Successfully Home

Way too much to break down in the time remaining, as I must also sleep before tomorrow, but one of those over-filled days that makes you grin to be alive. Started early and finished late. Rock and roll. A raft of Carter 'Artist Proof' prints, that I didn't know we had, that need to be stored in a better way, which we accomplish before setting up the equipage to watch the Wrack film at noon. The movie, I think is great, wishing only that The Tallahassee Lasher had been caught in action, but his work was, the bindings that tied everything together, and it is in our work that we're remembered. Enough, perhaps, that they understand I tied a single knot, and thereby a ship was saved. Questions and answers. Then a quick lunch before starting to prepare dinner. Again, D and I are a perfect team, I expound theory and he handles the mechanics, keeping the grill lit in roof-top wind gusts: I know how I want to cook these ribs, but I don't know if it's possible. As it turns out it is possible and the ribs and sauce are very good indeed, not an act of nature, but simply an act of planning. I defer to anyone. Read more...

Conversation

Screening the movie tomorrow. Glenn and Linda arrived this afternoon before closing time and we took them over to their digs, a lovely studio apartment, then met them after work at the pub, Anthony, D and myself, for a couple of beers. D headed home but the rest of us stayed for dinner and conversation. Witty intelligent conversation is one of the great joys of life. Recluse that I am, I couldn't live without it. I've always found it, or it finds me, wherever I am. Because I'm a southern boy at heart, there's usually food and drink involved. And books, always books. Tomorrow night, for instance, 3 of the 11 know Melville pretty well, 2 of us have read "Clarel", which would be odd in a group of 10,000. No one reads "Clarel", it's just not done. Linda understood my situation right away, that I would have to drink beer while cooking the ribs, and there would be wine with dinner and then drinks after, and I don't drive after drinking, and offered the sofa cushions in their studio; but I have a pad, blanket and pillow, at the museum, and prefer to sleep in a place that I'm alone. I'm pretty sure I snore and I'm really used to getting up in the night and bitching out loud about the state of the union. Makes for a lousy house-guest, even if you are amusing, at three in the morning. And there's the dog, who needs to be fed. Fucking dog, I can't believe I have a dog; she is so, what, energetic, she runs faster than anything I'm ever seen. Going downhill she trips over her own feet, only regains her footing because she can fly and regains her composure in the air. Dumber than a sack of rocks, but goddamn she is fast. Confusing day, in many ways, because G and L arrived and I love them most of all, Sara and Clay were back from their Cape Cod trip, and Jo Etta, who is in the show, came either to look or flirt, and I don't know which, because the music was so loud. In my world we cover the tables with paper, crack the crab claws with hammers, maybe dance a bit, sucking crawdad heads. Read more...

Cool Front

Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 3:26 AM
Beautiful late dawn, overcast, gentle rain. A thousand shades of green glistening and that lovely sound of water falling on leaves. I move downstairs to the sofa so I can watch through the patio doors. I read some Hannah Arendt (continuing the tutorial on loneliness) "The Human Condition", then some "Walden", then some of Joan Didion's lovely memoir on the death of her husband. Clean up and wash my hair on the deck; shave, and make another coffee inside, consider a meal. I harvest some poke weed stalks, which are mildly poisonous, but if you cut them into pieces and peel them, you lose the toxin; dip them in egg, then cornmeal, and fry them, they're really quite good. Probably have no food value beyond the egg and cornmeal, but that's ok. The pith, or whatever it is you're eating, kind of dissolves in your mouth. Like eating Sea Cucumber, or chitlins, for that matter, if they're done perfectly. Whatever that perfectly fried exterior. A sub-tutorial on what's really important. That first bite is really important. A perfect fried crust on anything is a major feat. I set the bar very high, not because I think I can jump it, but because I know there is someone who can. My language is only what I can manage, most everything misses me. Live alone long enough you lose track. The relationship between you and anything else. I think I know what I'm trying to tell myself. Too much vibrato and not enough substance. Harmony can be misleading. Change ringing. That'll be the day. An Irish harp, too much time alone, a bridge to nowhere. A penny whistle makes a kind of sense. Bagpipes. Crossing the moor. Read more...

