Painting Red

Big year for nuts and the squirrels are chattering at a furious rate. All along Mackletree they do their suicide indecision, counted seven dead in a two mile stretch, stopped and flipped them off the road. Pea soup fog this morning, thick along the river road. Clay going it alone to Massillon, so I can paint the entry and signage walls, tape, cut, roll; ther color is Pittsburg 233-7 Gumball Red, and it is too. The signage wall is hot pink so I should get it to cover in two coats but the entry wall is pastel green and I assume it will be problematic. Right on both counts. Paint for six hours and still have to put a third coat on the entry. Red paint is so high in solids that it goes on streaky and the roller wants to pull paint off the walls at the end of a stroke. Still, with yellow vinyl lettering, it's just right for the Circus Show. Going blind today, painting red over pink (somehow creating purple halos wherever I looked), and the red reminded of the first red Moroccan goatskin I used to bind a full-leather book. Almost too supple, I had to size it with glue water to stiffen it enough for my purposes. Mom was still making costumes for strippers then, and I had taken a small piece of the unsized over to show her. I drove her on her appointed rounds, fittings and deliveries, usually took a book and had a free beer at the bar. The girls would come out and model their new costumes for me. They loved the leather, I knew they would, had brought the sample along. I got Mom a lovely hide for $50 and she made $500 worth of skimpy g-strings out of it. Excellent business. She'd let her very favorite girls come out to the house, usually for a rush costume and once, I must have been a Junior in college, I'd had a few people out from school, we were doing a play together, for dinner and a read-through, and this beautiful woman, Amber, knocked on the door; Mom had sewn her a lovely American flag outfit, with stars over her breasts. I let her in, ushered her upstairs, went back to the reading, a few minutes later Mom stuck her head around the corner, said, Son, can you come up here. Amber had on the new outfit and it was stunning, yes, I said to them both, yes, it was perfect for a gathering of politicians (which was the gig), and that was that, but a while later, when Amber had redressed demurely in slacks and a silk blouse, she came over to the dining room table where we were reading, pecked me on the cheek, said thank you love and left. The rest of the cast looked at me. They wanted me to check the fit, I said, she's a stripper. I could hear Mom laughing upstairs, I'd been played. This a thread, in my upbringing, to learn by example, my father is a lousy teacher when it comes to explication, but he knows things, and shows them really well. You don't need a textbook when the example is right in front of you. I can make a handle for that. Once I understand the function I can probably build a better handle. I've been studying handles. Kim does handles better than anyone I know, but I occasionally wonder what is he thinking? I need him to do a two step, cast-iron stairway to nowhere. Two steps, man, leave the rest to me. My specialty is making sense out of nothing. Perfect, it's just me. It's just me, I wouldn't trust anything further. Read more...

