Wall Raising

B calls to remind me to come over and help raise the tall wall (12 feet, big headers up high, very top heavy) on the addition at their house. Four of us and a boy, get the wall up, braced and nailed in short order. Coffee and discussion after. On the way home I stop at the lake, two crows under the picnic table at the spillway. A loud place to eat. Ratty fucking crows, matted feathers, they've been into something, ketchup or grease or machine oil. I'm not sure they can fly because they just hop away in that awkward crow walk, like drunks on stilts. Tattered luncheon remains under the table, greasy fried chicken bones explain the crows condition; I pick up trash, leave the organics, head home. Already sweaty, in work clothes, I sling blade for an hour, then bathe on the deck with buckets of tepid water and shave at the kitchen sink, late lunch of homemade sausage, eggs shirred in wine, shredded potato patty, sourdough toast, and as a special treat, a little nip bottle of Glendronach single malt that I remember Glenn bringing when he was filming here, that I found yesterday, looking for whatever it was that smelled bad in the island storage (an bad onion, like a bad apple only worse) and moved things around that hadn't been moved in a while. You find the damnest things. Hours later, I'm thinking about the ratty crows, remembering a fishing trip with my Dad, after I had left home, on a trip back, so I was older than 18, but I don't remember when it was, after Bass Boats and really large outboards came on the market. He tolerated me smoking dope when we were fishing, had eaten hash in chocolate bars when he was on Sea Duty in the Med. We were powering in to a place that was normally unfishable because of shallow bars that guarded entrance to anything drafting more than a couple of inches. Some daredevil had discovered that if you blew through on full plane you could get to these fishing grounds up Salt Creek. Scariest boat ride I was ever on, but it was the Anhingas I was getting to. Once we made it over the bar, Dad slowed to a crawl, the water so clear we were watching specific fish, I took a three pound Large Mouth Bass on a very light fly-rod, four-pound test, probably the best fish of my life, we were drinking a lot of beer, suddenly, smeared against the bushes that lined the creek were these birds, Anhingas, and they don't have any oil or lanolin or whatever in their feathers AND they are fisher birds, so they get wet, and dry themselves by splaying their bodies on a bush. Doesn't seem like a good survival technique but there they are. The crows reminded me of them. I think about what they might have to say to each other. A Crow and an Anhinga go into a bar. They say to the bartender, -Tom sent us,- and the patrons move their chairs to the back of the room, get out their opera glasses. The Anhinga says -the audience was terrible tonight- and the Crow says, -no, we were terrible-, they proceed to throw back shots and argue performance. A Post Modern Moment. Ratty birds remind me of ratty birds, it's not really a large step, but I take it, any movement is probably good. You probably heard that blond joke. I had a fan on, blowing on my black Dell, then it was cool enough to turn the fan off and the silence was deafening, suddenly nothing, I sat back in my chair and thought about that. I love what passes for silence, which was Cage's point. I could be a real control freak about the River Wrack show, but I don't want that, I want a free flow of information.
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Sumac

In a day the seed heads of sumac went from yellow to orange on their way to red, colorful change in the verdant green. Increasingly becoming spam, if you miss me, of a given night, check ridgeposts.blogspot.com where Glenn is posting them. Anybody know how to send them individually from a list? Kim? I hate being dumped. Watercress at Kroger, so I buy some, and an English cucumber and a package of those light rye rounds, make a plate of sandwiches, with butter, I love these High Tea sandwiches. Carma sent via D a piece of cherry pie, seriously good Mom-and-Pop Diner cherry pie, rolled and pressed edge-crust, fresh filling, maybe my all-time favorite breakfast, but I can't save it, eat it after the sandwiches. Planning tomorrow, insofar as that's possible, in the morning, with copious coffee, what I want to do is write about Missip, then some brush work, clean up, a pork-fried-rice from leftovers, get a drink and write you. That's my plan, figure I'll read for four hours, between events. A marathon day. Fucking dog, man, I could hear him running up the driveway, a beagle for sure, barking and polluting the sound-scape, a screw works loose and I go and get the .22, when he zips past my back door, chasing a fawn, I lead him and pull off a shot, send him ass over tea-kettle, suddenly quiet again, that's what I mean. I put on gloves and drag his mangy carcass down the logging road, downwind, out of sight, let the crows, resplendent in their glory, out of sight; it was, after all, someone's dog, but there isn't a guilty bone in my body. Falls under that umbrella of protecting your space. I like that last line, I read it several ways, it's the way I pass my time.