Ishmael

Poking around in my library, putting a few things away, I ended up spending the entire day on a tutorial of loneliness. Pulled out my friend Diana George's excellent book of essays "The Lonely Other" (I'm a character in a couple of them) and then on to some pages sent to me of the Eyal Peretz book "Literature, Disaster, and the Enigma of Power: A Reading of Moby Dick", a book I must get on inner library loan. Which of course meant getting out Olson's "Call Me Ishmael" and then the parent book, wishing I had the Barry Moser illustrations. Thunder storms moving through and I lost power several times, dark enough once that I had to read with the head-lamp McCord sent. Peretz opens right into the ambiguity of the opening line, if we are to call you Ishmael, who are you really? and makes the argument that Ishmael is actually Pip. Olson discovered, among many other things, that the second draft of "Moby Dick" came after Melville read "King Lear", so, of course I had to reread that treatise on the lonely family. Very muggy between showers, I walk outside in the cool rain, then steam when I come back in the house. Too hot to eat anything other than raw vegetables, cheese and crackers. I need to extend the sauce and concoct a rub tomorrow, for the ribs on Wednesday. Started an interesting extension for the sauce tonight, a sweet onion, run through the blender, reduced in a base of enchilada sauce, with cumin, and a bottle of porter. I'll add some of the drippings from cooking the ribs. Start building a rub. So many dried chili powders at my disposal right now, garlic salt, onion powder, cumin, fresh ground mixed peppercorns, a touch of maple sugar. The ribs will be great, I do them really well, just another thing I learned; but the sauce is actually peaking right now, at that point where a single taste makes you remember a childhood you never had. I was never lonely, even as a child, as long as I could have my books. The world we create, later in life, is a shadow of what we first felt. I sense this acutely, for reasons I don't understand. I'm as close to normal as anyone of us would ever encounter. In that position, what would you say? Welcome to the club. Read more...

Some Thoughts

I wouldn't trust me any further than you could throw me. Cooking grits in a crock-pot is a sign of genius, but I stole the idea, someone always knows more than me. I'm a jack-daw, a crow, I merely hop around. I don't keep track of myself, I just respond. Glorious sunrise, clear blue sky and the morning light stabbing in hard shafts through the thick tree cover. Slow my heartbeat down and move at half-speed, fixing coffee, local fresh eggs on toast with salsa, a two-bucket shower on the front deck. Read some Wendell Berry slowly, marveling that anyone could be so clear-headed. Part of the drive into town, certain times of year, the low light slicing through a road-side stand of young maples is almost painful. Still, get to town, stop at Market Street for coffee, go ahead and get the breakfast wrap Loretta has made for me, go do my laundry, stop at the liquor store, open the museum so I can eat half the wrap while reading in an air-conditioned space, lock up, go have a beer at the pub, have two good conversations, get back and open the museum for real, all before anyone else gets there. I read in the kitchen, for another hour, to enjoy the coolth, then headed ridge-ward with liquids and other supplies. The driveway is drop-dead nasty. Going down isn't too bad (merely terrible) because you can hold a line, but going up is a nightmare because any little thing will throw you into the grooves you were specifically trying to avoid. Not an arcade, though. D and I were talking about taking risks, I'd listened to an NPR show about that sixteen year-old that tried to sail around the world single-handed. I had withheld my opinion about this event for two reasons. One, I didn't want to influence what anyone might say, and, two, I didn't really know what I thought. I've known a lot of sailors, and they're an independent lot. The first piercings were just harpoons the whales threw back. Look at the tape, your guy, Starbuck, was rowing away from the action. It's clear, the runner at third was out. Read more...