Change Ringing

Cool enough that I can start a fire, roast some vegetables, beets and turnips, a potato, an onion, the vague taste of dirt but in a nice way. Sweet and down low. I don't understand the implications. There's a charm in repetition, like a cheap toy in a box of cracker jacks, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a token. Unless you subscribe to that pesky notion that everything means something. A pain in the ass. That's not a bell it's a fucking woodpecker, the drumming search for bugs beneath the bark. Not a high-school lover but a mangled pillow. Wake up, get a grip. I recognize that guitar, it's Clapton playing Robert Johnson, "Crossroads", you're granted these moments, if you leave the radio on and go to bed. I don't fall for bullshit, usually, but Bach, early in the morning, is a revelation, Double Round Bobs like you wouldn't believe. The extra trip into town was mostly about collecting another load of wood, Osage Orange, serious winter wood. I wish I could play the piano, there's a song in my head that I can't quite access. Nothing prepares you for the late nights, you grasp at straws. It's enough to say you keep your head above water, but we all recognize failure as a clear and present danger. Drowning is a state of mind. Just before you go under, something reminds you of something else and you remember that night on the beach. Maybe it wasn't that important, but you remember. Happens to me all the time, I'm walking down the street and suddenly I'm somewhere else. One thing leads to another. Bach, I think, is the source of everything. Listen closely. It's merely change-ringing, but with that added kick, us talking directly. I admit to nothing, I merely keep the channel open. A janitor after all. Tracked down a cheap copy of "De Re Coquiaria", a cookbook by Apicius, the famed cookbook of ancient Rome, good recipes, though they do seem to have used garum (a sauce made by rotting fish in barrels and pouring off the liquid) a bit too freely; on the other hand I put anchovy paste in almost everything but in almost homeopathic doses where it tends to act like a natural MG and doesn't taste fishy at all. Seriously, keep a tube in the fridge and add a little squirt to any soup or stew, pot of beans, anything, it's amazing stuff. I sometimes spread just a bit on grilled meat. I never tell anyone because anchovies get a lot of bad press. I love anchovies, smelt, any of the very small fish that can be eaten bones and all. I've dined on minnows on more than one occasion and once, other than crackers, they were all I could find to eat. I'd gone deep into a wilderness area and was so sure I'd catch a mess of native cut-throat trout that I'd only taken a tube of saltines, a small skillet and a baby-food jar of bacon fat. Talk about over confident. I ended up making a kind of net from an extra tee-shirt, dragging it with a stick upstream and getting quite a few fingerling trout. Way too small to clean, I just ate them whole, fried, on crackers; oh, always carry hot sauce, Tabasco makes a little tiny bottle you can refill with your sauce of choice, I'm into the nether regions of hot sauce, I actually have a shelf labeled "Sauce Too Hot To Use" and I occasionally use one. I don't foist this on anyone else, heaven forbid, but I do, on occasion, make myself sweat. Habits die hard. I feel it purges my liver. I base this purely on speculation. I speculate more than I know. I wish it wasn't so, but there it is. I'm only always guessing. The world itself is such a mystery. I'm afraid to go outside to pee, or do anything. You know more than me. Read more...

Later

Try walking in my shoes. I went in to the museum today to see where I was going Tuesday. Not that it matters but I wondered where I'd be. I suppose it's expected, I need to handle more, when it comes to logistics. I just need to know it's my responsibility, and it would help if I had a phone. My office is actually the kitchen, with hot and cold running water, and a closet with a bucket bracket where I fill my mop pail. There is no way I'm looking for a girlfriend but I like Tammy's ankles. God help us, I like the staff at the museum right now, we get it done. The upcoming change-over looms large but Sara has booked enough time, I could do this by myself, but I need to engage James, as an installer. Pass the mantle. He's a natural, does the math in his head; I knew he would. I award myself a day off. Quite a bit of new information on Balanoculture. Seems you can practically live on a diet of acorns and a little green stuff. Balanophage, acorn eater. Odd side-bar is that I'm always tasting acorns, the Euell Gibbons influence. My Field Guide Edition of "Stalking The Wild Asparagus" cost $2.95 in 1973 and since I first read it I've searched for the illusive sweet acorn. Found two trees, one a huge first growth white oak on the farm in Missip and the other a rangy gambrel oak in Colorado, growing at 6500 feet. Both of these made a decent bread and it, as Mom always says, sticks to your bones. A couple of slices for breakfast and you can skip lunch. Evidence is that the 100 plus tribes on the west coast all lived pretty much an acorn centered life for a very long time. This is interesting reading and I almost wish I was as little bit better plugged in, as there's a shit-load of information on the net that takes me forever to access, inter-library loan is faster. Did read an article from U.S. Dept of Ag on the use of acorns as food, past, present, future. Informative but very dry. Dense mass of carbohydrates and fiber and high protein, even when the tannins are leached away. Perfect marathon food. I should set up a booth in Boston. Street food for the highly motivated. Western bean curd. Acorn jerky. Say what you will, you are what you eat. Read more...