Three crows might mean
nothing, not a blip on the
radar, less than nothing.
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Disambiguate

To make unambiguous. The Deputy called me back, last night, a point of information, seemed a second meaning of Tourettes was disambiguation, which we had to think about, then rehash over scones this morning. D and I were Plumbers-For-A-Day as faucets in four places were dripping, replaced the seats in three and changed out a fourth completely, excellent problem-solving, so engrossed we were late for lunch and the very pregnant Zoe was waiting for us at the pub, tapping her foot, in that splayed-leg way expectant mothers have. The Deputy's hubby was there too, Jamie, so we took a table instead of eating at the bar, which is our habit, and the staff fawned over us. Waitresses who have had kids tend toward attentive with hugely pregnant women: the service was great, meaning gruff and sarcastic and being part of the family. Jim brought us a couple of ounces of beer to taste, to see what we thought, we did that rolling in the glass and sniffing thing, slugged it back, talked about hops. Trash day, so after we get the last faucets finished, I collect garbage from the 12 stations, bag it all in strong drum-liners and get it into the alley. We generate a lot of trash. It's like the museum needs a compost pile, but there isn't a place for one, I sometimes take garbage home, so I can recycle it, compost it, or feed it to some animal along the way. Fifteen inches of rain since May 1st, a lot of water. I have this problem with Kim's spoons: I don't want to give them away, I want them all, because they are all different, but I line up those I haven't given away and I see a pattern. Right now, on the island, I have all of the spoons (of his, that I haven't given away) lined up, eight personal spoons and one fish serving spoon (Best In Show) and it is a lovely display. My personal favorite is a full-twist cherry spoon. He fucks with quick early twists and waves and things, but there is something about the long slow twist that turns my crank. I'm glad I got out all these spoons, they make it easy for me to give away the last two, to B and Sofia, apparently simple spoons, charged with meaning. Stephanie, I had to buy these paintings, had to send them to you, Iowa, corn, this kid is great, hang the one with blue and inch or two above the stalks. Your Dad will love this. Beware the highly specific, what you think you meant, B said it best, what anyone thought they were saying, we have filters in place, very little gets by us, I found another mylar star today and I went crazy. Maybe I'm not the man for the job.
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Cellar Daze

