Squeeze Machine

I woke up wedged into the back of the sofa, thinking about Temple Grandin and neutral ways of achieving comfort. The easiest way of achieving comfort is to roll into your partner, denied that, maybe a sex toy of mylar and latex; but if you can't bear the idea of commitment, there's nothing like waking up in your mummy bag, wedged into a corner. I finally found the zipper and extricated myself. Small mercies. I almost panicked, then realized it was Easter Sunday, and I had all day, if necessary, to shed myself of whatever restraints. First morels. I don't want to make too big a deal from this, but I do love morels, they always make me smile. Butter, a finely minced quarter of onion, one clove of garlic, with a perfect fried egg on toast. Sinfully good. I spend the afternoon walking in the woods, collecting young morels I'd ordinarily leave for another day or two, but there's a flock of wild turkeys working the mast around my house right now, and they eat everything. Low cloud cover, impending rain, I retreat to the house, transcribe some notes, log off, before the first line of squalls moves across. Weather dictated behavior. Not unlike the Catholic church in the 15 nth century. The Inquisition. There were two or three popes then, and they all spoke for god. You know, really, I don't speak for mediation, a bunch of popes makes for confusion. Those days, the birth of moveable type, as soon as the church banned a book it became a best seller; the printers moved to Amsterdam, Poggio invented the lower case, and society became literate. This happened quickly, between 1450 and 1500 the modern was born. Simply speaking, people learned to read. B comes over with a book, or Michael comes by with a bottle of single malt, and we talk about books. Literacy is the key, when it comes to considering the modern. Drew makes a note to read Procopius because I had a copy of "The Secret History" laying on the table, I wasn't trying to make a point, it was merely the book that I was reading at the time. I was also reading Xenephon and a wonderful piece about fishing for sturgeon in a New Yorker article by McPhee. It doesn't get any better than this, morels on toast and esoteric knowledge, when all is said and done, I hang a very good show; it's not that complex, you just pay attention to detail., everything centers at 57 inches.. I do the math on a yellow legal pad, TR does it in his head, who's keeping track? D is hanging an iconic Bruce Nauman print on the front-wall, "MALICE'", and it's a beautiful thing, just a black lithograph, nothing special, but striking in it's contrast.. A squall line moving in from the northwest, I'd better go. Read more...

Jack-Hammering

Brain dead. They've been jack-hammering in the alley for the best part of two weeks and we're all sick of it. D, TR and I at the museum today, and when I finished my work I headed home early. Stopped at the library and Kroger. The foster kid from up the creek, was waiting at the bottom of the driveway, needed to make a phone call for his Dad. I told him he couldn't do this all the time, that I lived in the woods for a reason. I don't think he understood. He couldn't understand why I was going to spend Easter alone, hadn't anyone asked me over for dinner? I told him I'd trained my friends not to ask, which further confused him. Then I laid out the stats, there are 168 hours in a week, and I aim to spend 120 of them by myself. Without television, listening to very little music anymore, rarely talking on the phone. Reading, writing, editing a book; I don't know where I got certain information so I'm fact-checking myself, and it's slow going, because I read so much, it's difficult to remember where I read something. Brought in a large and very nice artichoke for dinner. A tricked out sauce from pouches of condiments I found at the museum. I love artichokes. They always make me want to make paper because the fiber is so wonderful. Strong and breaks down beautifully. Paper-making and movable type is the beginning of the Renaissance. Threatens the status quo, up until then, the church ran everything, the pope was more or less god, you could buy indulgences. I think that's the first thing Gutenberg printed.. Indulgences. I do listen to the radio for 40 minutes, I'd heard that Robert Earl was going to be on "Mountain Stage" and I made a point to stop whatever I was doing and, get a drink and roll a smoke. I blast the music very loud. So much better than a jack-hammer. Some nights in Utah, Robert Earl saved my life. His plaintive voice and straight-forward lyrics. That period, not a shining time in my life, I marvel I made it through, I'd wake up, in my mummy bag, someplace far up the La Salle Mountains. Start a fire in the rock lined pit, heat water for a pot of coffee, and wade upstream in frigid water, looking to catch two cut-throat trout for breakfast. I'd stagger into town. Moab, Utah, is a strange place, prophets wander in from the desert. There are road-cuts, notched into the butte faces, that are virtually impossible. I have friends who live there by choice. My fear of falling eliminates that for me. I can't do it anymore. Sometimes I have to sleep on the floor, because I'm afraid of falling out of bed. Last night, for instance, I was so tired, physically whipped, I read for a couple of hours, started this paragraph, but I knew I needed to nap, and I made my down pallet on the floor; as soon as it was dark, I nodded off for a couple of hours. Best sleep in days. Rain woke me, I remembered I had a couple of empty buckets and I put them out to harvest rainwater. Easter Sunday, I think I'll wash my feet, take a sponge bath, wash my hair. Staccato drumming. An early breakfast of baked beans and a fried egg on toast. I don't know what it has to do with resurrection, but this time of year I often get a very nice frozen rabbit from France. They're a bit pricey, but absolutely sublime. Usually six pieces, and I dredge them in a highly seasoned flour, brown them, put them on a bed of onions, celery and carrots in a cast iron pot with a close fitting lid and cook them for 40 minutes or an hour, take the meat out, deglaze the pot with whatever wine is kicking about, reduce it. The Easter Bunny makes a very fine meal. For some reason I always have this with saffron rice and an Old Vines Zinfandel. Force of habit. Allows me to remember some things. Once, in western Colorado, probably up the Cimarron, laying a dry fly gently in a backwater, I hooked a large trout. I was fishing with the lightest possible gear, two-pound test invisible monofilament on a rod that could best be described as a twig. I knew I couldn't land the fish, but I let it play out all the backer line from my reel, knowing the weight of the line on the water would resist a few leaps, which it did, and it was beautiful, a four or five pound trout, conspiring to spit out a hook. Be still my heart. It sometimes happens that you're with another person when a singular event happens, and you both see the same thing, a sparkle of light, the angle of repose, a nugget of gold; but it's more often, in my experience, that I'm alone, walking somewhere, and some trick of light will reveal the other side. I have stumps where I sit to consider this shit. I'm adding a stump, where I often want to stop, half way up the driveway, doesn't matter if it's covered with snow, because I just sweep it off and pull out my foam pad. I'm prepared for almost anything. Song birds singing in the dead of night. Read more...

Restoration

Varnish gets dirty, it absorbs all the crap in the air. Air is filled with particulate matter. Collect rainwater and you'll see what I mean. I'm a student of water. Take care of what I drink, especially a year like this, when I hardly ever drive in, and filtered water is just too heavy to carry: the bench mark, a cubic foot of water. Once every fifty or hundred years, you have to clean the surface of a painting, which involves stripping off a layer without disturbing the substrate. Not easily done. Q-tips and a specific solvent. Could drive you mad. Most of our Carters have been restored, by contrast we have one on extended loan which has not been cleaned and it's quite dirty. If, as is likely, we're given the painting, it'll go immediately to be conserved. Exhausting week, I'm glad I could drive in the last couple of days. End of the day today, D and were both the walking dead, we pushed hard all week. But the show is up, and lit, I made the labels today, got them attached, and started cleaning the floor. I'll work on that for half-a-day tomorrow, and repackage the etchings for Glenn and Linda. UPS was not happy with my recycled furniture box because it had text all over the outside. I got some nice triple-wall cardboard, no writing. Packing them the way Art (the artist) says he does them all the time. Didn't drive in any supplies, which is always a bad idea, but I didn't get a chance to run over to Kroger, we were balls to the wall all day, and I certainly wasn't going to go in there at five on Good Friday. I'll stop in first thing tomorrow, I just need a couple of things. I'm going to do another pork tenderloin, rolled in sorghum molasses and "breaded" with ground nuts. This is so good, it'll make you weep. You'll need a sauce, I have the advantage here; I have a sauce that's ten years old and contains hundreds of ingredients. What I hope for, at this time of year, is root vegetables that have been in storage. The sugars have started to convert. When you hit it correctly, with a drizzle of melted butter, and a grind of black pepper; parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, become a kind of ambrosia. Mike came up behind me, asked if I'd found any morels. I told him no, but my records show they should be out right about now. . We agree to call each other, when we find the first one, with specific information. I need to bring in a dozen eggs tomorrow. A morel omelet is one of the finer things in the universe. I shave some good hard cheese on top. A slab of toast with very good jam. People are always giving me very good jam. I make a red onion jam that's perfect with this omelet, it takes maybe thirty minutes, but if you're standing at the stove anyway, what does it matter? Slice a large red onion quite thin, a shallot, a clove of garlic, caramelize them, stir in something sweet, some apple cider, reduce it. This is very good with anything, outstanding with seafood. I often forget what I was fixing and have it on toast. Read more...