Conceptual Stairs

The idea of ascent, movement from lower to higher (and the other way around, by implication), the means thereof. I remember some staircases, I imagine some others, then I think about some specific people and the stairs they might build for a show. Kim, Michael, Dennis, Tom Howe. As it happens I know a lot of people who build stairs. Can't remember how many sets I've built but the number is large. In one fantasy the gallery would be almost crowed with steps and stairs, all free-standing, all unique, this particular fantasy takes the place of another one, where several staircases accessed a common platform, the railing for which would be a bolted or notched system of natural sticks. Sara, listening, said she needed a concept, to hold it all together, then mentioned Carter's paintings and prints of almost try to reconstruct. Read more...

Goose Attack

Geese are on my side this morning, and I've brought scraps and left-over corn bread for them. Scary bastards. I feed them from the truck window, having been treed by them before. But I feel that these seasonal passers-by, need to be made welcome. Every year I swear never again. This year's drama: maybe three dozen of them, in a large half-circle, I throw well and I have them spaced out nicely, when a giant male jump/flies up onto the hood of the truck and starts pecking at the windshield, pooping on my ride. I hit the gas and he goes tumbling over the cab and lands in the bed of the truck, I stop and he makes a very undignified exit over the side. Have to stop at the self car-wash place on 52 near the Dairy Bar, pull into the first slot, closest to the change machine, get my four quarters, clean my wheel wells (they get caked with mud so badly that it throws off the alignment) and just fixing to clean off the shit, when a good-old-boy walks by to get his quarters, he drove into the second bay, a new big Dodge pick-up completely covered in mud, completely. He stops and looks at my little trucklet, then at me, and says, goose shit, I hate those bastards, and I have to ask how his truck got so completely covered in mud, he grinned, iconic, missing several front teeth, he's in camo, brush cut, and he grinned again, Forest Service roads at midnight, man, it's a rush. Seems he and a buddy like to take a twelve pack out in the forest at night, and hit the puddles as fast as possible on the intricate network of dirt roads in the 64,000 acres. You look ahead, he said, because until the wipers can clear a view, you're driving blind. Right, I thought, I want to do that. D was in and I am assigned to bring him up to speed on the weekly staff meeting. Being a liaison is not unlike being a docent. I swear I just saw the face of Richard Nixon on my damp coaster and it made me spill my drink. Fucking Republicans, excuse me Pegi, I struggle with this. This happens to me before I get to work, and I'm early, thinking to read for half-an-hour in the library, and everybody is already there. It's early enough in the cycle, the change-over cycle in the main gallery, that I don't have to prioritize, I can just do anything on any list, so I start doing things, D and I get a cup of coffee, roll cigs, get up to speed. We do a few things I need him for, and I'll be the judge of that because I'm still learning the ropes. In the permanent collection gallery, where we'd rehung everything, the lights were wrong, there are nine combinations of wattage and spread. Watercolors require low wattage and narrow spread, oils require greater wattage and wider spread. What you're trying to achieve is a balance. Glass and plexi-glass are different. Everything is different, the values, the colors. We joked then talked about a possible Stair Show, and I'm reasonably excited, I have to wrap my head around this. If we did something, it would have to be interesting. The day to day is interesting, but who gives a shit really. I want D to teach James how to cut mattes, so I wouldn't have to learn another thing, I'm tired of learning things, it's almost boring. Read more...