All day in the basement at the museum. My birthday, what the hell. Clear out what I think of as our (smokers) winter break room which had become a narrow hallway lined with shipping crates, organize the pedestal storage room, put things away in the tool room, then, after lunch, tackle the hell-hole where we store auction donations. I'm trained for days like this and sometimes prefer them to any alternative. I do better with dirt than with bullshit, though I can handle shit pretty well; snitch a birthday beer from the museum fridge and stop at the lake on the way home; a hard shower, late-afternoon, has driven any recreationers home and I have the place to myself. Brought a half loaf of moldy bread, to get the ducks high, and drink the beer at the spillway, feeding my congregation. Reminds me, there was a dude at Janitor College, a lapsed Muslim we called Charlie Mo, a very cool guy, dealt Egyptian hash (actually from Lebanon, a gold seal stamped on thin disks), ate pork, drank, smoked, we're talking severely lapsed, who had a way with birds. He had a couple of parrots he had taught a litany of dirty words in several languages, rented an isolated place in the drumlins that was called "the suicide cabin" for obvious reasons: you were either a terrorist or were going to commit suicide. Middle of nowhere, snow-bound for half the year or snowshoe in and out, bad karma, a ghost, a pack of wolves in the looming forest. Very cool place otherwise, and cheap. 11 suicides in 22 years, batting .500. Visiting him there was like visiting the Tourette Ward in a looney bin, the birds just kept up this barrage of dirty words unless Charlie put them in the cage and threw a blanket over the top. He had trained some ducks he had wintered over, in a small heated pond with a duckhouse, and they followed him around, did little duck tricks, grabbing food out of the air and biting each other on the ass. It was quite the show. When he graduated, he's janitor at a major mid-western museum now, he left his prayer rug to be displayed among the trophies in the lobby, swore he'd had his way with 47 women on that rug, and it should be retired. Ducks. Don't think I forgot. I think about Charlie. And it is these very sidebars that are important to me, now, what reminds me of what, a smell thing, but a pattern, the dry-down, whatever. Something to hang my perception on, a frame, a stretcher, an armature, the very idea. A mold, a net, a form, just at dark, I kid you not, the three crows settle above the outhouse, I get a drink and go outside. I'm just enough sheets to the wind that I seem to understand. They're discussing what I gave the ducks and didn't give them, how I'm a duck guy and not a crow guy, though we all know I'm a crow kind of guy, squawk in my ear and I'm gone, the birds confuse me. I don't want pets.
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Move, Remove

We all do this, for instance make piles of things that will have to be moved again. 100 kids in batches of 25 in the classroom tomorrow, so the reject art from "Cream Of The Crop" has to be moved, only other space not spoken for in the immediate is the Board Room, so I move everything there. Yearly auction event upcoming and stuff starts arriving at every door, this is the patrons chance to clean out some places, get rid of some things, one sweet woman whose name I didn't catch made me promise to not let her buy back anything she was donating. For a year now we just dumped things in the cellar, without a chance to organize, so the one possible storage area (a hideous space that floods and stinks) for the auction stuff, is already filled with crap, so the rest of the day I spend down there, cleaning the hold, coming up a few times for air and a smoke, take three elevator-loads of trash upstairs, three elevator loads of auction items down. Many things I have to wrap, delicate glass, because I don't have that much space and I need crowd things together. A bunch of those thin-slatted fruit cases I pack things in for safe-keeping. One woman actually brings something in that is already broken and I can't wrap my head around that, a bunch of broken glass in a bag, I put on gloves, box and tape it shut, put it in the neighboring bar's dumpster. Sometimes the janitor has to make a call, there was a class in this, at college, concerning where the guilt fell, if there was a lawsuit; when it might be necessary to mention something to your superiors, and when it was best to remain silent. Hiding the truth. Deniability. Getting shed of dead florescent bulbs is always difficult, but I've developed a technique that is both exciting and effective: explode them in a just emptied dumpster behind the bank across the way. Nothing easier. Doesn't matter if it takes a few weeks for the perfect circumstances to occur, D and I out back having a smoke and the garbage truck comes over there, D goes back upstairs, again, deniability, I put on an orange vest I keep folded in the basement, against the moment, take the bulbs over and smash them in the bottom of the dumpster, sometimes I wear a wig, sometimes I glue on a mustache, I change hats. I enjoy smashing the bulbs, I wear safety glasses and long-sleeves, fuck the argon, I can breathe almost anything, go to lunch on inert gases, my goal is, at death, to become neon: "Live Bait", my all-time favorite sign, in neon, at a fish-camp in north Florida, Paccetti's, the 'Live' is red and the 'Bait' is blue, I see this sign in dreams, sometimes the one thing I remember, probably be distracting to me, day-to-day, but I might turn it on for parties, like someone else's scented candles. If I ever had a party. I seem to consult on cooking for that clan about once a year, just enough to stay viable. That other guy. The one that justified a certain introspection. I haven't forgotten where I was just a couple of nights ago. It may be that the best you can hope for is not dying. I tend toward the negative because I am so often wrong. Not this. Fuck introspection. I need to clear some brush. The answer is almost always physical work: I'm a Sling-Blade Man, doo doo doo, I'm a Sling-Blade Man.
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Reading

