Library Time

Mold mitigation and remediation continues. Infused with insuperable inertia. I manage, after false starts and two trips to the hardware store, to rebuild the kitchen faucet, seat and stem and a new supply line. After hours, waiting for the crew, I spend some quality time in the library. The history of concrete: arch, vault, dome, those Romans. Then move on to a study of American realism. Not a bad way to kill time. I can't see my circumstance through other eyes. I know my house is a mess. What you save can never be the same as what's dying. Just a thought. Nothing prepares you. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of the clean-up, steam-cleaning all the floors in the basement. They have to stay until they're done, so I have to stay. Really want to go home. I miss my library and cookstove. Glass show comes down Saturday, so I can bring up the crates tomorrow. I dread carrying the largest piece down in the elevator. Brent said he never told exhibitors how to handle his pieces. They look so delicate that those of us who do this tend to be very careful. Brain-stormed with K and Stephanie (a volunteer) for a while after work. Actually, after beer, as I'd already gone over to the pub after closing time, for a Murphy's, and they were still at the museum when I got back. Demographics and such. They're both bright, and young, and their ideas are interesting. Palpable intelligence. Read a funny line in a new book by John Connolly (now there's a dark writer) about a central character, "that Dodo eggs had been laid more recently than him", spit whiskey on the screen. Polyvalency, in linguistic cant, is the the ability of a sign to mean more than one word, depending on context. Evidently making the translation of Sumerian a nightmare. The strange churrascaria of a trapped insect coming from somewhere, I can't track it down, and I can't concentrate. Driving me crazy. A cricket in the house and I become a recd-eyed killer with a fly-swatter in my hand. Finally find a logy fly, behind a painting, and pinch it's little head off. Of course I can't remember what I was thinking about before I was thinking about a trapped insect, I'd made a note, but it made no sense, but it made no sense, so maybe the signs meant other words, in that context. They were, all lower case, "small chicken", I think. My handwriting is no longer really legible. Also what I choose to note. I leave a post-it on Pegi's desk, and she finds me, wherever I am, to ask me what is says. No one ever writes me notes, because there's no place to put them. There wasn't a place, but now there is, the office, to which I had been assigned; that/which I actually, really, want to give to K so I can just hole-up in the kitchen and broom closet and not be bothered by all the notes. Interoffice communication and the attendant bullshit. Navigating upstream without an apparent means of locomotion. Read more...

What To Think

Life is confusing. Nature of the beast. The Extraction Crew finally shows at noon, finish filling the dumpster, tomorrow another crew arrives to steam clean. I don't get anything done, overseeing what's happening. A thankless chore, but I promised two members of the board, Terry and Chris, that I'd monitor things. In so far as I can. Just on my way out the door for lunch, when the insurance adjustor arrives for inspection. I docent her through the damage. Stress failure analysis. We bandy terms and seem to understand each other. I just want the claim to be settled. Have to stay another night, as all the equipage is still running. It's going to take a month to recover my hearing. They blew a circuit in the basement, I knew this was coming, and I knew that I wouldn't even know what breaker panel the circuit was in. Totally in the dark. These days I carry a flashlight, in a leather holster, on my belt. Beginning to look like a funny cop, with my tool-belt. And I have to trace the chased wiring back to a source. An interesting task, because there are so many branchings, do find it, restore power, but now that circuit has once failed, I look for a way to spread the load. Means running some other cords, and I have a kind of rough schematic in my head, so for a short period of time I actually look like I know what I'm doing. You'd have to say that I did know what I was doing, because I fixed the problem. Sub-text. Let's be clear, we really don't know what's being said, and heaven forbid you just construe. What is said and what is meant. I make a phone call, which I almost never do, to hear a voice I need to remember. Affecting a 'Joe Casual' I can pretend that nothing has happened. Common response is to bury your head in the sand. I've known several hermits, have actually been one myself, so speak with some authority. Diminished by the myriad failures. I can't help but I see things the way I see things. I've trained myself to just observe phenomena, What you do, is your own business, I look at small plants closely. Ships passing in the night. Lay my down pallet on the floor. I don't require much, a small strip of space. I don't want to be compared to anyone, I'd rather be a dismal failure on my own.

Small purple flowers,
covered with snow,
blow away the chaff. Read more...