Full Moon

It's so beautiful, behind layered clouds. Talk about 'in the zone', I wasn't aware of the outside world today, just hanging art. The focus becomes so narrow. At a particular moment, all I was doing was hanging a Jasper Johns and looking at it closely; a George Segal that is drop-dead gorgeous, lush and dark, three torsos, bare chested, in jeans stretched tight across their sex. I was whistling Janus Joplin, always a good sign, when the college class came in, and the kids didn't know what to make of me. I explained I was loosening the hanging wire, so I could get my hand behind a Andy Warhol, to make sure it hung correctly. A matter of course. I've taken one of the Roy Litchensteins completely apart, because I don't like the way they've done it, I could do it better in my sleep, which I do. Rearrange the hardware so it makes sense. In many ways I'm merely a technician. I mop in a pattern. It's not a big deal. I left home when I was quite young. Not that I had anything to prove, I was just curious, and realized that answers could only emerge from the din. Overslept this morning, nice stroll down the driveway which I judged to be firm enough to drive in on. As I need all the liquids, this is good news. D and I finish adding hardware and hanging the rest of the prints; it's a very good show, very powerful. We had gotten the entry wall and the signage walls primed yesterday, and got the first of two top-coats on them today. Going from brick red to bright yellow is a difficult transition, but three coats should do it. Stopped at Kroger, re-supplied the liquid larder. I'm craving roasted root vegetables, so I'll bring in food items tomorrow, maybe some pork chops, then booze on Saturday and I'll be set for a week. My needs are easily met. First thing I notice, arriving home, is that the poplars are showing bud; a big deal, for me, because it means I survived another winter. The blackberry canes on the driveway are set to explode. A beautiful, almost completely clear sky, and I'm looking forward to the moon again tonight. It's inexorable, you know, the turning of the wheel. I take very little for granted, but a day like this, I want to dance a jig. Everything clicked. Even lunch today was a treat; D and I sat between Tyler and a large guy with a Mohawk that was plowing through three large pretzels. D played basketball with Tyler in high school, we chatted about soccer and staying in shape, about whether or not North Korea could actually be stupid enough to attack the most heavily defended position in the world. I'm a Cancer, not that signs mean anything, and I love the moon. There were, camping beside my truck in the Utah desert, many times, when the only mediation between me and life, was a larger than expected moon, perched on top of a butte. Reminded of those times, as I watch a slightly past full moon rise among the stick trees. It's beautiful, it's sublime, it's astounding; I get a drink and roll a smoke and just sit there, watching the moon rise. Dusky dark and the three crows land on different branches of the dead oak tree out by the outhouse. They're in rare form. I didn't have a roadkill for them, and they seemed to be complaining. Fucking pets, they'll rule your life if you let them. I had a cat, once. I don't like dependency, it gives me heart-burn. Read more...

Hanging Art

Back in the saddle, and it feels good. I love hanging shows. This one is difficult, a lot of the pieces don't have hanging hardware, and on some that do, it's attached badly; and the frames are a uniform black channeled metal which is not quite strong enough because the pieces are so large. So large that they require two people to physically hang. D off teaching, so I work a few hours with TR. We both sputtered at first, on the math, then memory returned and we had a fine time. After he left I did the wall hardware for several more pieces. We should finish tomorrow, then get back to painting walls on Friday and Saturday. At four-o'clock a class came over from the University, Anisa's class, art history, her classes always have to write a two page paper on one of the Carter's. I always tour them, and three or four of the eighteen students, on average, will come back to pick my brain about a particular painting. It's great fun. One or two of them, this time, actually seemed to have a clue. One thing I notice, with the students, is that they're amazed to find someone enthusiastic about art. I rattle off factoids and point out detail, make them look closely; at one point today I went and got my magnifying glass and had them look at the way the wood was painted on the trim in "Chickens Through The Window". They either understood what I was saying or understood that if you wore the correct hat, you could get away with murder. Just that one time, I may have taken the initiative, led them to believe something that wasn't true. First day of spring. Really? Basho pocks on the snow for meaning. listen, really. Read more...

Concrete Pour

Went in early yesterday, cold, flurries, but a large crew assembled for the pour. Chaos reigning supreme. Guys tracking crap inside makes for a pretty mess. They set the posts for the big wrought-iron gates at the north end of the alley. They're a good crew, with two older guys, almost my age, who are excellent concrete finishers. Always a treat to watch someone do something well. The security guys were installing cameras all day, trying to figure out how to run their cables (a nightmare in an old bank) without drilling through 24 inches of concrete. Andrew stayed late, to guard the new pour against vandals and the stray dog. So I stay in town, go over to the pub for a beer, argue ethics with an nihilist person, that I know to speak to. Hit the ground running this morning, D was there and he was hot to get some things done, so we did, worked our asses off. D has a very strong work ethic. I'd rather think about those late Sargent watercolors, late in the day, when I'm putting away my tools. But he wants to paint another wall. Forgets I'm twice his age. We paint that wall, and I'm all in, beat, exhausted, whipped; I'm a little concerned I might have taken things too far, the walk in, tonight, was right at the limit. I knew it would be, I was physically depleted. I need a bench, about half--way up the driveway, where I could stash a water bottle and maybe a tin of fruit, a wee dram of Irish against the gathering gloom. I know just the spot, I stop there, every time I walk in, lean against my mop-handle, Basho considering the possibility of green. We see him in silhouette. Whatever we call that March moon. It's tracking through a muddled sky. A din chorus of frogs. I assume this is the nature of reality. What I wanted to do was pull out my 55 gallon contractor bag, crawl inside, and take a nap, in the rut of the road. Not even make it to the top. T. Bridwell, he did pretty well, he started back toward the top. All of my major joints are complaining. I get to the house, start a fire, this is rout, doing what needs to be done. I have to smile, what needs to be done. Pause. I assume you're not. I have to go to bed. Read more...