B and I read for two classes at the University. Made a day of it, the cost of gas, $10 trip to town, and do the laundry, go to the library, lunch at the pub (where they are shocked to see me on a Monday, Jim, at first, refuses service, then gets me a free beer); then to the school, read for the first class, they seem to get some of it, a couple of them particularly, which is all you can hope for, back to the pub for another beer, read for the second class, and B is done for the day too, so we retire to their place at Pond Lick for a beer and conversation, walk down to Turkey Creek, squat and watch the water flow, realize I've allowed myself to get very close to him, this other person. We talk about writing but mostly we talk about invasive species and whether or not to mow the grass when the bees are in the clover. Honey bees, lots of them, hundreds, under foot, doing what they do, that magic alchemy of plant juice to honey, I agree: Don't Mow. His other daughter, Katie, may move back here, asking to live in his cabin for a month while they find a place. Her significant other, Philip, is the finest natural stage talent I've ever found. Makes me think about doing a Pinter, "The Caretaker", which might be worth the effort with B and Philip if I could find a third crow, maybe an albino, to throw in there. I could use it for my own purposes, something to write about. Small changes, I notice I sometimes, now, start writing as soon as I get home (earlier, if it's a day I stay home) stop at some point and eat, then continue writing. Point being that writing is the most important thing I do, around which everything else is constellated; sure, there is 'extra' time, when I could be doing something else, but I can't predict it and make plans. It sounds stupid, but I can only go with the flow. Which would make a relationship difficult (-sorry, gotta go-) but is what makes me whatever regional thing I am, the second best potter, the third best wood-worker, the fourth best painter, though I am none of those. Six spoons in the mail from Kim today and I am hard-pressed what to say, he says for me to take two and pass the others along, one to B, one to D, the two others as I see fit. Fuck me. I want them all, though I choose the walnut twist (such character) and the cherry full-spiral, beautiful spoons, realize I don't have a spoon for Zoe and how pissed she'll be, decide to give her one of my spoons, she's carrying twins for god's sake, reasonably sure Kim will make me a close replica of whatever I had to give away. Close enough. The water is never the same, Heraclitus was correct, carrying a burden downstream. I collect samples, let them settle, I'm always surprised, never publish my results, they wouldn't be believed, what actually happens. Leaning on my mop, explaining art.
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Invidious Language

Insularity, isolation, maybe it does warp the mind. I was walking down the driveway, to curtail budding symptoms of what I now know to be a headache. Smoking too much and reading way too much in sometimes bad light, so a walk down the driveway, clear the mind. Half-way, there is a large hickory tree, and, gathering nuts, is a melanistic aberration, a 'sport', a completely black squirrel. Beautiful against the green. I nearly fell over. I've seen a few before, but never one here, like an electric shock, I know what it is, but I have to short through things, to get to the knowledge. These are more common the other way, albinos, I've seen a white raven and a stately white-tail buck In Missip, a massive 12 pointer that was as white as arctic snow. I shot one black squirrel in Missip because I wanted the pelt, and there were a lot of them, so I wasn't putting the species in any greater danger, and lost it to maggots in a really hot and humid Missip summer, so I have nothing to show; I do remember a very good meal of squirrel-and-dumplings, several, actually, but one in particular, that one. I pluck it from memory. Replay it, rushes with no text. Images. I need to look into this, I make a note and post it where I might see it. Who can do anything moire? more, right. Staying on course is the hard part. Me, I use that pronoun loosely, I just wait to see the drift. I fully expected a white crow, I was waiting, but it was those three black mother-fuckers, again, on that snag above the outshouse. I don't know what they expect of me, I'd like to make peace, sacrifice a lamb, whatever, but I am drawn into these triplets:

Black squirrel, you
shatter my illusion, (s,)
you are actually real.