High Maintenance

Here defined as ceiling repair. Water damage, the source of which we think is repaired. But first a trip across the street to check out the apartment where Glenn and Linda will be staying, for the Wrack Movie showing next week. Wednesday, the 30th, noon, free. Also needed to see where D and I will be cooking ribs (the roof) and the conference room, where we expect to dine. Must be the most beautiful spaces in Portsmouth. The workmanship is impeccable. Lunch at the pub has been a zoo the last couple of days, soccer mania. They opened early, for the U.S. game yesterday, and there were quite a few people drunk by noon. And again today, another crowd. But they always serve us promptly at the bar, know we need to be in and out, and banter with us in that familiar way that regulars anywhere enjoy. Lindsey, just pregnant, due in February, a perfect barmaid, enjoys our company. We usually sit in the same place, across from where the dispenser nozzle for various liquids hangs. That way we can get our own water, and we both drink a lot of water, so it's a good place; except that occasionally one of the servers will tip over a glass or even spray us or threaten to, if they perceive we're getting out of line. Lunch becomes an adventure. D had dressed for scrapping a ceiling over your head and I had other fish to fry. We only have James for a few more days, so I spent the rest of the day working with him, photographing the permanent collection. Except for three things we haven't found, I've now seen everything in the museum. So D scraped the ceiling in two spots and laid in a first layer of mud. Taking care of business. I have a very clear image of the museum, as a developed life-form, using people to further it's ways. That's why it got me to be the janitor here. Smart move. Good Draft. I was thinking about what Linda said, and rereread the passage, the beginning of 'The River' through wherever you lose interest, trying to find a certain passage. I like that section, it's free-form, it doesn't simply narrate. I expect an excess, really, if I pay any attention at all. What watching the frogs taught me, to admit my own ignorance, is that we rarely take the time to look at anything closely. Really closely. Now I notice everything and I still don't have a clue. Knowledge, someone said, is ignorance, and I might agree with that; my curser is stuck on a 7-10 split, which I've never converted. I think you have to bounce it off the backboard. Phone is out, probably another tree. Power out almost every day between noon and 5 PM for at least a few minutes. God damn goat-suckers, whip-poor-wills, wake me almost every morning before first light. It's like a George Carlin circle of hell. I often just go in early and read in the library at the museum, it's quiet and air-conditioned. Picasso's father was an art forger. Carvaggio fled Rome after killing someone, I knew that, what I didn't know was that the victim was a victorious opponent in a tennis game. Bad dude. D has some things to do and I scrub the floor in the elevator, hands and knees, an industrial orange based cleaner that I'm fond of for really tough jobs. Then scrap and vacuum the tracks the elevator doors run in. Little jobs accumulate, need addressing. I clean the theater, because there's a concert tonight, and just before closing the band arrives, to set up and test sound. They were supposed to perform in the theater, why I had cleaned same, but they like the main gallery, with the art work, and we set them up there. One of them is in the show, and he blows a mean harmonica. I want to stay, but I'm beat, from the preceding weeks, and all I can think about is getting home, changed into threadbare cotton, with a bourbon on ice. Salad and cheese and crackers for dinner. Produce is starting to come in at the farmer's market. A great tomato, I think I recognize it as a 'South Florida Ugly', a cultivar protected by state law there. I didn't say anything, just bought it for 50 cents. These are great tomatoes. Appearance isn't everything. Taste being what it is. Overriding, actually, like smell; being transported without conscious thought. The smells I remember. It's been a long day, a couple actually. I'm going to go have a tomato sandwich on whole wheat with mayonnaise. I can't think of anything better. Read more...

Sundry Items

Nice note from Linda commenting on the musicality of a particular passage last night. I was aware of it too. It's different, writing late at night or early in the morning, when I often do listen to music, usually the blues or The Dead. Writing then becomes more of a jazz riff. I'd started that post late the night before, when the dog woke me up yet again. Interesting conversation with Anthony at lunch today. A ceramic artist in D's next show and D had told him to ask me about the potential mess his part of the show might make. I looked at him with raised eyebrow and said that after 7 years of Janitor College there was no mess he was capable of making that I wasn't capable of cleaning up. We sparred back and forth, he mentioned certain acids, and I mentioned broken bones and the effect of sugar in the gas tank of his prized Jetta. Just so we understood each other. Fucking artists, man, they get an MFA and they view it as a license to kill. In this heat, and this afternoon it was hard to breathe, I look toward grazing cold foods. Bought one of those long seedless cucumbers and a bunch of radishes, make a plate with them, sliced; cheese (a double cheddar), and crackers. They didn't carry the Bleu Cheese dipping sauce with the wings on Friday Night, hard to circulate with a dipping sauce, so I brought it all home, a dozen or more containers: for the next week or two I'll be eating raw things dipped in increasingly pungent sauce. Found a couple of packages of frog-legs, in the varietal frozen food case, and decide to do some Buffalo Frog Legs. Only got two packages, I wonder who else would be buying them, a brace per package, so I only have four. Will have to be one of those meals where we wonder did it really happen, because I will certainly be alone and probably drinking. I go through two or three coasters a night in this kind weather. I can use one coaster for the entire winter, but when the weather takes this shift, I'm steady stealing coasters from the pub. If I start thinking about a particular verb, or dealing with an awkward comma, I destroy coasters as a matter of course. They cling to bottom of the glass, then I walk on them; sometimes I sling them like Frisbees against annoying insects. I killed a large roach, just the other night, with a soggy Landshark coaster, and I think Jimmy would have been proud. Me and my monkey. You probably noticed me, playing on the street corner, turning a crank, while the primate danced? This is how I pay off my college loans. You got a quarter mister? The geese were gathered at the lake, they're going somewhere, the far north, where they'll turn barnacles into babies. Magic, of sorts. I went down to the banks of the Ohio, a few spare minutes before the next storm front, and found a sycamore branch that looked exactly like the missing arm from a Greek marble piece. A good day. Read more...