Dumpster

Confusion reigns supreme. I saw our dumpster go by, but I couldn't get outside quick enough to stop them. Fulgent morning, the light almost painful. Phantasmal. Day three of the clean up, they should finish tomorrow and I can go home. Haven't wanted to leave the museum with 6 dehumidifiers and 20 squirrel-cage fans running full blast. Dumpster finally arrived and a crew of four were steady carrying 'contaminated' stuff out of the basement, which is very cool because most of it was junk and needed throwing away. K came in today, reorganized and cleaned the kitchen and back room. I read about Etruscan art for a while, kept checking on the crew, finally ended up in the kitchen, washing some things. It's estimated that Sargent did over 800 portraits. Imagine. I was explaining to K that to make a good elderberry wine, you need to make a gallon of elder flower (called elder blow) wine in the spring, then use that to top the elderberry wine in the fall, because the berries don't have any nose. You lose a fair amount of volume went you rack the wine off the lees during fermentation. Nice to use the flower wine to top it up. We made 12 gallons one year in Mississippi (and many gallons of other sundry beverages) of elderberry, with the flower wine, and with a zinfandel concentrate we got from California. Best wine I ever made, silky and huge. The only wine to serve with opossum and sweet potatoes. We made a sherry, with green tomatoes, brown rice, lemons, and pineapple juice that was quite good. Don't eat sushi while you're using a keyboard. A run to the liquor store, after work, then over to the pub for an Irish and to admire the case D made for them to store the Irish in. Nice, looks old, looks original. I'm liking this having another person at the museum, one who wants to work. We needed another person. Speaking of persons, went over to the pub this afternoon, to help D unload the display case, and there was a goth person there, with a lot of metal dangling, the word meretricious popped into my head. In the sense of gaudy, not particularly in the sense of attracting attention in a vulgar manner. Some people, they do disport themselves. Maybe not merely recognition they seek. I don't know. I call as little attention to myself as possible. Maybe not, I'm not sure. I was called on to docent, after the event on Saturday night. Six interested people, all bright, almost all of them vested in a fast-track sophistication. It was fun, I'd had a couple of beers, during the performance, and I was understated and remarkably lucid. Terry, now on the board, stayed for part, and he enjoyed it. Today K mentioned we should offer that service, docenting a small group through, after hours. I'll do the docenting, it's like being on stage, without the anxiety. I enjoy it, and I'm good, because I research everything, as a matter of course. Picked up sushi at Kroger, got back, started writing you, and had a small brown rice emergency. Lost the 'm' there for a few minutes, but Kim had explained to me how to take the keys off the keyboard, clean and lubricate them. I'm on top of this. The reports back, from the group I docented, were glowing, I was evidently quite amusing or something. Word back through K, staying in the carriage house that Clay and Sara once owned; and there was a reunion, or something, that was the group; and that I was like one of the best docents ever. I'm proud of that, like a runner with his time. I throw a few things away, into the dumpster; life, the universe, and all that, and still come out ahead. It's looking good for the home team. We get rid of shit, and don't have to do it ourselves. Read more...