Cutting Edges

I've done so much painting of walls that I take short cuts. One thing is that I cut edges without taping, Helen always said charge the brush fully and pay attention to the flow; and when you're pressed for time, taping is laborious, and the tape is expensive. I cut from right to left, from up to down. I'd been saying for several months that I wanted to paint these walls, they'd been re-hung without much attention, and I finally get my chance. I use Tammy, the new-hire, to take the art off the walls, feeling that if you work in an art museum you should handle art. I'll tell her tomorrow we moved paintings worth 100K. Suffer through a necessary staff meeting (so much on our collective plate) finish painting walls in the permanent collection's gallery at 4:30, after patching, filling, sanding, and feel good about that, on schedule if there was one. Because ham is on sale I decide to make a ham and bean soup for the staff tomorrow. I know Sara likes it, and I want to help curb her rising anxiety about the upcoming Circus Show, and I want to cook a meal for the staff to create a little complicity. The family that eats together. I enjoy putting a pot of this together, comfort food, nothing special, but I do caramelize a large onion and red bell pepper, pre-soak a pound of Great Northern beans, add garlic and a pound of ham chunks, several goodly grinds of fresh black pepper, can't really fail with this, if you've got an hour to put it together. I start a hot quick fire in the cookstove, heat the soup to almost boiling, damp everything down and just leave it on the stove until tomorrow morning. I do short ribs this way, or pork back bones, when I've cut out the loins, with cabbage. We're entering the cooking season and I can hardly wait. I'm ahead on wood, noticed a large dying chestnut oak today, loosing leaves early, a sure sign, marked it with crime-scene tape. Don't know where I got a roll of that. Now that B is not part of the equation I need to buy a small gas chainsaw, I need to drop a few trees, in the woods, alone. I'll be very careful. I'm good at careful. Got way more done than I thought I could be done. One foot in front of the other, slogging away, and I have the thought, sometime during the day, that if this is the worst they can throw at me, we're fine. My tool-kit allows for almost anything. Big storm and I had to shut down, lightning, thunder, no rain, still. I've already done the labels for the 'new' paintings and use them to pull all the replacements from the vault, set the order with Sara, get the road-box wheels, which contains 99% of anything needed to hang anything anywhere. Lovely drive to work this morning, huge flock of Canada Geese befouling the beach at the lake, three crows at the spillway, eating worms left by a fisherman, pristine, emerald green trees, cleaned of their dust by last night's storm. Get the soup to town with only minor spillage, not as good as I'd hoped for, old beans, several years is my guess, because I've often kept beans for years and they require a much longer cooking time. I cooked this soup for over twelve hours and it wasn't very good, a bean should keep its integrity, then explode in a buttery way. I'm particular about my beans, ten years in western Colorado, pinto capital of the world, made me thus. For a rare treat, raise a patch of pintos, and pick them when fully formed and still green, cook them for a scant hour, a wonderful meal. Thinking about it, while I eat of a bowl of not very good soup and some delicious cornbread Sara got, to go with lunch. I sliced the little squares and toasted them, a daub of butter on every bite. Thinking about the varieties of beans and peas that I've raised, I quickly get above twenty, christ, thirty before I stop that line of thought. The stand-outs, all heirloom, are an unnamed black crowder pea (I still have seed for this one, makes the most amazing juice), an African cow pea, a delicate tiny lady pea (hell to shell, but god they were good, almost a jasmine aftertaste), and a pink-eye purple-hull from Texas that made grown men weep. Pintos usually win my bean of the year award, I love them so many ways. My bean rhapsody. Part of me says get a life, and the other part comments on what a good life it is. I knew I'd hang paintings today and I'd prepped the walls and was ready, anxious, even. Hanging part of the permanent collection alone. Valuable stuff, but that's not the point. This is a fully engaging interesting piece of work, and I want to do it well, want it, really, to be almost perfect. I strive for almost perfection, I know it's the best I can do. I run the math for each wall, then do it again, arrive at some numbers that locate a piece horizontally and vertically and establish an icon that identifies who's where. Simple system, a number inside a circle. Hang ten pieces and only have to re-hang two, not bad, actually, going for almost perfection. In both cases a pesky conversion of quarters to eighths. I can predict my failures, it's good to know yourself. For me, the only odd thing happening at the museum right now, I accept the chaos of a auction fund-raiser, Sara's panic mode concerning the Circus Show, it's her show for god's sake, her name is writ large across the face of it, the clogged toilets, all of it, I love it. Mostly I really like installing shows, it's fucking magic. I fully intend to work here the rest of my working life, unless they fire me, for apparently trying to take control. I don't want control, I'm happy with my slice of cheesecake. I like what I do here, I hang stuff on walls. Read more...