Saving Money

Cushions for the bench that D and I made for the nook in the back hallway, where the doll heads used to live, were going to be fairly expensive. Hobby Lobby was going out of business and D bought a bolt of black 'pleather' for cheap, we had everything else, so I went in today and we made them ourselves. Took just a couple of hours after lunch. In the morning we set the print show with TR. The striking feature of the show is how large the pieces are. The OU print lab is one of the best in the country, and they have some very large presses, the quality of the prints is of the first water. Two Roy Lichtenstein pieces (at $25,000 each) are gorgeous, the registration is perfect. I don't like Andy Warhol, but his two, different colored, prints of an old electric chair, are very good. There's a Jasper Johns, a Lorna Simpson, the Roberts Stackhouse and Motherwell. Going to be a fun installation. I like the work a lot. Good to be back in the saddle, handling art. After these are hung and lighted they're going to have to be cleaned, smudges and fingerprints everywhere. I'll reserve that job for myself. You really get to know a piece when you clean it. Up close, with a magnifying glass, I hold things to a high standard. Another snow storm coming. I drove in, first time since before Christmas, on Friday, but on Saturday I parked at the bottom of the hill and walked in, so as not to get snow-bound on top of the ridge. Still weak, and stopped often, but was still exhausted (though exhilarated) when I got to the house. Got a drink, rolled a smoke, heated up some left-overs, started writing, but I was asleep within a couple of hours. My stamina was deeply tested this past week, as deep as my aspirations could dig. I'd left the radio on while I drifted off, Miles, "Kind Of Blue", but when I got up to pee it was an upbeat South American thing and I turned it off. I didn't want the stimulation. I'm easily overloaded. One Allman Brother's song. Take your pick. "Whipping Post." Dreary day, gray, rain from a leaden sky. I'm fully occupied, under a lap-robe, sipping spiked coffee, reading about the Renaissance. My thirst for information is slightly more than a hedge against boredom. I can do a great hour's talk about the beginning of the Renaissance. A period that could be best described as a bunch of white males with too many vowels in their names. But I'm hard-pressed to find the end. Shakespeare retired in 1610. You'd have to say that the language was codified by then. Read more...

Closing Loopholes

Monsoons. Sheets of rain, sweeping across the landscape. Coal sucks as a source of energy, it's so dirty, there's a spread of black grains at the bottom of the buckets of water I harvest; Coal, Anthracite, broken, specific gravity, 1.11, 69 pounds to the cubic foot; it settles out, I strain it through a clean old tee-shirt. Steve Winwood "But I can't find my way home..." Some of the rain is so hard, it begs the question. Sounds like gunfire. I seek a defensive position behind the sofa with my sawed-off shot gun. Good work day. Got most of the back hallway cleaned out, then spent several hours hauling debris, completely filling the dumpster we keep over at the Cirque. When I got back from the last trip, D was back from Athens with the print show that he selected from the OU collection. A hell of a collection, prints from all of the big names in printmaking from the last half of the twentieth century. It's going to be a great show, and it is such a relief to be dealing with art again. The schedule goes like this: work again tomorrow, finish prepping the main gallery, maybe get the signage and entry walls taped off and primed; rehang "Let Us Give Thanks" upstairs, in it's new location, pull the hardware, patch and repair where it was hanging downstairs, set and then hang the new show next week, lighting, labels; clean the floor, clean the kitchen, clean the theater, we've got events upcoming; then the next week, the big High School show, "Visually Literate" to install in both upstairs galleries and an opening for that. Dozens of other things. I think it's incredibly cool that the ladies who oversaw the redesign of the bathrooms didn't see fit to add toilet paper holders or towel dispensers; so you end up with this swanky new bathroom in which the roll of toilet paper is stored on the back of the toilet tank. Attractive. Maybe I misunderstood the directive. Hard as English is, it doesn't have enough tenses. I thought I had been clear enough. The world you work in, and the world of your mind, are not always the same. Does it count as an epiphany if you don't realize until the next day that something happened? Residual guilt. Expectations are the bane of existence. Seating, for instance. Best is just tiered rock around a natural bowl. The acoustics are good, the audience bring their own 'stadium pads', whatever they see fit to mediate between their ass and the deep blue sea. Fact of life is that audiences are fatter now, and they spring the joints on seats. What they need is just a stout flat surface, on which to spread their ass. I'm only speaking as a janitor here, but I notice certain things. A lot of people are very fat. Read more...

Still Sick

Slightly better. I swear Tuesday and Wednesday were horrible, and I was going to see a doctor if I wasn't better by today. But I was able to keep a little food down, my nose was drying up, and the cough was less painful. I could move well enough to get a few things done. My right eye is still dripping a colorless liquid that's slightly salty. The internet makes research so easy. Pegi asked me to find out about theater seats, and benches that might serve as padded pews, and possible seat more kids (most of the theater events are geared toward younger audiences) because they have narrower asses. So I've spent most of my hours, when I just had to get off my feet, during this sick spell, reading about, and looking at images, for the various ways to solve seating problems. I'd thought about the problem before: Greek amphitheaters, boxing rings, the crude wooden risers at a cock-fighting dive, but here I was, looking at solutions to seating problems. There are some very cool seats available, right now, from a theater in Chicago, cast iron with padded backs and seats in velvet. I love them, but they're not the right size. Hate to say I told you so. Went over to the pub, to share a drink with John. Ended up staying for a while, talking with him, and another regular customer, Toto. We each bought a round of Irish whiskey. Back at the museum, I started writing and fell asleep at the computer. Being sick is exhausting. Read more...

Sick

Hot and cold flashes, leaking at every orifice. Can't eat because I can't keep anything down. A kind of juice fast, so I can stay hydrated. I didn't know I was sick because I almost never am. But by Monday I knew I was in for it. My entire body was sore and I was weaker than I have been in years. I feel very stupid; as if my brain had been encased in lard. Got into work yesterday, and D came in, recovering as I was regressing, he got some things done; me, not so much. Hiked in with a very light pack and I didn't think I was going to make it. Drank some heated chicken stock and crashed on the sofa for twelve hours; got up with the light, ate a Greek yogurt, made a milder cup of coffee than is my want and hiked off down the hill, knowing full-well that I was going to spend a night away from home. I knew I couldn't walk back up the hill today. It's so weird, to be so physically depleted. So sore. My left hip is literally a pain in the ass. My shoulders are shot. I couldn't push up the front gate, yesterday, it was just too heavy. , and I wonder if I'm of any use at all. Probably not. Read more...

Keeps Coming

Eight inches by 4:30, no way I'll get to town tomorrow. Rts.125 and 52 are probably ok, but the five miles out of the forest is sure to be treacherous. I have plenty of everything for a extra day and night on the ridge, tinned soup, some roast beef, instant mashed potatoes, an extra can of coffee, plenty of whiskey and tobacco. I put on a lot of clothes and tuck under a blanket; when the power goes out, I have my LED headlamp, to read, fingerless gloves and a hat Linda knitted for me. It's not so bad. The snow is driving in from the SE, which is unusual, I think it means the Jet Stream has altered course. Four hours later, the power is back on. I leave one bulb turned on in the kitchen, so it'll wake me if the power comes back. Rekindle the fire and turn on some back-up heat. Feels warmer, and it is, 35 degrees, balmy. I might get into town after noon. I feel bad I'd told the carpet crew I'd be in at eight-thirty, but there's a lot of snow, and I feel I deserve a dispensation. I've worked hundreds of extra hours recently and I am well and truly trapped on the ridge. I'll get in when I can. I've been trapped by a lot of weather events, it's not a big deal. Hunker down, build a fire, eat something. I'm always reading. I can lose hours at the drop of a hat. Reels, horn-pipes. Listen. Just before dawn thunder storms move in West to East along the river. Massive amounts of melted snow. Flood warnings. Ground fog even on the ridge tops. More thunder, gotta go By the time I log on again, about four in the afternoon, almost all of the snow is gone. Twenty-four hours from eight inches to none. Incredible. But it got up to fifty degrees, and it rained a lot. I shudder to see the driveway on the walk out tomorrow. There's one place where the grader ditch wants desperately to leap across the road. It's at a place where the slope evens out, and fines have clogged the drainage. The fix is to mattock a channel for the water to dig further, and put all of the material as a damn in the lower rut. It's clear when you hunker down, above the situation, what needs to be done. Another line of storms, I hate to go, but thunder is shaking the house. Read more...