The River

Bug and frog noise. Enough cool breeze that I'm comfortable. The darkness is deep and oddly welcoming, a small death, like sleep, that promises oblivion or at least respite from care. True nature, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, what we feel innermost. Flowers and garbage. Nothing everywhere. A train, across the river, is a sad sound, a country music song. Suffering nourishes compassion, what we are, what we become. Tomorrow is a can of worms, I'll deal with that in good time, but right now, there is only the black hole of the present. An event horizon. Heat lightning. No sound, but a light show that may or not be real. I roll in my bed and clutch a pillow. The nature of reality is called into question..I wouldn't want to be misunderstood, I try to be clear, what I think I see. Still, there is doubt, what happens, what I perceive actually happens as opposed to what seems to be happening. You and yours, me and mine, the actual nature of things.The river figures in because it merely flows. A metaphor for everything else. There's you, and then there's the river. It's all drainage. Tallahassee, from Kim's posts, sounds the same as here, over 90 degrees, thunderstorms. D and I both useless at the museum today, walking around like zombies. I did get the floor semi-cleaned. Many spilled drinks is all that I can imagine. A lot of the finger-food was on toothpicks and I must have picked up 50; seems the protocol was to take one something from a cute serving girl, eat whatever it was, and just drop the toothpick on the floor. Several artists in, to pick up rejected work, and I resisted telling anyone that their work was rejected because it sucked. Proud of myself. Nearly killed Little Sister tonight. I was grilling a steak and went inside to get a drink, she knocked over the grill, ate the steak, and started a small fire. Fucking dogs. She ate the baked potato too, including most of the foil, and I ended up eating cold beans on toast. I grill three or four nights a week in summer, and this is not acceptable behavior. I'm not used to fighting for my food. I've never had anyone knock over my grill, except that once, when Marilyn thought I was paying too much attention to the ribs. I don't understand, ask anyone I get along with and they'll tell you I'm easy to get along with. And I'm attentive. What more could you ask? Yet I live alone, without running water, at the end of the grid, losing power every day, in my tree-tip pit. Actually, the people that do know me well understand that I'm almost completely transparent. Language, you have to laugh. How did we get this far? Look at the pictures on the cave walls. Everything is there, up through Bi-polar Disorder. I'm always amazed when people I know kill themselves, it would never occur to me that suicide was an option. I'd rather bitch about spilled drinks on a gallery floor, cut my hair, or something. I was only ever in one fight, couldn't believe we actually had to fight for a grade. I hit this way superior dude with an uppercut, hard right hand just as the round opened. I broke his jaw. Suddenly, I had a reputation. You know how that goes. I never fought again. I'm blessed with a second sight that always points out the bullshit. I usually think of it as a curse, that I can understand; sometimes I just surf., looking at letter forms. Meaning is a whole other kettle of fish. Don't get me started. Read more...