Logistics Again

I've started three lists because I have three time-lines to bring together. I think I need a clipboard because the folded sheet of paper in my pocket can no longer contain the nuances. Pulling a sizable chunk of the permanent collection tomorrow, several paintings for the Circus Show, downstairs, and that will leave some orphans so several walls will need patching and painting then re-hanging with other Carters from the vault. Started painting downstairs but ran into a couple of problems there, one, that the signage wall has begun edging out of it's corner, because every time you tape and repaint it, it moves a little further onto the adjacent pilasters; and, two, that I'd done some patch and fill in the gift shop and when I tried to touch-up the paint discovered that the wall was painted in an eggshell finish we no longer use. So I have to tape off the signage wall in reverse, to back-paint the corners, and will need to paint an entire wall in the gift shop. Fine. Study the list of paintings to pick up in Cleveland, seven paintings, five venues. Four will not be wrapped. Make a list. Note addresses, Google maps. Clay wants to go next Tuesday and Wednesday, make three of the pick-ups, rent a motel room, wine and dine, then hit the Cleveland Museum and Berea (some small college) on the way out of Dodge. I'll have to contact people at all these places, project an ETA. Thank god it's collectors and museums, if it was artists, five hits in two days would be impossible. They always forget, and when you arrive at the correct time at the correct place they're off getting their teeth cleaned, or getting a new tattoo. Time to handle the arrangements, so not too concerned, but that means leap-frogging chores I was planning. no problem, I was expecting this, the priority is the trip to Cleveland. It gathers the last of that show (Circus) for which I'm responsible, still two pick-ups being made by art shippers and I need to check on them. All of this has to happen before the Auction Benefit, because as soon as that's down, we have the movie premier, then installing the Circus Show, with the patron party pre-opening. Before which, somewhere, I'm looking for an extra week here, I really need to be helping Kenny matte and frame photos of the next show upstairs, from our photo archives, tying early businesses to actual artifacts. I was thinking about expectations on the way home, stopped at the lake, drank a very good porter and rolled a couple of smokes. The next month looks impossible, too many events, too many openings, too many clogged toilets, too many trips, and I have to break in a new person to help me install shows. There must be some appropriate Yiddish phrase. That's the way I feel. Still, it is doable, I think, with a little cooperation. There are still stops I can pull out, stays, but to push that sailing metaphor, when you're running before the wind, a spinnaker, above twelve knots the hull rises, planes, and all sound is behind you. I got this from people I sailed with, that they always wanted it behind them. I wondered what that meant, but I was really interested in not capsizing so I didn't ask too many questions. Your job is not be obnoxious and ask the right questions. Never mind what you thought you meant. Read more...

Lovely Thing

It had been raining all morning and everything still lushly green, washed; then in a lull, a flock of maybe a dozen goldfinches flew into the yard and flitted about. Then they're gone, an eye-blink away. I don't know where they spend the rest of the year. So beautiful against the green. Big fox grape year, the rains exactly correct for a big crop, there'll be many a drunken bird in the next month. 3 or 4 years ago was the last large crop and I managed to catch a drunken grouse, skinned (because I hate plucking) and barded with bacon, drizzled with Calvados, maybe my favorite fowl, though that's a hard call because I really like game hens, roasted on a rack above a drip pan, so I can collect the drippings, and I eat the crisped skin, and then the bird, with my fingers, try to have an artichoke with this, because you also need both hands for that, dip the leaves in the drippings, and you don't have to stop and wash your hands, just eat with your fingers. Wash my hands in dishwater and blot my mouth. It's a meal the fox likes, I know, because I see her tracks at the compost pile. I'm happy I please more than one of us. Back against the wall, it's good to know someone's covering something. Your backside. Buckeye was right, I was wrong, we are all accountable, I think I meant something else, but I can't remember what it was. Probably, he's right. Or left, whatever. Read more...

