You kidding me? I rarely remember what I was thinking, the exact thing, though I can often curl around it. Pull the wagons into a circle, defend the core. I've lost track of what day it is, and I'm not sure I care. Is that Murphy's on draft? With a Paddy back, I'm almost Irish. One more cigaret and one more drink. I'm way into tomorrow and I don't have a plan. Sunday, right, I don't need a plan. Wasily Kandinsky's first abstract paintings (which were musical scores) drove Schonberg to atonality. I happened to be looking at some Kandinsky and that was a footnote, which took me online, and back to a book TR had lent me (and had left on his desk); and that sequence led me back to the essay I was reading last night about the banal, which led back to the museum library where I spent several hours looking at Pop Art, which I don"t even like that much. There was a British guy at Janitor College, Farnsworth, that had a still in the basement of the laundry building, on the leeward side of campus. Mostly he made an apple brandy, from the local ciders, that he would push through a second fermentation to around 14% alcohol, then distill several times to around 100 proof. He aged this stuff for thirty days in used wine barrels and sold it in whatever canning jars he could find. Everyone knew he did this, he was a legend: he took twelve years to finish his degree, then retired to the Keys. He loved Pop Art, had several Kandinsky's, and a Warhol in the front hall of his underground house. This was back when 'being green' meant you had a hell of a hangover. He died in a curious explosion that seemed to involve a Tesla coil and a propane tank, the authorities labeled it suicide. Anyway, that's the first place I encountered Pop Art, and it struck me as stupid even then. I read back over this post, trying to pick up the thread. I'm afraid I lost it.

Saturday Follies

"The world is full, saturated with images..." Alberto Boatto, Making Good Use of the Banal. Thinking about Pop-Art. Plenty of time to think because I cleaned and sorted the top tray of the job-box. The entire box is two feet by four feet, and on it's dolly, is a good working height (about 38 inches); the top tray is 24x42 and only three-and-a-half inches deep. We can lift it out to access storage underneath. Desperately needed sorting and there was already a table set-up from striking the fabric show, You need a table to spread things out. The top tray contains thousands of fasteners, hangers, brackets, mirror clips, velcro strips, tools, drill bits, shims, things I don't even have names for. The way it goes with the top shelf is we string it out as long as we can, there are a lot of other priorities; then one of us gets a wild hair, occasioned by a particular irritation. We let it go too long, always, because we can find what we need, and time is the issue; but it's my nominal day off and I wanted to organize the job-box on my own time, not be accountable for billing hours. What happens, over the course of time and numerous shows, is that other tools and items tend to migrate up from the basement, into the job-box, bolt-cutters and cold-chisels that you only need once in a blue moon. You need to keep the right-handed monkey wrench in the basement. Casual word of advice, otherwise your tool-belt weighs forty pounds. I don't go to the pub, because I don't want to have a conversation; content with the dialog going on inside my head. Everything complicates, nothing furthers. G. Spenser Brown. Wait, that was someone else, a poet I knew? Blood sweat a scant answer, what you think you might have remembered. Then the bus-boy slams through the double doors and says there's a car waiting for you. Right, OK, sure, let me look at the skid tracks, and see what I might have seen happen. I'm not naive, but I don't give a shit. Not to speak too fine a point.

Numbers

Last night: falling temps, rain turning to snow that's supposed to accumulate, much colder, I ran home and picked up some clothes, I figure everyone will be late and someone needs to be there to answer the phone. I enlist myself as receptionist. The pub, after work, is a zoo, they've lost five or six employees, and John, the manager, is interviewing new hires. A scant beer later, the blowing snow had haloed around street lamps, Wrote in longhand last night and that puts us into the "real time" dilema where there is now information from a forty-eight hour period rather than just today since I woke up. I couldn't stop reading Mary's letters, and I had a legal pad on the desk. The looseleaf binders with the letters are large and awkward and I've developed my system for reading them, which is to prop them open, on my mid-thigh, leaned against the front of the desk; all my other habits within easy reach. The new Gaylord Archival Products arrived, I love this catalog, and I immediately turned to the archeological artifacts page. Three items catch my eye: Shallow LId Multipurpose Box, ideally sized for housing bone collections, chemically inert and dust -free to maintain the condition of collections; Specimen Box, partitions, sold seperately, can be used to create up to 16 compartments for separating specimens; and my favorite, the Skeletal Remains Box, keeps human remains safe and organized, nine-piece box provides seperate insert trays for skull, long bones vertebrae, etc, box features a seperate compartment that holds the removable spine tray. I love this stuff, it brightens my day. Second filling with the light-weight spackle, reading some letters while it dried, then sanding for a hour, preparation is everything. Today, D was at the museum, and we both had thought that we needed to get the photographs matted and framed for a little exhibit in the library to coincide with the showing of a film about the 1937 flood. Not a problem, we had them done in an hour and hung in another, we're scary good at this, like knife-throwers in the sideshow. What I noticed today, one thing, was that D just looks over at me and I feed him a number, and we both know exactly what that number is, what it represents. No narrative, just a glance and a number. Communication is an interesting thing.