Reverential Calm

Nothing but the rain. One particular solo camping trip, 20 miles up the Little Cimarron, an area that appears as a blank space on any map. My goal was just to get above the beaver ponds, where the native cut-throat trout lived in very cold water. Pitched camp above 10,000 feet, a small tent and my mummy bag, a fire pit with a stainless steel refrigerator rack resting on four rocks. My supplies were a baby-food jar of bacon fat and a lemon, I always carry salt and pepper. It was a miserable early spring, spitting snow, but the starving fish would rise to a blank hook. I shot a squirrel, for dinner the first night, and tied some streamers from his tail hairs. For a period of time, an hour or more, during the hatch of some fly I couldn't identify, I caught a fish on every cast. It rained the whole time, holding steady at 34 degrees. I had pitched the tent to take advantage of the fire-pit, cozy, as I remember, and I'd go out several times a day with a great little seven-foot bamboo fly-rod and a very light leader and catch what I needed in terms of sustenance. I was depressed at the time, considering suicide, so I guess you'd bookmark that time. Actually, it wasn't that big a deal, you either choose to live or not. What happens for me is that a calm settles and I realize I'd rather live. I'd rather see Kori's butt than not. Simple diagnostic. There's a yellow flower, under foot right now, that I can't identify, and it drives me crazy that I don't know what family it belongs to. I thought I knew my yellow flowers. I have a degree in yellow flowers, but the rain drowns out any reason. I had brought the sheep-watering trough inside, so it could heat-up, come to room temperature, and it's raining so hard I pour ten gallons of water into the trough and put the buckets back outside. A surplus of water. I'm not used to being this clean. Nothing prepares you. Easy enough to slough something off, but what you consider to be the core might matter. Early this morning the rain switched over to snow, and by noon there was four inches and still coming down. Not in the forecast. By mid-afternoon it's a whiteout, visibility down to a couple of hundred yards. Very beautiful, but not very welcome this time of year. Two crows are the only thing I see all day. They look miserable, but they always look pretty ratty. Six inches and counting. I'd better go, sure to lose power. Read more...

Thunder Storm

Lightening wakes me. This cell has already moved off to the SW, my electric comes in from the NE and it's raining hard. Probably won't lose power. I need water, so I get up, pour off the clean water from two five gallon buckets, into the five gallon kettle I keep on the cookstove, and clean the bottom of the buckets. There's always some crap at the bottom. From the coal-fired power plants along the Ohio. Put the buckets out on the back porch, under the drip edge. Four in the morning. The splash of cold rain, when I put the buckets out, wakes me completely. Nothing like it ever was. Haul in the sheep watering trough, there'll be water for a bath on Sunday. Get through Saturday first. Get to work early, let the carpet guys in, have my Irish breakfast, and probably be stuck at the museum all day because the fumes will drive the rest of the staff away, What's that Tom Rush song? "I feel like an engine, done lost it's driving wheel...". One more month and maybe I can take a few days off. This schedule is killing me. But I will be off work tomorrow, and I can take a bath, wash my hair, trim my toenails. I need to get some dandruff shampoo, the house is so dry, my skin is flaking like rust off the hull of an aging freighter. Pretty sure I'll find a morel later today or tomorrow. I might just wander in the woods tomorrow. It would be a boon if I could well and truly be lost. Find an overhang, where I could be out of the rain, retreat there, with a few nuts, some dried fruit, watch the rain drip into my future bath. It's a basic life, factored by time, light, "the rebirth of wonder". Water as a factor of change. Drawing closer to the edge. The entire carpet crew have shaved heads and tattoos, a sign of the times? I hold out for a rational approach, but the public spirit is beyond me. I did head out before sunrise, I did get to the museum before the carpet crew, Pegi did show up, and I escaped to the pub for a huge meat-lovers breakfast. The blood sausage was tasty, but even better was a white sausage that seemed to be oats and pork fat, also bangers, a rasher, two eggs, a scone, toast, baked beans, and a fried tomato. I was first pour on the Murphy's stout, so I got an extra glass of foam that had settled to a half-glass of beer by the time I had finished the meal. Hell of a way to start the day. The bonus was that the carpet crew left and TR showed up to man the ship, so I was free go. Stopped at Kroger for a few things, and booked it up the driveway in a lull between rainstorms. It's still stick trees on the ridge, but the blackberries are breaking bud and the poplars are hazing color. More or less officially spring. Sixty degrees today and the ground is heating up. Still just a little snow in the lee of logs on north-facing slopes, but it'll be gone before nightfall. I could have driven in, but I like the walk, the places I stop, to look at particular things. A certain fungus that I can't identify, a spring I hadn't noticed before, the way a set of jack-strewn trees form letters of the alphabet; things, in the natural world, that invite my attention. The duff is so thick it'll be difficult to find those first morels, but once I find the first one, I'll be able to see them. Deceive the eye. I think they mimic their surroundings so they can go to spore. If Phillip moves back here, we'd probably conspire together on another Beckett. I keep thinking I'm done with that. After a week like this last past, I'm ready to throw in the towel, retreat under my overhang, shoot anything that approaches. But by my calculation there is only one more awful week, and then I can start cleaning up. What I want to do is install a show, this jack-hammering, pouring concrete, hammer-drilling world is not to my liking. I'd rather be reading Mary's letters to her Mom. Read more...

Interesting, Something

A long mellow cool-down and I was ok with what went down today. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting through the day, other times you have crazy attachments and it's not possible to meet your demands. The day started with a Starling in the museum. I went to the basement for my bat/bird net, but by the time I got back upstairs, the bird had gotten above the false ceiling. It took an hour to capture it alive and release it outside. Then the carpet guys arrived and I had to move all of the stuff that had been taken out of the projection booth by the A/C guys so they could drill ceiling and floor to run a freon line from the roof to the basement for the new unit, then help clean the theater. D called in sick. The fumes from the adhesive the carpet guys were using gave everyone a headache, and the rest of the staff all left. I'll have to go back to work tomorrow morning, because both the alley crew and the carpet crew will be back, and again on Monday, because I promised Sara I wouldn't allow anyone in the building if I wasn't there. I am going to the Irish Breakfast at the pub, at nine, even if I have to close the place down; not only is it a great breakfast (blood sausage, rashers, eggs, Irish country bread, potatoes, and a pint of Murphy's Stout; but I've already paid for it. Pegi can cover for me, she'll be in town because some of her girls are Celtic dancing in the parade. Rain, of course, in the forecast. I brought in a goodly pack tonight: juice, Greeks yogurts, a dozen eggs in the off hand from my walking stick. Walking stick, how could I forget? I was walking out this morning and a dog attacked me. I don't think that's too strong a word, it was displaying it's teeth and growling and inching toward me. I stuck my walking stick down his throat. I use different mop handles as walking sticks, today it was the aluminum one, with a ferrule at the end, to reinforce things at the business end, and I didn't kill him, or even seriously damage, but he will never attack me again. I was already reaching for my knife, you don't want to fuck with me on the driveway. I stop eight or seven times to look at something, This time of year, there is always something to see. Some color, at last. At least. We're so dramatically involved. The way it conjugates. Read more...