Fairly Precise

I try to be clear. Thinking about that today. For a great many years I was remarkably opaque. Interestingly, it's more difficult to be fairly precise than it is to just let your imagination run. For me, at any rate. There's a small yellow flower in the spring that I often get down on my knees to examine. It grows in disturbed ground, often in the medians of dirt roads. Prolific. They promise warmer weather, but are usually covered, once, by snow. Lovely little things, and so bright it breaks your heart. Next will be those miniature iris, I don't really know what they are, either, that are a deep purple, and are so small I use a magnifying glass on them. They're perfect, one of the most beautiful things in the world. They don't smell, that I can detect, and I thought about that for a while. They don't have to, because the pollinators are looking for color. Fucking winter, man. It's amazing we don't all kill ourselves. Add a basement disaster, kick in a few of the dead and dying, and I could go for a Murphy's with a Paddys back. K had retyped that last page I finally sent, back into a sendable form. I'm so slow with two fingers, that I cramp up, so I tend to not correct errors. But I wanted you to have that two-day page, because if you didn't have it, you'd be out of the loop. Clearing a Class Three Site is quite complex, I don't want to get too technical, but there are stations of the cross. It's hard to predict but easy to say, when the shit hits the fan. I'm a Structualist, for gods sake, I'm generations behind, I just write words and place commas. Really, if you isolated me, a monad, nothing special. I can barely tie my shoes. Not quite enough, when they give a detail, a video, and it's not you, really, it's another skinny white guy with his hat turned backwards. Look around you. This is what you are become, other, not me, K commented on the commas, I appologize. I thought something, I was off, somewhere. Hang on here. I was right, correct, when I said I couldn't connect with anything other. Feigned ignorance. I actually connect fairly well when there might be a conversation worth having. Often poignantly contrary to what is expected. Charon is the only satellite of Pluto. also that ferryman. I was looking something up that began with the letter 'c' and one thing led to another. I forgot the word I was looking for. Charmeuse is a satin finish silk. A charmed particle is a particle with nonzero charm. Charnel house is a repository for the dead, from the Latin carnalis, of the flesh. Carrageen is the same as Irish Moss, which I have eaten, on occasion. Squamule is a lovely word. Means a small, loosely attached thallus lobe (means undifferentiated in shape) of certain lichens. Some of the stones, literally just rocks, in my graveyard of neglected graves collapsing, are spotted with squamule. As a rule, I seldom panic, in spite of everything anyway. D acknowledged that I handled the shit-storm very well. It's nice to be appreciated. Circumstances having been what they were. Music event at the museum, two actually, Steve Free played his brand of singer/songwriter for gifted high school students this morning, then a group called Local Girls playing right now. Free food and drinks, nice turnout, lights down low and a sound like the Andrews sisters. One of the board members, sends another board member upstairs to get a real drink off me. Pretty funny, really. I tell Terry to add ice and a splash of water, knowing how Julia drinks her bourbon. They want a lighting effect, that they can't really have, to mark Earth Day or something ,and It's hard to think fast enough, to come up with something. This was in the middle of the performance, right after Julia had requested a drink. A little late in the game. I cob something together. Dimmers played with four hands. Also, the Extraction Company had sent a man over to turn off all the blowers and dehumidifiers and then to come back and turn everything on after the show. Glad I was there. When the event is over, K's friend Seven, has some people visiting from all over the place, a kind of reunion, and I tour them through the various galleries with a line of talk. I enjoy them, they're bright and vibrant, exuding a kind of sophistication not common in these parts. I enjoy the company and the stimulation. If I can't read and write, I'd rather listen and talk. But I've been wearing my work boots for 16 hours and I really want to flex my toes. When they leave there is suddenly quiet. Engaged with people, most of the day, it's interesting when that filter is pulled out of play. Pressed into service,, I do well as a docent, I know too much, which serves me well. I serve a function. If you need somebody, call one. understood. Me. Read more...

Basement Disaster

Wasn't ready for this. I thought I was going to paint the new walls. One of the storm cells that just glanced off the ridge hammered downtown. Smelled it when I unlocked the door, flooded basement. And I'd just cleaned the space out on Saturday, so I could paint. At least nothing was on the floor. The drains backed up and the toilet regurgitated. It's a mess. Life. Walking out this morning, lovely though overcast (because of that new color) and passing the puddles, there are two dead frogs, head-shots by quarter-sized hail. They're big enough to eat, so I go back to the house for a plastic bag; cut of the legs with poultry shears, slit and peel off the skin, two minutes maybe. I'll just pan fry them with a little garlic, served on toast, to soak up the juices. The debris in the basement, back-flowed through the drains, looks a lot like macerated paper pulp. It could be cast, no question about that, I've cleaned a lot of it up before, it sets-up hard. I need to talk to Anthony. We should probably save it, and cast something obscene. The smell is terrible, Pegi has to breathe through the neck of her blouse. Jack Vetter said it rained three inches in fifteen minutes. He offered me a job, either full or part-time, as his second in command, renovating some apartments; eight of them right now, plus a 10,000 foot home and hall he wants to make into a B&B. Interesting, and flattering, to be asked. I might work with him a day a week, for a few weeks, to see what he actually is about, what he's like. Work with someone on a project like that, you need to be able to communicate. At this point in my life, I need to like someone, before I can work with them. So, I'm controlling my gag reflex, in the basement, thinking about casting really awful crap into offensive pieces. And the elevator inspector arrives, for our annual certification. I know, from past experience, that the bottom of the elevator shaft, the lowest point on the building, is ankle-deep in water. I tell him, up-front, that we have a problem, and that I wished he'd inspected the damned thing last Friday. He agrees to pass us if I swear to sump the water out. Fucking promises are killing me. Hydrostatic pressure is an interesting thing. I met with two board members today, both off the cuff, and we talked about that very thing. The insidious ways of water. The second board member was the Chairman, also sitting on the board of some bank, holding their monthly meeting at the pub. My kind of board. And I called him out, a little, that we had to address this problem. He's right there, it's cool, everything is really under control, because he runs a huge plumbing retail business and understands drainage issues. A few frogs are still fucking, but way slowed down. Last night it was an overlapping chorus, tonight it's just an isolate, a blues guitar, over in the corner. Slack, delta stuff, teasing meaning from a stroke, what Ry Cooder learned from Mississippi John Hurt; listen closely, it's slightly off-beat. There wasn't a point. No Entry is just a sign. Read more...