Dogs

The down side of having a dog or two is that they run everything else away. A sterile world. No rabbits, no fox, no deer. The trade-off is having someone to cook for. The opossum stir-fry, is good, but not that good, and yet the dogs are very excited. Hard not to share their enthusiasm. Like controlling the flow of liquor at an opening. An odd place to find yourself. When D came in with Carma he assessed the situation, immediately stepped in, I was already gone, having bartended beyond my mandate, wanted to flirt, had the music not been so loud, barring that, just wanted to go home. The drive itself was not a problem, the things I thought about were merely hurdles, but I did wonder why I was jumping when I did. I'm always suspect when I go on a late night rant. Falstaff. It's true, that I pretend, no excuses, simply what I find in front of me. After the incident in the night I finally got back to sleep. Up this morning with a sling-blade, clearing a path to the outhouse. Breakfast and coffee, then switch to clippers, working until a late lunch, sweating like a race-horse. A severe thunder cell moves through, dumping an inch of rain in 15 minutes. I take a shower in it and get chilled to the bone. Lose power, the automatic relays switch on and off a couple of times, and still the power is out, which means Adams County Rural Electric (I get my power from the next county east) will have to send a person to the sub-station to flip the breakers manually. I know from long experience that if a pole had been hit by lightning or a vehicle, the lines would be down, and I'd never have seen the flash that the automatic relays cause, ergo, power should be restored with an hour. Which it is. The display of lightning was impressive. Whenever I watch such a thing I always think about capturing the energy generated by even a single storm cell. Billions of volts of electricity and temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun. No small thing. Containment is the problem. Then, of course, attachment, which is always another problem. And it all happens so quickly. Need some sort of a passive system, either a very large battery, or something to store the heat, so you could charge a battery later, or run a turbine to run an alternator. I just think about these things, the same way I might design a house in my head, on a whim, some quirky idea I might have. In the back of my mind is the idea of putting together a installation of staircases. I keep dismissing the idea, because it would be difficult and involve a lot of hard physical labor; but I like it, because it would be so cool. Pegi would have to be equal partner, and the show would have to be in summer, when her students would be out of school, because every day, at a certain time, they would slither through the treads and around the railings. This would be a good show, I see it in my mind's eye. I'd need a significant grant, and don't want to do it, but could. If you know me well, you know I usually speak the truth. Interesting that I never learned to lie. I stay awake nights, thinking about that. If I'd only learned to lie. Napp, water over the dam, is a clear indication of flow, sometimes I venture out on the slipway (spillway), to measure the actual flood. I'm anemic and have balance issues, but still want to know. If I measure the depth of flow and the distance across, I can estimate how much water over the dam. Numbers are important to me, they carry information. I'm just trying to make sense of the world. I saw I great mushroom today, a Russula Emetica that was vibrant orange against the leaf litter, and I poked it with a stick, to spread the spores. I do what I can. Read more...

Saturday Duty

No one else wanted to work, so I was staff at the museum. Didn't do anything but slump in a boardroom chair and read, and, besides, the museum is air-conditioned. Have to get a small unit for the house because my computer is complaining about the heat, even with the ice-pack and fan arrangement. Brought a vat of left-overs home for the dog and culled a couple of meals for myself, enough shrimp for a fried rice, and enough meatballs for a meal of some sort. Too hot to think and too tired to care. The show looks great, I walked around all the galleries, straightening pictures, knowing I had installed everything and remembering very little about the actual process. The last two weeks is kind of a blur; a ship on the ways: you do everything you can, double check the math, and finally just launch the damned thing. At the Market Street Cafe, Loretta had left instructions on how to prepare my breakfast burrito, and it was perfect, breakfast and lunch, as it happened, because I just had a Stella on tap, with chips and salsa, later, and beat a path home. Meatballs on toast for dinner. The music was too loud for casual flirting last night, or I might have brought someone home. Such are the wave-fronts of chance. There was another party, after, but it was in the wrong direction and I was peopled out, too much music and too much idle chatter. I'd of had to sleep on their sofa and pee in their yard, in my green jungle not a transgression, but I've noticed other people frown on my habits. Can't SEND as the phone line is down. Sleep for nine hours, wake to the hottest day of the year, breakfast on home-made polenta and eggs, plop on the sofa, after 12 straight days of work, and finish "One River", ethno-botany of the Amazon, then the power goes out. Take a wooden chair out on the front deck, pour a gallon of tepid water over my head, dry my hands, read until I'm dry. Can't call Dad (Father's Day) because the phone is out, and can't write (I make some notes) because the power is out. Not really a conspiracy kind of person, but I keep expecting large guys in black suits and bullet-proof vests to pop out of the woodwork. Finally get electric and phone back around seven tonight, and fix a nice dish of party leavings, a shrimp bisque, with some little garlic-toast rounds, and a side order of avocado with lime juice. Comes down to how you live your life, what is a minor inconvenience for me might be cataclysmic for you, or the other way around. Living without things, for long periods of time, makes you sensitive to the needs of others. Like Saturday, I wasn't going to do anything anyway, so I might as well read at the museum, where there is air-conditioning and I can at least be comfortable. No one else could work, so I did, reading in the coolth. Fuck a bunch of correctness. People were picking up rejected art, and I had to keep a game-face, I deny any accountability. That world, out there, is your imaging. Mostly what I do is write in the dark. Read more...