Frotteur

Some lovely textural pieces, like sunsets or moonrises, rubbings in various colored chalk. Can't remember where I saw these. Frottage, which sounds like a paraphilia but might mean nothing more than stroking a lover's foot. Sometimes milking a goat is just milking a goat. Living on a farm or ranch you find yourself doing strange things. There is a large pill, for instance, a bolus, and to get one in an animal you need to shove it down beyond the gag reflex, then stroke it through the gullet into that first stomach. Easy enough, once you learn how, like turning a breech calf or digging a post hole. There's a major disconnect, now, between feeling your way through and avoiding physical contact, you can't not touch what needs to be moved, and you're liable if you touch it. Tort is not a tart, first thing you know you're in bankruptcy and the wolves are clawing at the door. You what, stupid asshole, stood behind her, and corrected her grip on her putter? Her butt nestling into your crouch, your hand over her hand holding her putter. Class action case. Everyone whoever. I have a problem with labels, it's a hierarchy, and if I'm to play that game give me my due, I'm not an assistant. I'm not accountable. Read more...

Avoiding Parades

Slight miscalculation, forgetting that River Days opened with the Labor Day Parade. Back way into the library, then around the promised route to get to the museum, talk with D about his MFA orientation, bring him up to speed on priorities and requests. Thought to just wait-out the damned festivities. Out back for a smoke and we can watch from half-a-block away. Three buzzards circle the parade, which makes little sense at the time, but by the time the thing ends, two hours later, certainly something or someone will have died. Patient buzzards. Nice phrase which I think I might start using in a variety of circumstances, it seems to hold possibility in tone and intent. In line at Burger King, for instance, the crowded entrance at the quarter-mile dirt track, first night crowd at an opening. I sent D back to his work and read a book on Initial Letters. As a book designer and printer, I always learned toward a conservative tract, same font, maybe two points larger, a second color. The work has to speak, the text, or it's just an object, a book-like thing. I think it's the drugs, but I also ate well today, and have already had a couple of drinks. And I feel good, wanting to get on with things, needing to do physical work, prepping for winter. And something else. In my reverie, writing you, I carry on a running monolog, must of which is connective tissue, which I discard, and the thoughts bifurcate, again and again, and I'm familiar with the space and my voice. Happened tonight, and I remembered other incidences recently, where the voice itself bifurcated, and I was listening to several fictions at once, characters in the play. My god, I thought, that's fiction. But thinking about it later, I'm not sure. I think I'm on the brink of a non-fiction novel, make a note to get up real early and go to Wal-Mart, I need a fucking printer. Writing in the dark is hell, some circle of hell. I only do it because there's nothing else I'm qualified for. I appreciate the compliments, but what are you going to do? Put out a spread of readings. It's the next day. Had a couple of drinks and fell asleep on the sofa, between sentences, as it were. Get to reread myself. The buzzards over the parade, and they really were there, were a surreal image. I dreamed about them last night. In the dream there was a gleaming 18 wheeler, with it's 53 foot flat bed draped in black cloth, in the center, on a plinth, was a small white coffin, red roses strewn everywhere, randomly; parade watchers, on both sides, bulged out in two standing waves, to toss more roses. Excellent visuals. Didn't seem sad, but I'm little concerned with the meaning of dreams; the tone of them, the mood, is generally more problematic for me, indicating a level of emotional involvement. When I'm concerned about something I often dream of falling. I prefer Erving Goffman over Freud. I had always avoided reading any sociology, because of a sidebar in Olson somewhere, where he said sociology was a pile of shit, so I didn't read any, then thirty years later I'm building a staircase in a house, somewhere, I forget where, and there's a very good library, actually organized, and there are 10 or 12 books by this guy Goffman, who I'd never heard of, and I thought, what the hell, give him a read. Blew me away. He nails many things closely, his book, "Stigma" should be required reading. Germane to my ongoing point, what we think we see. Therefore the nature of reality. When you look at someone with webbed hands, what do you see? Read more...