I don't know, I take this with a grain of salt, what happens if I stay awake. The tendency is to stay awake forever, I require sleep, and dreams, but I want to stay awake, still, I must sleep. Grab odd hours, sleep when you can, I often sleep on the sofa, make sure I'm uncomfortable enough to not stay asleep. We're strange, when you look at us closely.
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Stochastic Factors

Any random or seemingly random factors that contribute to the decline of a species. Reminds me of idiopathic, of unknown cause, and I spend and hour with the dictionaries. Quammen's summation of the Alfred Wallace / Charles Darwin simultaneous discovery of natural selection is very good. Lucid even. Threat of rain, some showers, thunder in the afternoon. Bad tick year, too much rain, seed ticks, the little fuckers, everywhere. Just a little walk down to the printshop to look at the wrack pile, and when I get home I pick several large ticks off, and wash both ankles with alcohol and witch-hazel. When we picked blackberries in Missip we had to wear long sleeves and tie rags dipped in kerosene around wrist and ankle, pretty effective if you don't break out in hives. One of the most erotic rural scenes I was ever involved in. One of the good old boys had a beautiful wife, Rudy and Sonia, his family owned some acres for hunting in the fall, near our farm, and they'd stop by a few times, late summer, she'd stay at our place talking to Marilyn, mostly, while Rudy scouted his hunting sites. I was down at the hog-pen, Martina (the sows were all tennis players that year) had just birthed 13 piglets and only had 12 teats, so I was deciding which one I'd take inside and raise on goat's milk. The women had been for a walk. Sonia had about a zillion seed ticks on her ankles and Marilyn needed to go milk, the goats were talking loudly, so she foisted Sonia off on me. I go and get the alcohol and the witch-hazel (after an alcohol rub I always like to cool whatever it is off with witch-hazel, I love the smell), deciding on a course of action. She's a little freaked, not really a country girl, she's wearing open-toed, expensive shoes, and I take them off, she has great feet, well attended toe-nails, and lots of ticks. I've done this many times, and the way I've found that works best is that you seat the victim, hold a foot by the Achilles Heel and clean the foot area, then lean forward and anchor that foot above your belt, working on the zone between the knee and ankle. I kept getting sidetracked by her toes, and she was wearing a light summer skirt that drifted up her thighs, when I wiped her down with witch-hazel she was making sounds. I thought I was in a Faulkner novel. We never fucked, but she was later involved in an incident at the Super 8, a table thrown through the window. I wonder where we could have gone. Nowhere probably. I meant to go out tonight, listen to B's brother's band "Houndog Harrison" at the museum, but I started writing and there was thunder, I couldn't leave. I'll use any excuse to not leave the ridge, thunder is good, the price of gas, what someone had thought I meant about something I'd said about something; come on, get up to speed, what you think you say is a myth, a misunderstood fossil. It's those damned swimmers in those funny suits, you going to say something or not?
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Not Depressed