Work Ethic

It's a large room, this past show was maybe 45 paintings, which meant 80 or so holes in the wall. So here's the sequence. You go once around with a hammer, pulling all the hangers that are nailed, you put those in a bin for sorting later; then you go around with a cordless drill, backing pan-head screws out of plastic anchors about half-way, then you go around with a hammer again, pulling the screw and molly, then you stand over a trash can and unscrew, the rest of the way, the plastic sleeve, and throw it away. I save the pan-head screws, because I can use them several times. Go around again, with the hammer, and depress the dimple where you pulled something out. Then go around again with a good eraser to get rid of all the pencil marks that pin-point every hole, then the first round of filler, then lunch, then a second round of filler. I have to wait for it to dry, before I sand it, and I go and sit in Sara's office, where most of the Carter archives are stored. I realize I need to read Mary's diaries and letters in sequence for them to make any cumulative sense. So on my breaks, I go back and reconstruct her life; she makes it easy, because she wrote her Mom so often, and Sara's already done the hard part of this: there are thirty-six loose-leaf binders of letters, and they're arranged, chronologically. I just have to read it, and I am, as advertised, a very good reader. She's not much of a stylist, but she does record the times, and I'm reading between the lines. There are three guys before Clarence, Cartie, as she called him: Jim the lawyer, Bob the doctor, and Wales, I can't figure out what he did. Maybe they had sex, i suspect they did. Pretty sure he fucked that Italian peasant he painted three times the year before he met Mary. That would have been '27 or '28. They married May of 29. She thought he was the greatest thing since sliced white bread, her mother was a bit more restrained. She thought he might be a serial killer. I roll up my Yoga blanket and go home, fuck a bunch of speculation. I just want some mashed potatoes and gravy. Anything on toast. Mushrooms, asparagas.

Tom

You and your projections.

In Town

So much on my plate, supposed to rain after midnight, straight through, turning to snow by Thursday, figured I'd stay in town. Dealt with trash and the bathrooms this morning, then pulled hardware, patched and repaired the two upstairs galleries. I'll do the main gallery tomorrow, then paint the rest of the week. I need a bunch of roller covers and trays. After work TR goes over for a beer with me, and it's weird because Astra is leaving for the day and Lindsey is our barkeep and it's usually the other way around. Lindsey has become a bank person and we'll probably only see her one evening a week. So we're sitting there, in an Irish pub, drinking our pints, he's having a pretzel with hot cheese dip, I'm eating a bowl of chips to galvanize my salt intake into an electric field. Wild-ass theories are my stock in trade. And we're talking about totem poles, what asses who needs to kiss. We try to look like two guys talking about sports, but TR's hat and his jackets, with patches at the elbow, are a dead give-away. Then the owner comes over to talk with us, and we're no longer invisible. I like having a beer to unwind, and that cold first swish of a draft is magic. And I also enjoy conversation. A perfect evening. I thought about going back out, meeting with TR and a few of his friends, but I bailed, and read a year of Mary's letters, 1945, to see if there was mention of that painting that is called "La Salle Blades" in the watercolor, but "Tidewater" in the oil; no mention, you have to start reading between the lines. Just saying.