Anything in G

Anything in G. Afro-pop. The Nigerian music scene. I get up to pee in the middle of the night and the trees are vibrating. The fox is there, yipping from the far side of the compost heap. I only imagine I understand what she says, Kori. Persephone, Demeter. The language of the street, the god that looks both ways. Janus. Just saying. She dips her head and directs that I would follow. You can't not. Attraction, as it happens, can be a single joint, an ankle, as it happens. "Living With The Law". Big sky country. Love you in your second skin. Hallelujah. A voice comes in on top of the bass line. You can almost understand it, but there's too much reverb and meaning means less than it should. A sharp hard female voice. You want to get to know her. So inclined. Cat got your tongue. My music guy told me Paul was completely bogus. I tend to agree. I mostly listen to Bach, and women that sing the blues. My mail is backed up because of a shortage of telephone. Frontier says it will be restored by tonight. D stayed home sick today. I got a few things done. I just wanted to get home, but the alley crew was working late to get the forms set for tomorrow's pour, so I hung around. Read some Carter letters, thought about what questions I'll ask John Carter when Sara sets up the time when I can call him. The last of that generation of the Carter clan. I could do a genealogy, I've got the tools and I know the format. I linotyped thirteen generations of the Nickerson Family, who came over on the Mayflower, and there were like eleven sons in that second generation. It was great fun actually. I got paid per page, and after I'd gained enough skill, I could operate that machine as fast as it could operate. I could set a 48 page book of poetry in a day, proof it, make one set of corrections, that would be another day, and in two days the type-setting was done. This is a liberating factor, when it comes to doing longer books. It's not hand set, which is an art, but it's lead type that makes an impression upon the page. Not a picture of something, an embossed copy. Some of us draw a distinction there. Poetry reads better in letterpress, it reminds you of the beat, the stress. but for all the rest, print it whatever way is cheapest, being, of course, as green as possible. I wanted to stay in town, go our to the pub for "Business After Hours" for a couple of free beers and Tony Sherman's excellent cooking. But I came home instead, to walk up the hill, with my left-over lunch, and send a couple pf paragraphs. It's what I'm happiest doing. Read more...

New Hire

Phillip wants to move back to the area, but there's no work. Out in the county, unemployment is over 20 percent, the poor rob the poor as a matter of course. I can't believe the shitty job the AC people did installing the new roof-top unit for the theater. Hands down, the worst installation of anything ever. It's functional, is the best that could be said. They had to get a freon line and a thermostat wire from the roof to the basement, so they core-drilled the concrete floors and ceilings and just ran the lines down in the corner of the rooms. Black foam insulated one-inch copper tubing with the wire zip-tied to the outside. Completely exposed. As ugly as anything you've ever seen. I can't believe it. It's like something a five-year old would do in the corner of a tree-house. It's the most appalling travesty of 'finish' work that I've ever seen in my life, like something you might trick out in a tent in the middle of the Gobi Desert., when you were hungry and very thirsty. Andrew and the alley crew still have five window wells to form up and pour with concrete, but they're making good headway on that; the truth is, the story of my life, it'll look like nothing has been done. 85 thousand dollars and we almost have the alley re-paved. Glad I'm not holding book on this. When I wasn't consulting today, I rounded up trash and debris for a few runs to the dumpster tomorrow. A ceiling to paint, so I'll take in a set of disposable clothes and a dead baseball hat. I hate painting ceilings. D still down in his back and went home early, I had to run the alley crew out of the basement after five, and thanks to DST was still able to buy a few groceries, a little nip bottle of brandy, drive in the long way, following Upper Twin Creek the entire trip. There's a lot going on. Where Upper Twin Creek Road turns off the river road, the elevation is probably a little over 400 feet, my tar-paper shack, on the ridge, is at 1380 feet. It's cool to watch the progression of a given season up the creek. My drainage here, Low Gap Hollow, is the absolute beginning of Upper Twin Creek. The crest of the road, right at my west line, the exact same road, is called Upper Twin, to the east and south, and Rocky Rock (another stream, that flows into Ohio Brush Creek), going west, which drains hollows, and they are countless, between here and Cincy. Not countless anymore, the 'Raven' map, and they are the best makers of maps ever, is quite clear. From this map, new to me, I treated myself for no good reason, I can roughly approximate the acre-feet of drainage. I do recreational math because it interests me. How much water is flowing over the spillway? How many acre-feet does that creek drain? How many turkeys in that flock, working a harvested corn-field close to the road? The early bulbs, in town, are ready to bloom, which means that the daffodils, which define abandoned home sites, are ready to explode; the river road is going to be very beautiful for the next couple of months. I assemble my spring-time kit, a plastic petrie dish with cover, long tweezers, a minnow dip-net (which is my signature tool), a very good LED small flashlight, and my magnifying glass. I always carry my foam pad and a couple of Kroger plastic bags stuffed in my pocket. You never know what you might find. Three or for times a year I bring home dried animal shit, to figure out what it is, and to figure out what it's composed of. This time of year, I also carry a plastic mesh bag Key Limes came in years ago, because when you harvest morels you want to spread the spores far and wide. I attach the bag with a carabineer to a belt-loop on my right side, and it brushes me, whenever I take a step. Tommy Morel Spore. You call me that and I will kill you. I stir-fried a third of a pork tenderloin, sliced very thin, against the grain, with some fingering potatoes and kale. It was very good. I can cook better on a one burner hot-plate than most people could cook on a six-burner stove. I'm just saying..There should probably be a filter in here.You would turn what I would say into meaning. I have to go, we'll talk tomorrow. Read more...

Planets Align

Making plans for my older daughter and her significant other to visit at that holiday at the end of summer. My house is a wreck and everything smells like piss because I've been burning black oak, but they're willing to forgive me certain transgressions. I'll be over this whole daylight saving's deal by then. The adopted kid, or the foster kid, came up for the third time, and I told him he couldn't do that, that I couldn't be interrupted that many times. Ten thousand bull sharks swimming up the coast of Florida. I think the kid is Daleana's (Bear's wife) brother's foster child. In the boonies, raising a couple of foster children is a source of revenue. It doesn't matter what you think of this, it's a fact of nature. Somebody has to raise the orphans. They, the 'parents', don't have a phone, so they sent the kid up here three times to call the father's mother to get them some pot. I try not to be critical of other parenting styles. I did ask him, Travis, if he was getting enough to eat, and he said he was, but he asked for a glass of water every time he came to use the phone, and the last time I gave him a glass of juice instead; my current juice mix, which is equal parts orange, cranberry, and pomegranate, and his face lit up. He said he'd never tasted anything like that before. I assured him the world held unexpected surprises. I'll cook, for instance, with my daughter's beau, Scott, when they're here at the end of summer; should be fun; mostly I cook alone because there's no one else around, I'm not opposed to sharing a meal, there are people with whom I'd break bread; it's a short list, but a list none-the-less. It's all about terminal mass..Kori's ass. Persephone, Demeter's daughter, Queen of the underworld; wait, yes, she was walking away, I was befuddled and amused. I don't do well at flirting. I'd love to cook a meal for the union organizer, she has great ankles, and she's bright, but the actual state of things is confusing. Nothing might well be better than something. When I got to the museum there were already 11 guys there. I don't understand how Pegi believes it's somehow acceptable that there not be a staff member there. Phillip had called, met me fort lunch and we got caught up on each other's lives. Rained all day, then, when I finally got shed of the last crew, it started raining hard for my drive home and walk up the hill. A mess which I, of course, tracked right into the house. No fire tonight, must be nearly fifty degrees outside, I've got the little EdenPure heater on it's lowest setting, and my plans for dinner required no cooking. I made a salsa from grape tomatoes, watercress, and jalapenos to have on a roast beef sandwich; looked forward to it all day, and it was as good as I had anticipated. I was making some notes from the book I have to get back to B, which lead me to a Latin text I remembered I owned, and actually found, "Latin Writings Of The Italian Humanists", which contained a quote that was in the Greenblatt. Quotes are about as far as I go, in the translation department, but it's amusing to spend an hour trying to tease out meaning from something you know damned good and well is a colloquialism. Phone is out. The ground is so soft, with the thaw and the rain, that the fire damaged trees from a few years ago are toppling like jack-straws. These trees, if they're oak, are almost completely heartwood, the bark has fallen off, the sapwood has melted away, once they fall, they rot quickly, but as long as they're standing, they are excellent firewood. I picked up, for ten bucks, off the sale table at the pawn shop, a 14 inch battery powered chain saw. Didn't know such a thing existed. It's good for harvesting branch wood, maybe twenty cuts on a charge. It's quiet, and the battery charges in a hour, so by the time you carry a few armloads of wood, it's ready to go again. Later in the spring I'll enjoy using it to clear a green space around the outside of the house. I could spend the rest of my life just harvesting saplings within a hundred yards, that and the pallets from behind the paint store, and I could be quite comfortable, heat-wise. Never split another fucking billet. On the other hand, I do enjoy splitting wood sometimes. Mindless pleasures. Correctly deducing lines of stress, hitting it just so, it's wonderful, the way the halves blow apart. Hey, listen, I have this under control. The you that did that wasn't you. We know that. When we have too many sequential minutes, things start to make sense; always there, you should insert a filter. No, really. You could make a case for almost anything. A battery powered chainsaw? I mean, really. Read more...