Not to worry, I rarely write twice in one night, I'd slept for a little while, somehow gotten sober, and the computer was just sitting there. The occasional rant does wonders for the spirit. Rain continues all day today, sometimes hard. I collect water for a bath, take one, the whole ritual, then dab on a little Dzing. It smells like old books, mesmerizing. It is, as Luca Turin says, a female scent men can wear. The dry-down is wonderful, a bit vanilla or close. I love it. Sara has a bottle of Tommy Girl at Hilton Head and has promised it to me. Also nice, and very cheap (Dzing, by comparison, is $135 an ounce) which is strange in the perfume industry. Read the new Sanford novel, a good read, then started rereading "The Song Of The Dodo" by David Quammen. A big important book. These rains have me living in a tropical jungle. Country Fried Steak and the lovely scalloped potatoes I do in the microwave and brown with a propane torch. 4th of July. Woo hoo. There's a large bent tree on the terrace below the road below the floodwall, but certain logistic problems. If Kim and Kurt were here, with B and D and myself, we'd stand a chance: the eight feet or so I need must weigh 1000 pounds. Eyes bigger than my gravitas. Some things are impossible, I constantly remind myself. The crotched poplar, as index, is less than a hundred pounds. The big rock I need, for the deck stairs, will be loaded with a fork-lift, all of the moving will be slightly down hill after that, easy; but the bent stick, 18-20 inches in diameter, is down on a bench, and would need to be lifted 12-15 feet at a sheer terrace face. Might could haul it up with the truck, I'll have to go back and look, some places that would be possible, could get it into position with some six-inch rollers, it might not be impossible (of course it's not, I mean relatively easily) and I think about it for a while. I'm attracted to the difficult, or maybe not that so much as attracted to certain materials and using them entails moving them and often they're large and heavy and awkward. This stick would make a great stringer for the stairs, but it's very existence proves that such sticks exist and maybe I'll look around on higher ground. I built a staircase in Utah, using a big Ponderosa Pine, horribly bent, as the stringer, come-a-longed the damn thing out of the woods and then went to a bar and enlisted large drunk cowboys to help me get into my truck. Using the ploy that always works with good old boys: -bet a round that you can't lift this- they lift it and I buy a round, sometimes two. You just have to know what's the carrot. The Deputy called me on the new carpet, said that I didn't respond when her cousin was flirting, I countered I didn't know, so far removed from the game, then D asked me what I thought about that dancer I dated a few times several years ago, stopping, to chat, when we were all out having a smoke, I said I thought she was flirting with him, he's attractive, I'm a weathered drunk, what am I supposed to think? I love holidays, everyone leaves you alone, they all have plans, and if you don't have plans you're a loser. I admit to not having plans, I don't use them anymore, just build things out of my head. I'd rather think about building a boat than talk to most people. The Wallace Line (you are, of course, familiar with that) which is generally deep water that separates islands, tends to divide species too, what Wallace was thinking about when Darwin wouldn't speak, then Hooker entered the picture, the classic case of independent discovery, and the mediated settlement is we remember Darwin and Wallace is a footnote. Life ain't fair. I really expected to be the Goat Cheese Tsar at this point, dictating terms, instead I'm a janitor. Such are things constellated.
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Early, Late

I've been up all night, what I think of as D's Sleep Disease, which I seem to have caught, as though it were contagious. Nothing makes any sense. I consider my various roles, none of them matter, in any larger frame: what I might do, what I've done. This time of day, the only thing that makes a difference is a perfect omelet, steak and cheese, a slice of sour-dough toast with seedless blackberry preserves. My older daughter calls and I wish I could send her the money she needs for whatever it is she needs it for, but I'm broke, been broke for ten years, paying Child Support as a matter of course, bleeding the turnip dry. In most ways, I've failed. The absent father, the broken piggy bank. I look at the spread sheet and I don't see how things could be any different, this is where I am. I can't even make an apology, give it light and shit grows. The sumac is incredible, the way it fills space. I had a list of things I needed to get done at the museum, I was the only person on the floor, the only one sweating, I stank by the end of the day, when I got home I had to pour a bucket of water over my head, soap my pits (a great soap from Iowa) and rinse in the rain. It's worth it, to me, because I can write you, parlay experience into a paragraph, but I have a hang-nail and I broke my left little toe on the bottom stair and I wish I could sleep. It's raining hard, a drone on the metal roof, and I like the sound, better than those fucking whip-poor-wills, setting up in the distance, coming closer. I hate birds, their cheerful sound, only the crow sounds natural, a rasping, gutteral cry. Off my feed. I think about that, wonder why I expected anything else, Frost was right, the past is a bucket of ashes. I'm thinking about moving to Iowa, my connection here is tenuous at best, and there's decent work there, a staircase, a shower, something I could do, maybe rural north Florida, where people carve spoons in their spare time. I can't get far enough off the grid. I try, I bathe with rain-water, I heat with wood, it's not enough. I want to live in a cave with just an elk-skin shawl, tallow lamps, raw meat, ramps. Everything else is pretense.
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Hummingbirds