Some Commotion

January 10, 2012 2:47:18 AM CST

Some kind of commotion. Rabid coons playing king of the compost pile, or something. Enough to get me up and throw some rocks. When your adrenaline stirs at three in the morning, the night is lost. I resurrect a fire from a hand-full of coals, hang around the stove, reading an essay about Picasso and Braque. Cubism was all about the space between things. For a long time I look at Picasso's Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. Iconic. One of the greatest paintings ever. Originally he was going to call it "The Avignon Brothel", those harpies, rip your heart out and eat it raw. I finally drift over to the computer. I hadn't even turned it on, it was so far away, and I was busy, reading, at the other side of the room. Everything, really, is just an excuse for getting another drink and rolling a smoke. I consider it a good evening if I can enjamb a particular verb against a specific noun. A ringing in my ears. Not nothing, palpable. Did someone die? a butterfly give up the ghost in Australia? someone trying to tell me something? I go sit in my tattered writing chair and start a post to you, I don't know what else to do. It's how I respond to circumstance. Two coons singing in the dead of night. Doesn't mean anything, but it signifies, how's that new baby?

Walking In

The most important thing is to stay focused. Relative safety, and all that. I forget the number of art works I've shipped, it's a large number, probably in the hundreds, no wonder I can't keep track, who's counting anyway. After a while you're jaded and a painting by Bellows or Whistler is just another object worth a lot of money, to someone, somewhere. The world on a string, sitting on a rainbow; I wouldn't bet against Tebow, he seems to have a lock with the gods. Brady, on the other hand, sleeps with a goddess, so it's anyone's guess. I assume Eli can't beat the Packers, but I only watch the highlights and don't understand contact sports. Nice drive in this morning, had to stop on Mackletree for a convention of turkeys to cross the road; they were headed for the clear-cut, to work the mast. Had to be at work early because I knew the art shippers (Brian, crazy Irishman with braids in his beard) would want to be in and out quickly. Waited a couple of hours. TR was there, and when they showed up, Brian had a helper, we had them unloaded and re-loaded in fifteen minutes. Late lunch and a beer at the pub, went back to the museum and watched an episode of "Unforgettable". I like the show, and Carrie Wells is hot. Got back home, drove in (supplies tomorrow), got a fire started before sunset, read The New Yorker from cover to cover, fixed an open face roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Stayed seated at the island and thought about things. Full moon tonight and the sky is clear. My truck is dying and I need to get a cell phone for when I get stranded. Yes, the pieces for the Folk Art show were hardly wrapped at all, and we will have to devise packing. I need an occasional relationship, someone I'd see just once in a while, I'd do all the cooking. Wondering who'll find me when I'm dead, especially if I continue to live this way, as remote as possible and barely connected. I'd be stinky dead by the time someone found me, probably D, coming out to see why I hadn't reported in. Lists take many forms. My calves are sore, from hiking in, a muscle group in my lower back, and my feet are sore, from standing on the tile floor.

Winter Walk

A garble of crow sounds from beyond the outhouse draws me into the woods. You can't get lost around here, but you can misplace yourself. Read Charles Frazier's new book "Nightwoods" today, and it was a treat; then the mid-afternoon walk, to clear the cobwebs. Early dinner of an steamed artichoke and a large hunk of good bread, both dipped in olive oil. Walked over to the graveyard, then over to the next ridge and down to where the church used to be. Nothing there now but a flat spot. There's a rock that may have been a cornerstone, which is a good place to sit if you carry a butt pad in your pack. When I get back home, just at sunset, there are orange striations in a sandwich with clouds in the west, and a looming yellow moon in the east. I carry my Selma Alabama chair outside and position myself so that I can see them both by just turning my head. It's a lovely sight. But even in my bathrobe, with Linda's hat pulled down over my ears, I get cold, go inside and build a fire. Junk mail isn't a great fire-starter, but if you move a chair over to the stove, and tend the blaze carefully, you can get rid of a lot of crap. I salvaged another oak table from the trash at the furniture store next door, excellent firewood. So, between junk mail and salvaged office furniture, I'm doing nicely, thank you. Elementary school chairs are great firewood, and at auction they often go for 50 cents each, which is a cheap heating bill, when you think about it, a hundred chairs and you're ready to go for a very cold month. All you need is a hatchet and a match. And these pallets I'm getting from the board member's plumbing supply house are perfect, all oak, 4x4 skids and 1x4 slats, eight feet long. I can spike the stove for several days with one of these, and I don't need to spike the stove so often anymore, now that I've learned to be cold. It's not that bad, except for the fingertips. I start missing keys. One thing leads to another. Next thing you know, you're writing fiction and mistakes plague you, wondering who you are in the face of things. There was a French guy at Janitor College, Maurice, he was cool, he smoked Lebonese Gold Seal hash in a small Adena pipe he'd found in a recently plowed corn field, and he spoke perfectly several languages, including at least two that required a different alphabet, a different language, different characters, a whole different mind set. I tried to pick his brain, but that first year and last year he was there, I was seeing someone, and my recollections are spotty, other occupied, as you might say, knowing you. He died in a hellish flame that erupted from an oxygen bottle too close to an open flame. What, I have to ask now, what questions before I build a fire in a tree-tip pit?