Perfectly Packed

Week from hell, really. I'm feeling better, keeping food down, massive quantities of plain yogurt to keep some bugs in my gut. Three more days of antibiotics. Slept on the sofa last night, so I could learn the patterns of this new slanted light, and I needed to be in town early, to rent the truck, open the museum. Sue and Brent, a couple from the cirque, driver and navigator for the trip to Mansfield, arrived, James came in to help load. Everyone brought me boxes and I packed the truck. This is an art form. At Janitor College, there was a required course in packing, taught by a wizened retired Merchant Mariner: "No Wasted Space", and the final was to take the contents from a truck packed completely full and fit them into the next size smaller truck. In the Merchant Marine, they learn how to pack. 10 or 12 boxes were labeled Fragile: Nothing On Top, which I could pretty much ignore because I knew what was in every box and knew how it was packed. So many very light things, some boxes with a large footprint didn't weight a pound, you could rest them on a pier of eggs. The front two-thirds of the bed I stacked two and three high to achieve a level and carefully wedged surface, I covered them with packing blankets, tucked at the front and draped at the rear in a way that the next boxes, the final third, wedged the blankets in place, securing that part of the load really well; then the very fragile items at the rear, spaced with folded blankets where necessary, topped with the rolled goods, which spanned many boxes, and were therefore almost weightless. The footprint is all, look at the way the load is distributed, the last ten minutes spent finding the correct solution with the last layer so that the door would open. It was so perfectly packed there was no place to put any straps. It was a lovely thing, I wanted to keep it, as an example of maybe my best work. It was like a block of fiction or that first all white canvas that Russian did. There was no applause, but everyone said, "Jeeze, that's perfect." I like moments like that, work toward them. Last night I agonized over getting them on the road by 10, they were off by a quarter till. Good when a plan comes together. This week, maybe it's the drugs, I want to assume more responsibility at the museum, stage-manage a transition, but I don't have the authority, AND I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, nor overstep my bounds, and, because this is this best job I've ever had. Being surrounded by art all the time, like it's your job, you know? Putting on cotton gloves and handling artifacts. I had a friend once, maybe I make friendships too easily, make a note to think about that, but this friend knew a great deal about mushrooms, whatever you call those guys, and he had a theory about lines of latitude. I understood nothing he said, but we shared a similar taste for walks and bourbon. And he had a great deep voice: Now Tom, he'd say, did you really expect they'd cut you any slack? I believe I'm back, rereading to see what I was saying. Of course there's a thread, my job is to do this, think about that. Consider that there are a dozen people that read me closely. That's fine with me. Read more...

Lousy Care

Not eating enough and taking drugs, I have what you might call antibiotic tummy. Unpleasant, but in most other ways I feel better. We get 20 or so pictures framed, which ain't bad, but I had to leave half-an-hour early, feeling dizzy, with a large container of plain yogurt and a bunch of fruit. Once home I eat those until I get tired of swallowing. Better almost immediately. Big day tomorrow and I must be at work to get the truck packed and shipped out, the ODC Show to it's next venue, north of Columbus. Reset my internal clock to get up at very first light, which will work for the next month or two, then timing becomes more difficult, getting up in the dark, then most difficult of all, leaving home before first light. I manage this without a bedside clock. There is a clock in the house, buried behind papers on my desk, that I reference every few days to verify the existence of time. I'm rarely late, usually early; and there's a street clock, a wonderful, ornate, cast iron thing at Market Street, on my way in to work, which tells me if I have time to go down to the river, or read at the museum before anyone else gets there. I always carry a book and enjoy a first smoke watching the fog on the river, and the museum is heated in winter, AC in summer, a treat I've almost never enjoyed. Starting in maybe two weeks I can build a fast hot fire in the cookstove, to fix dinner or heat water for shaving. Won't really need heat until around Thanksgiving, maybe later. I calculate I need one more fairly large dead tree, to cut and split for early winter, and with 25 acres of woodlot it shouldn't be a problem, push comes to shove I could buy some wood, $57 a ton, and I've contracted to get the driveway graded, so the dump truck load of dry, cut and split wood, could get to the ridge. Make a note to get some candles and lamp oil, I have to be able to read, for several hours after dark, so I need a few dozen candles and maybe 6 quarts of lamp oil. I'm fond of the 1 inch utility candle I can get at Big Lots for 59 cents, a package of five, which allows almost a week of reading, with the brass lamp to which I added a mirror. A couple of cool nights and I'm already projecting 'worse case scenario', I can't not, I can't afford to be caught with my pants down, my ass would probably freeze, There's not a lot of margin living this way. It's still summer, for god's sake, and I'm lining up cans in my pantry. Because I need to prepare, need fall-back and other positions that I can't even foresee. They had mowed the verges on Mackletree today, and it was a beautiful thing, a manicured edge leading into wildness, the crows and squirrels were beside themselves, I drove slowly because squirrels are so stupid and I hate that thump when they land in your wheel-wells. Read more...