We Open

The show opens, D and I are exhausted, we have no relation to the natural world, everything is merely something else. I throw flags and yellow cards. We're so exhausted we can't even talk, I have a tree tip pit I can retreat to, I assume everyone does, maybe a tarp, protection against the rain. Once, in Janitor College, we were truly lost, this was before GPS and we had just the sun and a stick, we predicted a certain direction, and we were correct, that way did lead out. We argued about rather or not something could carry meaning. I remember you flinched. It's only my close friends I care about. I really don't have time for anything else. The show opens. I don't get to mingle as much as I want because I end up the being the bartender, which is cool, controlling the flow of liquor, and drinking for free. I find a last reserve of energy, to get me through the night; the Cirque girls help, they're so damn cute, and I end up leaving the bar to D and Clay, eleemosynary. I hate dealing with money, and I've done way too much math in the last few days, so I trust people to tell me what they owe. The band is way too loud. When D relieves me at the bar we decide "Kind Of Blue" on loop, in the background, would be more appropriate. People want to talk, not be blasted by aging doctors with way too much equipment covering Jimmy Buffet. I could tell you a story. Having been almost everywhere. But I fear being boring, a last Hershey's Kiss late at night, another box of chocolates, I'd rather be remembered as that janitor you passed in the hall, the quantum mechanic, with a speech impediment. Nothing prepares you, everything satisfies. Several of those moments, entropy, epiphany, suddenly you stop dead in you tracks. Time to go home. D asks if I'm ok to drive and I tell him I could do this in my sleep. Read more...

Sweet Melissa

Late, and something woke the dog. I get the shotgun and a flashlight, slip outside without turning on a light. Little Sister is cowering on the back porch, turning circles. Something has turned the compost pile inside out. Something large enough to cower the dog. Do the math. Probably a black bear. I can live with that. Retreat to the house and roll a smoke, turn the radio loud and it's the Allman Brothers, "Sweet Melissa", which I consider one of the most beautiful songs ever, then The Dead, "Fire On The Mountain", get a drink, consider this place in time. I am in this moment, ephemeral, nothing really matters, what we might think of as the larger picture, though within that we live our lives of quiet desperation. Whatever cry against the darkness is just a holding pattern, then you die. I've looked at this closely, but the fact is. Given that, what do you do? Retrace a drawing on a cave wall. The best you might accomplish in that life given you to live. I'm just a janitor, I know, but I say don't do anything you don't enjoy. Finally back to sleep for a few hours, then awakened by a glorious sunrise, orange and blue, and the green all around is a glowing jungle. Stop to pick up litter on Mackletree because it offends my eye. We do the vinyl signage, then hang the final pictures on those two walls, get half of the labels dry-mounted, then do the lighting. Another long hard day, but the show is nearly done, we can see it in front of us. I've half-a-day hauling equipage to the basement, getting the floors clean, setting tables and chairs for the gala opening party, for which I will stay long enough to have a couple of free drinks and some finger food, chat with the artists, which I do really enjoy usually. A certain percentage of people are just pricks, it's not to be helped, but artists do tend to be interesting. There'll be much air-kissing and more than the usual amount of casual flirting because the wine will flow. Art, considered reasonably, seems to open emotional channels. On a good night, doing a play for instance, Linda might give us Emily in a way that makes us remember things we hadn't thought about, maybe ever, and we allow ourselves to feel. It has something to do with dropping your defenses and allowing a response to happen. You have to be vulnerable, to learn. I called Zoe because her stick-lady was sagging. Just because you're an artist, doesn't mean you're an engineer; and she added a couple of props. One of the interesting things about her piece, is that it thrusts forward and actually cantilevers, part of its charm, because of that becomes a dynamic feminist statement. I like it. Ephemeral, too, which I also like, and I told her today, when she was adding some props, that I liked the way the hair, which is a spread of natural grass, would age. Because my name is Tom, I'm allowed the occasional time to feel like a pinball wizard. I get this, I often understand what people are saying. It's not something I ask for, it just happens. You need to listen. I need to listen, as a word of advice, because if I don't listen I don't have a clue what's going on. I love that artists come out of left field. A board member, with a caustic wit, was commenting on 'Outsider Art' today, Sara, D and I were outside smoking. I thought one of us would choke to death. James (the board member) had told John, his partner, that they should save the tub of dogshit, because he might need it in the future. Hard not to like where that might be going. Maybe I qualify things too much, but I live alone, and you have to cut me some slack. Time is elastic. If you don't own a clock things are different. I consider myself reasonably regimented, I sleep when I'm sleepy, eat when I'm hungry. Tonight, coming home, stopped at a wet-weather spring, drank a cup of clear, cold, hard water. It was a breath of fresh air. No mediation, me and the aquifer. I could just as well post on that narrow fit where you slid into the lock. But I'm way to the left of even being liberal. So far left I become dangerously close to being right. Or correct, or whatever. First there is a mountain. Paradigms shift. Next thing you you're walking up a scree slope, twisting your ankle. You have your own life to live, I just have to install a show. Read more...