The Frogs

Awakened by a vigorous round of croaking. Impossible to get back to sleep, so I go out with my mug of coffee and my slab of ethafoam and sit on the ground about fifteen feet away from the puddle. In five minutes I achieved the zen state of invisibility and the chorus resumed. They're so frenetic. Watched for maybe an hour, their courtship is all slide and slither, all splash and plop. Watching frogs mate is a great beginning to any day. Back inside I make a one skillet breakfast of sausage, potatoes and eggs, topped with a sauce from Belize that is so hot it makes my eyes water. Then, to further enhance the glory of the day, not one, but two Piliated Woodpeckers, ruby crested and artful, standing still, vertically on tree-trunks, with their heads cocked, listening for activity beneath the bark, then hammering furiously after a grub. About as much entertainment as I can stand. Plow through the rest of Michael Cabon's "Telegraph Avenue", he's a wonderful writer. A flying squirrel got in the house. I have a system for dealing with this situation. I open the back door and herd the damned around the interior of the house with a tennis racket until it finally finds escape. Morels are only days away. When you begin to smell the fecund leaf-litter is the first clue. Or when you smell the frogs mating. My brain is a labyrinth of smells. There's a woman I've had a few drinks with, the pub has become a common meeting ground for business meetings, upscale enough to drink a glass of wine and decide the fate of some project. She's a union organizer person, very attractive, and bright; and she considers me an expert witness on solitude. We've had several discussions about loneliness; I ask her leading questions, and I am a good listener. She seemed to be casting for a relationship (she won't be long alone) and I told her that I wasn't interested in a relationship, in-so-far as it exceeded meeting for a drink at the pub. Weirdest thing, a kid just showed up at my door, wanting to use my phone, a foster care kid, adopted by the folks in the nearest house down on the main road. Upper Twin. He's maybe twelve. He has a written script he's to read to his adopted father's mother, instructing her to get him some herb as soon as possible, and bring it to the house. The kid looks around, and he sees all these books, asks if he can borrow one, Ian Frazier, "The Great Plains" and I say yes, that he can, take one book at a time from my library, I take the dust jacket off, stash it on a shelf. I don't like being interrupted. Read more...

Playing Yourself

Naturalism. It's a fiction, of course. The way you fiddle with your hand, the hesitation before the bon mot, the way you look back over your shoulder. Acting out. How you look, for instance, the time you spend on that. Currently, I have four pair of black jeans and about twenty denim shirts that I wear in rotation, I shave (I didn't, for twenty-five years), and manage a social face. It's not an act, exactly, just an attempt to simplify the decision-making process. I've lived alone for a long time, twelve years; I have a job (which I enjoy) that keeps me integrated with the outside world. But three-quarters of the time, I'm alone. Mostly what I do now is sit and think about things. I've done enough, in a varied life, that there are a lot of things to consider. A lot of failures. Very few things play out the way we intend. I prefer simple tasks now, splitting wood, walking up the hill, reading a book, writing you. Almost nothing. Seeing Philip did make me think about doing another Beckett. Heaven forbid I should stage another play, but he would be a perfect Krapp. A shot out of the rough, first thing you know, you're back in the game. Oh, wait, I swore I'd never play another game. I'm conflicted. Dry-wall dust, joint compound, covered the face of the earth, and everyone had tracked everything everywhere. Not unlike your worst dream, and I mopped until my shoulders were screaming. Off the record, I was pissed, D finally yelled at me to shut up. My left hip and my right knee were both acting up, but I needed to go to town for supplies, both the hip and knee were better by the time I got to the bottom of the hill. I stashed a jug and a short length of PVC at the most vigorous of the springs (I drive the PVC into the mouth of the spring, to serve as a spigot) but I was carrying so much, on the way back in, that I couldn't carry a gallon of water. I'll walk back down tomorrow and get one. The second frog fuckfest is happening, as I write, and the noise is deafening, I finally put on The Cello Suites to drown out the sound. Too many frogs having too much fun. I wasn't working today and Barb was trying out various plastic cups as emergency backup for the Guinness on St. Patrick's day and I managed to drink 40 ounces of stout, lest it be thrown away; I signed up for the St. Paddy's day breakfast, mostly so I could see old members of the staff that had moved on, but always come back, that one day, because the tips are so good, three deep at the bar and every chair occupied. Blood sausage, rashers of Irish bacon, eggs, toast, potatoes; who, in their right mind, would pass up such an event? There are 38 kegs of beer in the hallway at the pub. Plus five in operation and two in the pre-cooler. A lot of beer. The Irish take their holidays seriously. I'll be back home in bed before the party begins. Fucking Daylight Savings Time, they do this to me every year, just adjusting to the light and they change the standard. Except for going to lunch at five minutes to twelve, so I can catch the ten top plays on ESPN, I don't pay much attention to time. It's so artificial. Speaking of losing track of time, I was kneeling on my pad of ethafoam, the other day, and it was cold. I was wondering about the fact that the frog eggs didn't freeze easily. I punctured one of them and tasted it. It was sweet, as I suspected, the sugars acting as anti-freeze. You could probably live on the amniotic fluid of tadpoles, in those harsh days of early spring, when nothing much was available; though I leaven my diet with cat-tail shoots and water cress, I need a source of protein. Read more...

Split Fingers

This time of year, no matter what I do, I'm going to end up with very painful split fingertips. I can postpone it, by lathering my hands with lotion and wearing latex gloves at night, but what fun is that? It really stands out, if you're the only guy at the bar wearing rubber gloves. I'm sure it looks like something it's not. The story of my life, but I make no excuses. There was still a couple of inches of snow when I achieved the ridge, walking carefully, because the ground was rotten and I was trying to avoid a fall, but worth the effort, because it was so beautiful. Often those things that attract us the most are the most dangerous. Driving home tonight, no snow in town, when I got to 125 there was a skiff, when I got to the ridge there was several inches. It was quiet. Linda's correct, the difference between this and that. I stop a few times, looking at tracks, confused by life. Today was like yesterday only more so, sub-contractors everywhere. The event tomorrow is The Missoula Children's Theater performing for the Catholic school, using some of students as additional cast, and they rehearsed all afternoon. I hate most children's theater, left early as we couldn't get anything done. Still snow on the ridge, despite temps in the forties. Beginning to see some buds on the Poplar trees. Walking in I could hear the wet-weather springs; at one place it was squirting out of the slope and I drank a couple of handfuls. Excellent water. After this weekend (temps up to sixty), when the ground firms up, there should be morels at my early spots. I picked up an extra pound of butter, best to be prepared, and flipped through a couple of mushroom cookbooks to see what I might try that's new and different. The first batch is always just cooked in butter and served on toast. It's traditional. Just noticed that because the posts (tree trunks) and beams (36 feet of 6x10's, and 11 4x8's 12 feet long) that form the structure of my house, begin to absorb heat during the day, that it's much easier to get the house heated at night. I'm warm right now, 60 degrees, and I've only had a fire going for an hour. Fox tracks at the compost heap and the pack of dogs haven't been back since I shot them with rock salt. It's all good. Those miniature iris will be up soon and I'm looking forward to the splashes of color. The black, brown, and white world of winter migrates to the south; mitigates my discomfort, that I'll be able to see in color. Winter is bleak, and hard, unless you can spend it in the Keys, watching birds. Which I would prefer, but the discomfort and the questionable footing keeps me on my toes, so there's something to be said for a slippery slope. D and I had sharp words at each other this morning, he misunderstood something I said, thought it was a criticism of him personally, and it wasn't, it was just a passing comment about inter-departmental communication. This event was not on the calendar, and I thought they at least owed me that. My right thumb has a crack, that under a magnifying glass looks like the Grands Canyon. I'm surprised I'm not dead. Death by split finger-tips. Read more...