Keep Moving

Don't get between a male lion and his pride. So much to do and we're coming down on crunch time here, tempers will be frayed, best to nip these things in the bud, get enough done ahead of time to hold the beast at bay. I'm feeling a little better, but mention I need a round of antibiotics, and the new hire, our Educational Director's ex-husband is a doc, she makes a phone call and he phones a script into Kroger's. Then Sara and Pegi, in a brainstorm, enlist a Cirque couple to make the Friday delivery, which frees me up for another whole day, things begin to look possible. So like theater, it's ridiculous, make it happen, the number of times I've been told that. James (my new helper) and I get out tables, bring up the benefit auction items from the basement, then set about framing 25 photos, my goal now to have these done by Friday and make two Cleveland trips in the next two weeks. Several things need reframing, including a major painting. Crates will have to be built but that's months away, another show upstairs before that, if we don't die before then. We're stretched, and I end up picking up the slack, nothing for it, and I don't mind, as long as no one yells at me or suggests that I could have done something better. Find someone better and hire them if you think that's true, I'm replaceable but not for what I'm paid. Anyone else would laugh. D rolled his eyes when Trish was explaining something to a prospective client, her grammar was so bad, I went downstairs and cleaned toilets, humming a Neil Young song. "Southern Man." Read more...

Somewhat Later

Say what you want, Jesse Winchester is great, ducked to Canada and that's no sin, avoiding a war he wanted no part of. No time to read between the lines. Back then, you did what you had to. I stayed up for a week and snorted benzedrine, looked like shit and was the first person out the door. Probably means I can't be a Supreme Court justice, but doesn't affect my life in many other ways. The devil in details, I don't want to be in the position of killing someone. Even if it was unavoidable. Take a cab somewhere else, China Town, underneath the bridge, where they sell sates in stalls and you don't ask what meat you're eating. Yes, I should be more aware, but I'm stupidly asleep, come a little bit closer, there's something I need to say, because I'm still in love with her. Could you just dance again? Something in the toe-nail polish, a message. I thought I saw something. I'm sure I'm wrong, nonetheless, under the cloak of darkness, you resemble someone I used to know. Relapse into sickness. Feeling as bad as I have in years, bad timing, but I do take off an hour early, nap, drink some chicken broth, nap, sweating, then chills. Shaping up as the week from hell, because I have to be on the road Friday, taking the ODC Show north of Columbus. Two more road trips the next two weeks, collecting the last of the Circus Show; the auction, the movie premier, setting the Circus Show. I want to enjoy this stuff, not feel like shit and barely slog through. Hard labor, in this condition, breaking rocks into smaller rocks, I can barely lift the hammer. I make a note to get a new book on Corvids. If you'd ever watched a wake crows held over one of the recently dead, you wouldn't doubt their intelligence. They recognize me by sight. I'm beat, I have to go to bed. I haven't eaten enough but I'm exhausted. Being sick is hard work. You got to move a long train. Carry me home. That same old song. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. See what tomorrow brings. I need to sleep. Read more...