These fuckers are driving me crazy, two fighting, or whatever it is, outside my window right now and I yell at them, they pay no attention. I was below the floodwall this morning and found a stick that we must have, told D to bring his chainsaw on Tuesday. A perfect post with a splayed crotch that will make an easy attachment for the pergola in the Wrack Show; when we get morning coffee, we drive down again, D and I, he agrees we really must have it. Need several similar sticks, make the show easier. I think about another show I'd like to do, "From The Bone-Yard", a rock show, everything from the McDermott quarry, stacked rocks, ersatz furniture, everything made from stacked rocks. The bone-yard at that quarry (the bone-yard is where they throw shit that fails) fills an entire hollow, thousands of cubic yards, and they add and bulldoze over the edge every day. We're talking a lot of rock, cheap. $20 a pick-up load, Jesus, at $20 I'd buy anything, horse shit, offcut slabs, rocks, wouldn't quibble. I've done major league bathrooms and kitchens with this stuff, it's cool and so goddamn organic it breaks my heart. Jana asked, I'll answer her here, because it seems appropriate: I like being the janitor at the museum, I enjoy being mis-pegged, I love docenting with a mop. I took a tour today with a crippled lady, wheelchair, through the show, we talked about useless patterns, what you might imagine you would do. She was comfortable in her broken body and I went to school on that. We do fail as we get older, the frame, the joints. She smiled when we talked about the show, she was so happy to be included; I shared the insider dope, the judge's personal preferences, how that played a part. I never know how much to help the handicapped, some of them take such offense that I'm shocked. What I do is nothing, just mentioning some things. Anyone could be more specific. At the back door there is a threshold and I lift the front of the wheelchair, exactly as I would do for anything we were bringing through the door, art, bodies, whatever, a certain way to play your hand. We connect, I talk with her several times over the next hour. I need to be on the floor, subject to question, everyone else is hanging on the subject, removed, I'm mopping. Excuse me, you thought what?
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Not Magic

Three crows everywhere, far as I can tell. This morning, taking the compost out, they were on a dead snag in a Chestnut Oak; stopped at the lake, to roll a smoke, and there they were cleaning a picnic table; pulled over, to get a dead raccoon off the road, where the Barbecue Place used to be, and they were competing for a perch on a bush that wouldn't support them all; at Raven Rock they flew over in a vee; none at the museum, but Carma's, in tile. Another day cleaning and tomorrow I have to put things away in the basement, for weeks we've not put things away, because there wasn't time, now, you can barely move down there and the tools are akimbo. D hates that now I'm the guy that gets to go to the basement, far from prying eyes, and work at whatever pace I decide. I said to Sara's husband, Clay, that if he was getting cards printed, I wanted some too:

Southern Ohio Museum
Janitor

I don't want promotion. It took me years to get here. I don't care what my title is, or handle (I'm sensitive about nicknames, there are two people who call be Tommy, and one who calls me Tomas, D tends to call me Old Fart, and that's cool, I call him Lard-Ass, still, I would never trust him with an ice-pick. He lunges.) Then on the way home the fucking crows are on the job, they've called ahead, they have a beacon on my truck. There are so many balls in the back of my truck, I was looking at them tonight, while I was looking for the bug, you know, someone watching, and started laughing. I could have choked to death, I was laughing so hard, not a bad way to go. Forty balls in the back of the truck, recent balls, I have become selective, and, still, forty balls. Three crows in the road on a squirrel that is completely flattened; and then I get home and those same three original crows are in position. What would you make of that? why do crows travel in threes? is that ugly sound actually a language? Run full-circle.