Installing

We need to hang 40 pieces and we get to 57 before we make a mistake and stop. 4:30 in the afternoon. We don't like to hang art after 4:00 because we always start making mistakes. Too many numbers, too much serious attention. The show is hung tight and that makes any small mistake glaring. And it's 50% framed and rigged for hanging by nonprofessionals which translates as badly and means we'll have to make some minor correction. We only stop for a couple of short breaks, a cigaret in the alley, a quick lunch. This level of intensity, most people don't ever experience it, nor would they want to. Thunder in the west, another line of squalls, I should go but, but I want to stress the focus. 57 pieces in six hours, slightly more than nine an hour, slightly more than one every six minutes. Try this at home. I'm sure we're not the best ever, but we're very good at this, and we make jokes and laugh while we do it. Gotta go. Serious lightning. It passed over. I think I'm clear. Rain like a drumming through the leaves. The lightning has moved south and west, but it's raining so hard I feel like a tadpole in a shallow dish. Read more...

Setting The Show

Whereby you shuffle everything until it makes a kind of sense. There is no theme, merely the best from a given sample. It's a crap shoot, really, and we need to install it, so we move everything around, searching for a certain harmony. Sara is the diva of this, she could put a show together from house-hold trash. At the end of the day we have everything where it goes, sitting on the floor. Tomorrow we start the actual installation, hanging everything centered at 57 inches, equally spaced, a nightmare of simple math and instant solutions for particular problems. 133 pieces by 77 artists in three days, we need to do 45 pieces a day for three days, six or seven an hour until time runs out. It's not an option to fail; I actually look forward to this, working with D, counting off the numbers. In my preparator mode I have to leave my janitor mode behind. I trust someone will mop the floor. I hate placing my faith in amateurs. Meaning only I know how to mop and brook no failure. I'd rather mop than teach mopping because I'm not a very good teacher. I'd rather mop the fucking floor than try and explain a theory of mopping. I was bogged down in meaning and a pileated woodpecker flew into the scene. Looking for bugs, a simple mandate, I watched him for an hour, the way he listened. Half of all conversation is just listening, what's being said, what you might respond to. Usually I duck below the radar, pray I won't be recognized, sometimes I make a fuss, often I just stay quiet. D and I communicate in a series of grunts, we're done, toast. We've talked through the next sequence of steps and see a way through. We can do it, but right now we're all in, go back upstairs and tell Sara we're done for the day. Long and winding road. Tomorrow is another day. As we're leaving we meet Anthony at the back door, decide to go for a beer at the pub, where Holly, after a call, agrees to an early Happy Hour. There are only a couple of other patrons and we're loud and very funny, one of the owners gets a beer and listens from the end of the bar, agrees to sponsor our Curling Team, which will compete in the alley, after we steal a car and smash a fire hydrant, mid-winter, such that the surface will be a sheet of ice. We'll compete, sliding those concrete geese that are lawn furniture locally, using the neck as handle, sweeping the path with Swifters. The few patrons in the bar were crying with laughter. Even exhausted, we're the best act in town. I could hang this show no matter what. Posit your end-of-world scene, a pig's ass or sheep in the mist. It's nothing if not interesting. Read more...