Divination

Never much for tea leaves, but I can tell from the leaf-drifts which way the wind is blowing. Whenever I gut anything I always look closely at the liver, I'm not sure if that counts, since I'm mostly thinking about pate at that point. I ran out of horseradish jam and they actually had some roots at the store, so I bought one, some apple juice and some pectin. This day and age, of course, what you should do is go on line, do a little research, but I remembered my Mom's approach to making jam (she could make jam out of dirty sneakers): equal quantities of whatever ingredient and sugar, pectin, boil until it jells. It's not that I don't like recipes, I read them all the time, occasionally use one. But divination: if I'm really perplexed about something, I get out "The Joy Of Cooking" and randomly put my finger on a sentence. Usually it's something like 'mince the onion' and that's enough to pull me back from whatever edge I was walking. Like up the driveway. Sometimes, I swear, I feel like a Sherpa scaling Everest with a bunch of tourists. It's not too terrible, because I'm alive, moving about in the world, but when I first start walking the driveway, I wonder why I have to live this way. I've grown so used to isolation that I need the walk in to acclimate. Chances are I won't die. Walking in to my unfinished tar-paper shack. I got an MFA in Janitorial Studies, if you can believe that, and did post-doc work with mites. I have problems believing myself, but I suppose we all do. Here's a header. The phone rings and I almost don't answer it. Finally do, and it's my older daughter (consider the comparative) asking me to come visit, party with her friends. Chalk it up to whatever. It may be a kind of destiny, which I say with a certain amount of hesitancy, because I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. I do have to go and party with her friends. Besides, new horizons, a different set of ankles.

Tom

I make myself laugh, sometime today, trying to write what happened. It's hard to stay on top of this, the way the rock rolls downhill. Plowing new ground.