Buried Cables

Yesterday, because of a snow and slush storm, I was the only staff at the museum. The subs showed up and the underground utility guy. I spent most of the day wandering around, answering questions. I called my electric company and they said my meter was dead, therefore my electricity was out, so I spent one more night in town. Then this morning things got very busy: the Heating and Air guys (two vans and a truck), and the crane arrived, for removing the old A/C unit from the roof and setting the new one up there; the alley crew, in force, to try and form up the last of the window wells for pouring concrete; the City Engineer; the foreman of the alley crew. At one point there was a dump truck at the back door, being loaded by a small front-end loader, a monster compressor at the other end of the alley, powering a jack-hammer (that ran most of the day), the crane, three guys using hammer-drills in the basement, and one of the A/C guys in the back hall hammering duct-work. D called in that he had re-injured his back and wouldn't be in. I went to lunch and the pub was packed beyond capacity because the road company for "A Chorus Line", playing tonight at the University theater, were all having lunch. The staff had saved a seat at the bar for me, and I just ordered a bowl of stew, so I could eat and get out quickly. Days of chaos and I was tapped out. Got back from lunch and discover that's there's a fucking event in the main gallery on Saturday and the crew to set up for that will be in at noon tomorrow. It wasn't on the calendar and no one had told me. The main gallery is a war zone. I spent the afternoon, cleaning, going to the dumpster, and swearing under my breath. I'd told Pegi I was going home at four today, so I could start a fire, and I did leave at four; fuck a bunch of non-communication. Twice, during the remodel, they've done this, forced me to stop what I was doing, clean the jobsite (and there's a difference between a clean jobsite and the space for a museum event), and pretend it's no big deal. On it's most basic level, the world, where you interact, is theater. Fortunately, Philip, 'Estragon' from the "Waiting For Gogot" I directed at the university 10 years ago, visiting to see some friends, found me in the alley. I hadn't him seen in all that time, but we picked right back up, as if a decade hadn't passed. He's a natural talent, the best cold reader of text I've ever met, we talked about doing some Beckett. He has a voice, something about the cadence; and I suspect, if he moves back to this area of the country, we'll probably do something together. We both love Beckett. Going home, there are these lavender clouds, and under the snow, there's a hint of green; I think I probably won't die this winter. You put it all together, a cold night you survived in pajamas, the hours you spent in a snow cave, it all results in you, somehow you surviving. Mostly, I don't give a shit, operating in that realm where fact meets fiction. Sven's brother could either or not respond. As long as we're clear on that. Read more...

Inclement Weather

Job sites can be pretty funny. Everyone knows everyone else, and usually they're all giving each other a hard time. Too many trucks, so everybody bitches about the parking. Amusing stories all day long. D is still down in his back, so he locates at a spot and I carry everything to him. I'm a great gofer. He painted the final coat on the new front wall, and I made the first pass (it'll take two or three) in the rest of the main gallery. In the afternoon I removed 40 two inch high bronze letters that had been epoxied into place using two, three, or four (depending on the letter) steel posts. I used a chislel, which will have to be completely reground. Had to pry carefully at each post equally. Then I'd rock it back and forth with my hand. The posts were a ridiculous two inches long, and when they popped free of the plaster wall (the plaster dust is actually what made the whole removal process possible) they looked like nothing so much as little condom encased penises. So went the afternoon, me, on a ladder, pulling letters from the wall, giving each of them a name that began with their letter, and talking to them about their privates. Inclement weather (rain turning to slush) so I had to stay in town, to close the museum, and to open for the subs at eight tomorrow. Pegi will be running late, D teaches on Wednesday, Trish isn't going to work any overtime. And I won't have a bunch of Terry's thugs in the museum without me or D being there. Went over to the pub, Astra was throwing darts, and holding her pregnant belly with the other hand, Christine got me a draft and I just watched the staff interact. Some soccer highlights. Rolled out a down pallet on the floor. Slept the sleep of the innocent; I don't have a lot to hide. Read more...

Local Politics

Still spitting snow, just a skiff on the ground, but not from a lack of trying. The earth is a great thermal insulator and even though the temps are in the low twenties the green briar and certain ferns exhibit signs of life; Snow Bells and a tiny iris-like plant that I've never identified show some color. The dead of winter is past, now, these cold days are merely a bother, not likely I'll be frozen stiff on the driveway. What I assume is a sunset is a quiet affair, a few stupid frogs and a solitary crow. I left my crampons in the Jeep, but I can get down the hill with a mop-handle and a little common sense. New snow is oddly not slick. This new snow at least. I walk with a sure confidence. If the walk is too treacherous I slide down on a cardboard box, nothing I can't handle. I start a fire with the last of the school chairs, legs mostly, I'm addicted to legs. Mare est in turba, or whatever phrase might be used. Consider the universe and consider my trousers. I have to go to sleep. You wouldn't think deciding between a period and a comma could be so exhausting. The root cause was D being down in his back. He'd get in position to do something, and I'd have to fetch him everything. The one time he tried to stand up, he fell over backwards. I don't mind being Step-And-Fetch-It, I'm actually very good at it, because I anticipate whatever will be needed next. Makes me the perfect helper. And I can figure out how to do almost anything, but my ego is seldom on the line. Actually, the only time my ego is on the line, is when I sit alone, fortified and smoking, trying to put a few words together. The rest of it, the carpentry, the painting, even installing a show, is child's play, merely numbers and particular considerations. Being original is a step above that, and requires beating your head against a wall. By dint of a strong sense of irony. Yesterday, for instance, the Silent Partner in the ownership of the pub came in, John himself, and one of the Cory's poured him a Murphy's stout, no, wait, it was his wife started the pour, but she got distracted and one of the Cory people finished it. Thought about changing my name to Cory, or Kori, so I could work at the pub, but I'm so comfortable being Mad Tom, it's become a way of life. John was pissed at life in general, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or otherwise had crossed himself, and there was nothing for it, so I had the barkeep, Christine, pour us a wee dram, in coffee cups, so we'd look civilized. I don't really care what I look like. Appearance is an ego thing, a game I refuse to play; I don't have running water, for god's sake, draw whatever conclusions you will. Read more...