Tom

The spring rains
and plum blossoms:
blackberry canes, the
way things explode,
I never thought to ask.
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Downe a Downe

In a post a few days ago, By Increments on June 23 if you're interested, Tom talked about a tile triptych that Carma created for the current show at the museum. She was kind enough to send me an image of it, so here it is. (Click on the image for a larger view.) Primal iconography. There are primes 1, 3, 5, 7 in the clay, I believe. And music.

There were three ravens sat under a tree,
downe a downe, hay downe hay downe.
And they were black as they might be,
with a downe.

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Eating Crow

Interesting message from Carma concerning crows, she was suffering word overload and needed to mention several things, make sure I had some information I might need. I knew all of the words she highlighted, had forgotten Huginn and Muninn, "Thought and Memory", the two crows that sat on Odin's shoulders and filled him in on events. Had to get out a book on Norse mythology. "Kenning" I knew as 'a brief metaphorical synonym' (the whale's road, for instance, being the ocean) a strong feature in Anglo-Saxon stress verse poetry. Crawa is Anglo-Saxon for crow. Museum was trashed by the party, D had warned me, mostly the floor and bathrooms: I was in Janitor Mode all day. They should outlaw glitter and small decorative foil stars. There are maybe 8400 feet of grout joints in the tile floor of the main gallery and the stars were a perfect size to be lodged within the joints, mylar, probably, which doesn't need glue to stick. I sweep up thousands and then pop several hundred out with the blade of my pocketknife. The person that invented these should be shot. There was a mandatory course, at Janitor College, "Non-Food Foreign Bodies" that preached patience with the stupidity of party designers, but I am too long out of school to remember the calming mantras, mostly I get pissed. I really don't like stupid people. And what is it with women and public bathrooms? why are they so much messier than men? in my personal life I've always found the opposite to be true. For instance, when you tear off a piece of toilet paper and it doesn't rip perfectly on the perforations, in public rest rooms, men seem to just fold the jagged piece under, or wad it in the middle, but women tear it off on the perforation and drop the extra piece on the floor, because it disturbs the perfect fold. This is wrong, one should never drop anything on the ground or on the floor anywhere, bad form. I stopped on the way in this morning, on Mackletree, and picked up the remains of a late-night Taco Bell run, I carry a spatula, for flipping food onto the berm, where the scavengers might eat in peace, and pick up wrappers and bags and cups, and am rewarded with a perfect drive back in this evening, no trash, a pristine ride through a perfectly canopied tunnel, stopping to look at a lovely weed I'd never noticed before, a sturdy stem three feet high and then these narrow cone-shaped white blossoms, a foot long, tapering to a point, impressive. I don't know my weeds well enough. Someplace I have a book, "Common Weeds Of The United States" and I make a note to look for it, a Dover Book, pale brown, an inch-and-a-quarter thick, I can almost remember where it is. It's nice, you know, when you're doing really dirty jobs that no one else wants to do, because everyone leaves you alone: you don't criticize the way someone cleans a toilet if they clean it and you don't have to. Rule Of Thumb. I'm picky about floor upkeep and everyone knows it, they defer to my level of engagement. Today, I am serious and vocal about the fucking stars; they humor me, the rest of the staff, and then, because I'm working on the floor most of the day, I end up docenting various people and groups through the show, leaning on my broom or mop and offering opinion. I'm just the janitor but I'm ok. Oddly trusted by a broad range of people. I don't know what to make of it. I live a really simple life. A small steak tonight, a baked potato with sour cream, I saved just enough, next to the bone, for an omelet, with a serious British cheddar, the future. Holly, don't wear a scent tomorrow, I have a perfume sample I want you to wear, I'll bring it over at lunch, I'll slip away to smell the dry-down. That potter I was with when we came over for lunch the other day thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world, I cautioned him against extremes but he was adamant. He mentioned your feet. I talked about the weather. We settled on fishing, native trout, high in the Rockies.
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