Getting Home

The walk in is all uphill. I have my place to park, at the bottom, and I usually climb over the gear-shift and out the passenger-side because of the blackberry canes. There's usually a session of readjusting my clothing and repacking my pack before I attempt the last three hundred vertical feet. It's not a technical climb, more a slog, for the first half I mostly just watch where my feet fall. We're careful not to improve the driveway until after the first curve, so it looks impossible from the road. After the upper culvert, it's not bad, except for the mud, during the freeze-and-thaw cycles. I always carry something in, tonight it was a half-gallon of orange juice and cream for my coffee. You make a list, It's not brain surgery. After the last hickory on the left, the understory clears out; I always stop there, and admire the view. It's the first place I can see across the hollow, and I'm always struck with the distances. After the last hickory, when the hollow opens out, every step becomes more clear, a certain play of light. I keep a set of crampons in the truck, and another pair at the house, same with walking sticks (aluminum broom handles, very good for poking at scat). I always carry a pack and I'm fixing to change over to a better, newer one that D gave me. My old army sack is completely worn out. I rarely hurry on the walk in, as there are roughly 25 events, or things, on any given day, that I'm keeping an eye on. There's wildlife, maybe the fox. There's a stump I can sit on, maybe two thirds of the way up, where I can roll a smoke if I'm watching something. I seem to watch things a lot. Remember, we are deep in the woods here, about as deep as you could be, east of the Mississippi, and except in extreme circumstances, there's almost always something going on. This time of year I can see so much further, half the year I live in a green cave. I love crows, they're usually around, and this is the season for Red-Headed and Pileated woodpeckers, which I always stop and watch. Anyone in decent shape can probably do the walk in five minutes, I take between ten and thirty, maybe averaging fifteen. I also keep an umbrella both places. The mud can be very bad, slick, sometimes deep; I often wear work boots and keep my shoes around my neck. I don't like to carry anything in my left hand, so I could break a fall. I've often thought, walking in, that I could well die on the driveway, B would find me, going in or going out, know immediately that it was me, and that I had died on the driveway. In deep snow, whoever breaks trail establishes the length of stride; I have gaiters, that I keep in a milk crate near the door, along with other weather specific apparatus. And of course, the walk in provides transition between one world and another. I'm always aware of this, when I shut the door of the truck and start hiking up hill, that my house is there, and I'll be there soon. I always think about where the various firewood and kindling piles stand, what I need to do first my next day off. I have to go in on Monday, because the shipper arrives with part of the Folk Art show, and hauls away most of "Wet Paint". Does that affect anything? I don't think so. I have a huge supply of food at the house; if I'm stuck in town, Kroger is right there. Unseasonably warm, from 25 to 55 in two days, the shock is almost too much. I poke the driveway with my stick and decide I can bring in drinking water tomorrow, or Monday, when I'll be in town anyway. I think tomorrow I'll just flop on the sofa and read. Did I mention I hate irregular verbs? A regulation assent requires confirmation, you have to sign the guest-book or something. It occasionally happens that I can't get to the top, have to turn back and return to town, not often, but it happens. I feel bad about myself for a few minutes then relish in the hot running water.

Like, Then

Pretty sure I'd get a rise from Sara about that. I was talking with someone yesterday about what constitutes art, whether or not the word itself carried any weight. I don't pretend to know. The wind is tearing some new ground right now, I have to kill the breaker for the fridge. It's new-age Bach, a touch of Cage: a prepared organ, and a raving maniac. Fortunately it's not very cold, and I can listen with a certain dispatch. Maybe quilts are different, because they serve a functional need. But I rest my case on the learning curve issue, lightning or not. The fox was at my compost heap, I can see her tracks clearly, she seems to favor egg dishes and cooked cranberries. Go figure. I'll not lose my head over a fox ever again. I like living alone, not compromising my time. Foxes require attention. The wind is like a voice from the past. Nothing you can fix, just another broken neck, and something you have to hear over and over. When it's really quiet, I hear the rafters adjusting. Another beautiful day, 55 degrees (25 high on Wednesday), and later the waxing moon, close to full, in a clear sky. Finished packing up the paintings for Fed Ex freight. We didn't like the crate two paintings came in from Reno Nevada. We rebuilt it. Done. A world of patch and repair to be done, then three or four weeks of painting. Fun working with both D and TR, we can do Three Stooges routines. I need to go in for half-a-day tomorrow, then half-a-day on Monday to take delivery on most of the next show and ship out the bulk of Wet Paint. We have to unpack the Folk Art show because D has to photograph everything for the catalog. I sense some awkwardness, but maybe not, we can probably just glom everything together in the center of the main gallery. The ladies almost got to me today, Trisha and Pegi; they kept asking questions about the Folk Art show that are not answerable yet, because the show doesn't exist. I can't tell you how many panels or pedestals are going to be in play, and I certainly can't project the configuration. Cardboard smells nice, a hint of old books. My calves were a little sore, standing on the tile floor is tough enough, but then I remembered I'd been walking in, carrying a pack; and I'm surprised I'm not more impacted by the dramatic change in routine. Walking in is a whole lot different from driving in. Not just the hike, which is cool enough, but something I mentioned last year, the mediation the hike provides, between the inside and the outside. The museum is public, the ridge is incredibly private. This time of year, the people who would show up at my door are (is) a severely limited list. Only those willing to use a room temperature toilet seat and take the hike are allowed.