Loose Ends

Whipping those loose boards into order. The way it starts, you either find a couple of boards, or someone gives you a special board, burly maple, or a stick of walnut with character, and you stand it up in the corner, where you're sure to notice it; it's a lovely thing, but you don't have an immediate use for it. If you're Kim you carve it into a few spoons. Since I know Kim, I don't have to actually make the spoons, he takes care of that. I saw a board, once, being used as a gate closure, rife with rusty nails. I rebuilt a 100 feet of fence and gifted a fellow rancher with a new gate so I could have that board. It was just a piece of Lodge-Pole Pine, but it had been struck by lightning and it had a black burn mark (where do you put the hyphen?) running through the grain. I had to have it. I've been struck by lightning twice, so I have a soft spot in my heart for lightning strikes, and I knew right away that I wanted this particular stick (a particular board, in carpenter talk, is always a stick) to be the headboard of a bed. The bed is lost in history, we can trace it to 1987, when it seems to be lost in a fire, comma, then the next thing. I have to say that I warned you. You knew that I'd eventually get, what, possessive? Me? Come on, really? I built a bed as God intended, a magnificent bed, on which to act out my follies. I admit to those. Even still. The fact that I wake in the morning, new light breaking over the ridgetop, is a wonder to me. Snow on the ground, and it's bloody cold. Puttered today but D was down in his back and my feet hurt. Then had to carry in a heavy pack and the canvas tote. Yesterday we hit the ground running. I hauled debris and garbage all morning while D primed the new front wall in the main gallery. After lunch he stained cherry cherry and I pack two etchings for shipment. Left work a little early, got home and both the electricity and the phone were out, almost turned around and went back to the museum, but I lit a couple of oil lamps and a couple of candles. Baked a potato right in the firebox of the cookstove. I had collected several little containers of sour cream that D had left on his plate at various pub lunches. This has become a ritual. Build a fire, of course, change into mufti, get a drink, roll a couple of smokes (a couple, because I always roll one to set next to the phone, in case there's a call, which there usually isn't, so it's usually the last cigaret I smoke at night), get the butter out of the fridge, line up the little containers of sour cream, wash the potato and prick it with a fork. Wrap it in several layers of foil. I have several implements I use for managing fires, and I use one of them to push the coals toward the back of the firebox, creating a potato sized oven space. I use my longest tongs to spin it a few times. I put a plate on the warming shelf above the stove, I want it hot. Sometimes I unwrap the potato and let it dry out just a bit, I like the toughened skin that creates, but not doing it is fine, depending on your level of preoccupation. Sometimes you end up with a lump pf coal. But if it works out correctly, and if I'm not distracted, I transfer the potato to the heated plate, cut it into a one-inch dice with a knife and fork, then squash it with the fork, butter it liberally, then a layer of sour cream, plenty of fresh ground black pepper on top and you're ready to go. I might as well be Irish. Or Basque. Or Hungarian for that matter. But I did get in a box of salted cod and I'm making some very fine cakes. I make a small dish if tartar sauce whenever I make these: a heaping teaspoon of Hellman's Mayonnaise, a level teaspoon of sweet relish, and a dash of hot sauce from my arsenal of hot sauces. I have hot sauces that I use to heat up other hot sauces; any given time, I might have ten or fifteen varieties kicking around. There's a statute of limitations on this, right? Read more...

Logging Roads

Broken light. I went for a walk and even the diffused light was too bright for my winter eyes. Old logging roads follow the contour of slopes like rice paddies. Dry snow reminds me of Colorado. I get slightly lost, traveling west from the cemetery, but I know if I head north I'll intersect Upper Twin. I could walk these ridges all the way to Cincinnati without incurring a single town. I carry an extra Bic lighter in my pack, a metal cup, for melting snow, and a sling-shot, with a few ball-bearings and marbles for ammunition. I'm already finding cat-tail shoots, and in protected hollows, water-cress, that wonderfully bites the tongue. I could walk as far as Denver, to make a point, but I refuse to climb those mountains because they remind me of my driveway. Something about the drifting snow has me in a reverie, and I go a few miles too far. I manage to get back home, blinded by the light and starving, open a very good zin (a Ridge) and make a clam chowder. I changed into sweats, with slippers and a bath-robe, the Linda hat (which always makes me feel homeless), and the fingerless gloves that allow me to roll a cigaret and pound on the keyboard. Life is grand. In the folly today, my hike, I actually twirled around a couple trees. Fred meets Henry. The thing about a complex zin, is that it reminds you of things; not just tastes, but smells and places and people. This Ridge, a York Creek, 2004, fairly fucking explodes in the front part of your mouth, then trails tannin down your throat. I love it. The snowflakes are larger now and I take a glass of wine out onto the back porch, with the one foot square piece of foam that is my universal cushion between me and the world, catching snowflakes in my hand, watching them dissolve. On one of the logging roads, the skid-cut went below a rock over-hang. Not a cave, exactly, but a protected place, an over-hang, where you could build a fire and feel relatively secure. There was a ledge, bench height, and I stopped to roll a smoke, cleared a place in the leaf-litter, to drop my ash, with my right foot, and listened to the third Cello Suite in my head. Walking in the woods is a science. Stopping is a practice. I could never find this place again, but there were flakes and gnawed bones. It was a niche in the rocks. Almost an altar. Read more...

Well Used

The floor finally caught up with us. A piece of baseboard needed to be scribed and the bottom needed to be rasped and planed to conform to some very uneven tile. Peter Monroe playing mostly harmonics, almost screaming. Blue Grass Music is an acquired taste. I convince myself I'm not completely crazy, wash some dishes, shave, dance around the kitchen. "Red and black leather is my favorite color scheme," Richard Thompson. He gave her his Vincent to ride. Red Molly. This is a great song, and I love the use of the mandolin. Captures that frenetic element of life. At some point I go back inside. I don't mean anything by that, I simply go through the door, but my panties are twisted, or something, and I stop, in a shadow, to make things right. That double-headed god, Janus be the death of me, I tried to act normal, but the cards were stacked against me. Listen. Is that hail on the brim of your hat? I'm just asking. It could be sleet, and how would you know the difference? "I've been to my doctor, I've been to my priest", nothing is working, I'd rather retire into the woodwork, the world is too much with me. At a certain level of water-flow there's a cascade of images. I could pretend they don't matter. Fact, in every rut, has a history. Gray-blue dawn, cold, but it's March and the average temperature should be rising. It's snowing, lightly; no wind, and the flakes are falling straight down. Red bird, a Cardinal, on the front deck, chipping at a wasp nest I knocked down a few days ago; two crows out over the outhouse. I told the Frontier Phone guy exactly where the tree had severed his line, this is like cutting eye teeth, he can't do anything, until he gets a call from dispatch. So I don't have a phone and he's sitting on his ass. John, himself, joined us at lunch, and he was in a bad temper, a fowl mood. Why is it a fowl mood, and is that even the correct word? Days that begin like this are always questionable. And we're sitting at the bar, watching soccer with no sound, actually there is a sound, Irish music played low, in the background, and he says he's not having a good day. D and I glance at each other and break into the chorus of a Greg Brown song: "I don't want to have a nice day..." which cracks a smile from John, and actually makes the day. Yesterday. Today, the snow is falling and it's very quiet, other than those raucous birds and a train over in Kentucky. Peaceful, but frot with concern. Is 'frot' a word? The snow is so beautiful. All dogs are wolves. What I mean is that if I fall out there, and break a leg, I'm probably dead. You could learn a lot from watching wolves. Read more...

Table Talk

Board meeting at lunch which D had to attend as he is the Facilities Manager and the facilities are being revamped. Then a staff meeting at two, talking about The Renaissance because Sara is doing a show of modern painters who work in that style. Turns out D and I know a lot about the period, mostly through the emergence of printing with moveable type. The show isn't until October (it takes time to get a show together) and D and I are roped into doing a talk. It'll be fun. I surprised myself with my depth of knowledge about certain aspects of the period. Doesn't hurt that I just read the Greenblatt book and the Renaissance is his field. I feel like I just took a study course, actually, I did just take a study course in The Early Renaissance. It must have been forty degrees in town, but I got to the bottom of the hill and there was still snow. The ruts were mud, but I could walk up in the steps I took down, in the median; at this point in rotting snow, where you've stepped previously melts faster. I don't know why, exactly, I have several theories, all of which are probably wrong, but it keeps the question alive, which is the issue. It's a matter of relative temperature and heat still trapped in the ground, or the mud, in your boot treads, darkens spots and they melt faster in sunlight; but it's different, from the beginning of winter, because if you compact snow then, it melts slower. Curious. I drive home slowly, looking for where the black ice will be in the morning. I trust myself, driving through slush and ice, but I don't trust anyone else. If you're driving six miles along a stretch that usually takes six minutes, it take you three more minutes to be safe. Seems like it doesn't deserve a second thought. Of course, I have to think about that. Whether or not it doesn't. Read more...