Learning Curve

Pegi asked me to define Folk Art. I said it was art that showed no learning curve. Except for quilting, which does, and is far and away my favorite folk art. Waked in again, got a fire started before sunset, which is critical. Taking a week of my vacation time by leaving work an hour early. The walk down this morning was stunning, still a coating of snow and I'm amazed every year at how that reveals the actual lay of the land. I study this in detail. Sidebar: it's fifteen degrees warmer and I had to go put on my sword-fishing cap, it has a extra long brim, so I could block the rays of the setting sun; which happens, this time of year, right outside my writing window. Warm enough that I don't need Linda's hat. Pegi's office looks so much better that she wants several other zones painted, plus I have some to do in the Carter galleries, plus patch and repair and paint the main galleries. The apple crate I keep at the museum for books that accumulate for me there, is full AND in D's office and I need to bring them home and do something with them. My book accretion tendencies. I'm thinking about turning the smaller bedroom upstairs into a library with a single bed and converting the downstairs room that was supposed to be a studio but became a junk room, that I call the chainsaw room because there are three dead chainsaws in there and one that is alive, into a downstairs bedroom. Pink clouds outside, lit from underneath; two orange jet contrails, over Kentucky. Reading some of Mary's letters every day, and now the diaries. It's interesting, constructing a life and a relationship just from what's said on the page. Not unlike you and me, though I probably dip into the 'creative' side of Creative Non-Fiction more than Mary ever did. There it is again, Jupiter, Mac says, and I trust him in these matters, blinking because of a branch in the breeze. Or wind, if you felt 'breeze' was too much. I swear, I was not consciously aware of building up that alliteration, it's something my writing self does to see if I'll notice. Devious bastard. He knows how I feel about elevators. Safe assumption that you're not going to die, but nonetheless I always send freight and take the stairs. There's a learning curve, I was trapped in an elevator twice. There's no place to pee. Now, when I find myself in a big city, and I have to use an elevator, I carry an empty one gallon pickle jar, with lid, nobody can miss a gallon pickle jar. And I always carry a book, whenever I might be caught between floors. Come on, would you rather hear about the medical history of an entire family, or read a good book? I carry a copy of Ken Warren's HOUSE ORGAN everywhere I go, that way I can always read some good poems. He's a great mediator, for me, between the plethora of shit that's published and what I have the time to read. We all have filters, I did a survey, once, and it was concussive. Like with the eye-color hazel, the jury is still out, and we shouldn't talk about that either. What's not said is at least as important as what is actually said. This is the Bridwell Rule, and I thought everyone knew we weren't working on the metric system. Fucking grips from Australia. They all have that weird accent. Listen, mate, I'm trying to be offensive, it's the bowl season, after all.

Dead Mice

The last step in suiting up for an evening around the house, I check the mouse traps. I feed the dead mice to the crows that frequent the dead poplar NW of the outhouse. It's an arrangement. Mice. If they were neat, like pigs, they'd shit in the same place, and I wouldn't have to kill them, we could come up with a compromise. But they're simple, not to say stupid, and they shit all the time, on everything, and you have to trap them. Fucking dead mouse in my slipper is wit's end. How improbable that you'd have to deal with that? I was actually fast enough, still, to not come down completely with the weight of my body (each step, when you think about it, is a point load) because I sensed something was wrong. My callous heel felt something. Not unique, I'm sure, but really, how many people slip on their slippers and realize, in the instant, that if they put their weight on the heel of their left foot, they would squash a small dead rodent? Just asking. This shit happens to me and I don't know how to respond. First, I think, my train of thought, is isolate your feelings, what do you really (Glenn, please, cut me some slack) think you're saying. Dead mice. Consider the lilies of the field.

Tom

"Once I was a weaver."

Phone Restored

Good day at work, TR and I almost finished taking down all three shows, just a couple of things left to do with D on Friday. Town was dry, sunny after a brief flurry, so I left my usual (winter) hour early and headed home. The lake was frozen, pockets of snow on the north side of hollows, and as I gained the last few hundred feet of elevation I knew the driveway would be impassable. Managed to get into my winter, bottom-of-the-hill, spot, and walked in for the first time this season. Scant half-inch, and it hasn't been above freezing for a while. The first walk in is the hardest. Not carrying much, a light pack, and I stop several times to look around and let my breathing catch up. Have to start the winter routine of prioritizing a list of things I'll be needing. Get out the crampons and put a set in the truck. The biggest problem with this latitude is that the freeze-and-thaw cycle happens so often. Must be Venus in the southern sky. Might not be, I don't know: you go through all this and they give you one fucking star. I changed into my winter writing outfit as soon as I came in the door, actually did the top part before I left the museum, so when I got in the house all I needed to do was take off my jeans, put on long underwear and the thick sweats I got at the Goodwill. I added a layer of socks and slipped into the oversized slippers I also got at Goodwill. Pulled Linda's hat down around my ears. I had to review the posts that were backed up here, there were actually three, but I threw one away because I didn't like it. Too nasty. What right do I have to be judgmental? I'm a janitor, I clean bathrooms professionally. As a profession, I mean. I got a very good fire going, starting with a chair, then some red maple then some red oak then some osage orange. My best fire of the year. I'm ok, I think; I was very careful, walking up the hill, using a sassafras staff I had broken off at the bottom. Me and a branch run the gauntlet. I'm hoping to reestablish contact with the fox, she might see me as a seasonal source of apples. Is everything always so tentative? I hate posting things out of order because it messes with the narrative. And there is one, which surprises me, at times. Narrative is strange at (wrong? collected) that point where a motif is selected. Call it what you will.

I have to go, Tom.

Stage One

Finished ahead of the cold front. The last area, under the various drains and service entrances involved a lot of cutting and fitting, so I took my time, longer than I expected, but the results are gratifying. I'm peeling off layers of clothes, as the house warms. Before I get too comfortable I put three gallons of water on the cookstove to heat, put on an outer layer and take a walk down the logging road. My phone is out, surely another dead-fall on Mackletree, so I don't know when I'll be able to post. Brutal, under the house, a couple of times I had to laugh. I looked like the village idiot, in my blue jumpsuit, duct-taped at the wrist and ankles and a sacrificial knit hat that I had picked up at a thrift store for a buck. The hat was Hunter Orange. No one wears orange well. And I was muttering, at first, then launching into full-scale tirades against anything that crossed my mind. To say I was contrary hardly skims the surface, but I was doing good and necessary service, and felt somehow ennobled by such direct contact with all the molds and literal crap that collects under a house. A lot of dead spiders and several small skeletons that I'm pretty sure were moles not mice. My neck is killing me, from the unnatural positions I had to assume. Crawl spaces are a form of hell, and I'm digging fiberglass out of every pore. Stage Two is exactly half done, take me and D four hours; Stage Three is me alone and should require just an hour, expanding foam to fill all the crevices. What I'm after, more than insulation numbers, is the complete absence of air infiltration from below. One reason igloos are effective, another is that a single walrus blubber lamp can bring temps above freezing so you don't freeze to death. Insulated by ice, how strange is that? Why did the Eskimo tribes go north, where the living is not easy? Those acorn eaters, along the corridor, were reputed to be cannibals, better to hang a sharp left and eat rain-deer than end up in the stew-pot. I don't have a calendar for next year, so I'm officially off the map after midnight. I don't care what day it is, as long as I have cream for my coffee. The rest of it is all nonsense. Time, we know, is relative. Insulation, in the corner of my eyes, is driving me crazy. I finally dunk my head in ice-cold water and wash the silt away. Fuck whatever protocol. Still no phone, talk with you maybe tomorrow, though that is doubtful, given the holiday, holed up on the ridge.

Slanted Light

Amazing, how different things can look, depending on the angle. It's supposed to snow, so I may go into town tomorrow, three shows to take down and a litany of things to do. D will be back at school, TR and I have to pack and send things all over, not a problem, because we've been over this, what gets shipped where and how. But I don't exactly remember how those small painting were packed. I'll figure it out, I'm a professional after all. After my foray under the house, and a walk to clear the cobwebs, I dined on cheese grits made with feta, medallions of tenderloin, the sauce, two perfectly fried eggs, and toast with horseradish jam. One drink and a smoke and I was out like a light. Just woke up and it's next year by several hours. I missed the festivities and because the phone is out, I didn't receive any calls. Someone probably tried, my daughters, or Linda or Glenn. Though maybe not, everyone, actually, has their own house to crawl under. A scattered few stars, rare enough here, and I remember the night sky in western Colorado, where the Milky Way was prominent 300 nights a year. The sauce has transformed into a dark, rich, unspeakable substance; next time I tend it, I want to add some lime juice and a bottle of beer. What happens to the sauce when I'm gone? Six months after my body is exhumed from a tree-tip pit (sorry, couldn't resist that) someone has to clean out the fridge. It happens, people die, their refrigerators have to be cleaned out. Fiberglass burning my eyeballs, what was I thinking about? right, the sauce. I've worked on this variation for nearly a decade. A sauce. I can't believe myself. I insulated the rim joists exactly the way I intended. Sometimes things work out right. There is a god, or gods, I got the first drink of the new year and rolled a smoke. All best to you and your's. Something about routine settled whatever that question was. I'm thinking an egg on toast would be perfect right about now.

It's Cold

When the temperature is 18 degrees and it's blowing a full gale, light snow skittering, it's hard to get comfortable. I google the weather and see that Mac is probably getting hammered with Lake Effect Snow. We live where we do for one reason or another. I'd rather be someplace warmer, but here I am. Walking in a winter wonder land. It's not easy, but I'm not dead, and it's beautiful, the way white blows across your face. It's winter, come on, you should be used to this, a fact of nature, buck up, no one promised anyone a free ride. Phone company says I should have phone tomorrow, so I elect to work late and go home early tomorrow. Temps are dropping like a rock. Even a below zero day, with six feet of snow on the ground, was more comfortable in western Colorado. When I talked with Sara she mentioned Mary's diaries and where they were. Got them out today and started poking around. TR and I started packing up the painting show. Three shippers (the "three friends" in Chinese art are bamboo, plum blossoms, and pine) and over a dozen destinations; we tried to keep things as simple as possible and label everything clearly. It's difficult to remember how every single thing was packed, so we end up making some improvements. Handling it all again, I'd have to say that subjective art springs from the inner personality, which means that all psychotic art is subjective, just a thought. I read today that a paidogeron is a symbolic picture (a symbol of what?) that depicts a child, with, for instance, a beard. After work I went to the pub for a beer and ended up talking with some guys I know by sight, but had never talked to. They were interested in my life, what brought me here, and I gave them the short version, which hardly does justice, and wondered how they could believe anything I'd say. I don't believe my life, I can't imagine anyone else would. I have several dead skinned animals in the back of my truck that I intend to eat, with gravy, on toast. It's not a statement, just dinner. Eat local.

Out of Order

Came back to town because of forecast snow and I must be here Tuesday, to start un-installing three shows. D's back at school. Me and TR. No phone at my house, so I have a couple of posts backed up there that will be out of order, they were the 31st and early morning of the 1st. Huge winds. Got the insulation done, ate well. Wanted to stay home, but the rule is that, in winter, if I absolutely have to be at the museum, I have to come to town before a weather event. In addition, we should get one of the new Carter's tomorrow. I read Mary's letters all afternoon, 1927 - 1930, interesting. I'm hooked. It's instructive to read what was going on in their lives when a particular painting in our collection is mentioned. All those early money worries. The other artists they knew and spent time with. The occasional letter written by Clarence, mostly when he was visiting Portsmouth, to Mary. Found out that the model for two early paintings that I like quite a lot, was Italian, from the year in Europe; just before he met Mary, on the trip home. My favorite painting in the permanent collection, "Serenity" (that model), because I could live with it, you glance at something ten or twelve times a day, you want to like what you see. I'm not a critic, not even well informed. If I hear art glass being referenced as a good investment, I'll shoot someone. I did beat the snow, a skiff, blowing hard. Walked over to Kroger and got a couple of things I could nuke. They have dramatically improved the science of flash-freezing, some things are quite good. I don't usually eat like this, but it's interesting to sample some things I wouldn't normally fix for myself. The first Carter son, John, was born in 1930, and the number of letters increases. Mary was prolific. Found a small connection today, between one of the photographs Clarence took of a specific painting, it was a little exciting. Sara called, and we had a great talk, as we are capable of, and discussed the provenance of another painting that we had been asked about. She asked me to mark any passages that drew connections, which I was already doing. It was Glenn, I think, who left me a pad of Post-Its and said "just start marking things". Which I do now, when taking a walk. Mark the occasional bush. I can't be convicted, just because someone peed on the flowers. I hate that these will be out of order.