Thunder Storms

Hail, whipping winds, rain, and in the midst of all that, the frogs in full reproductive mode. I go out to watch, between squall lines, and they're completely oblivious. Supposed to rain most of the week, so I ran to town, liquor store, library, laundromat, brought everything in and took the truck down to the bottom of the driveway this morning. The rain held off until late afternoon, then struck with a vengeance that kept me away from my keyboard. Made a nice clam chowder. Always reminds me of Cape Cod where I could collect enough razor clams for a big pot of chowder in thirty minutes. Winslow and I would night fish for cod, off the beach at night, the ocean side, near Chatham, and freeze the fillets. I ate codfish cakes, with a yolky egg, every morning for breakfast, for years. Available food establishes a diet, best to live somewhere where you like what is available. Going into morel mode here. I've got one bottle of walnut oil left, from a great buy, several years ago, when we were picking up some art in Athens, and I bought a few discontinued bottles at a health food store. I love the stuff. A lot of wild Black Walnut trees around, I could collect a considerable quantity, pay kids to collect them for me, but then what? They're notoriously hard shelled, but if I could somehow shell them, these wild nuts fairly exude oil. Be easy enough the extract the oil. Break up the kernels and put them out in the sun on several layers of un-bleached muslin, press them. Presses are easy to build, a seven ton jack is less then twenty dollars, and I already have a couple. Still, the first gallon of oil will probably cost $100. I hope some of the frogs are taking a break, it's wearing me out. I feel like I need a nap. Another squall, I'd better save. The energy in one of these cells is amazing, the millions of BTU's, billions, in a single lightning flash. Our problem is storage. It's clear, right, some places you have sunlight, some places you have wind, so why are you taking the tops off mountains? From the wind in Wyoming and the sun in Nevada, you could run the entire grid. If you'd just run the cables. You'd have to reconfigure the grid. My first thought is a very large fly-wheel, something that would store a great deal of kinetic energy. Everything's potential, right? what might distort whatever. Fact is, the coal companies have a lot of cash, and we are all subject to bribes. Not that you would take one, or me, but money is a lure, for most people, and they justify it, some way, as their due. I don't understand finance. Read more...

Lost Marbles

A loud noise in the night, something has fallen over. Pretty sure I'm alone, I don't sense another presence, and the sound was a one-time thing, but I have to get up and see what it was. I keep a bunch of tools stacked in the corner next to the back door and a dynamic tension or a gust of wind shook the house just enough and the shovel decided to fall. Turn on the radio, the show on NPR called "Crossing Boundaries", usually quite good, and it doesn't disappoint. A sound that can only be Bela Fleck. Get a drink and roll a smoke, consider my failures. A Greg Brown song I haven't heard in a while, about putting summer in a jar. I'm hungry and there's just enough tenderloin left for a sandwich, spread with roasted parsnip and mayonnaise. Elvis Costello, then Robert Clay. More music than I've listened to in a while, gets me out of myself, or deeper in, I can't decide, really. What I meant to write about, last night, but got distracted, was life at the margin. Through the afternoon, yesterday, I was thinking how small choices led to major changes. Reading those Magic Realists will do that to you. I think about translation, an almost impossible task, for which I depend on others. I can tease out Catullus. Harvey used to read Lorca to us, when we were printing. It was beautiful, begged the question of understanding. Those days were like that. Hypo Clearing Agent would breeze in, recount a tale from doing "Peter Grimes" in Baltimore, we'd walk across the marsh and get a couple of quarts of ale, toke, and talk until the sun came up over Cape Cod Bay. Still tripping on what we'd left behind. K had a friend visiting over the week-end, Robert, vacating his house so the soon-to-be ex could pack her things. Awkward, but shit happens. We had a beer Friday, then Saturday he came in the museum and looked around. He was impressed with how well the Modernism show was hung. It's virtually perfect, visually, everything centered at 57 inches and the spacing is meticulous. Then I talked him through the glass show, he seemed to understand how one handled such things. Ships passing in the night, you know? Not sentimental, or anything even close, but I do miss that other warm body in which I could confide. Life on the edge is rough, because you're always alone, and a single step away from disaster. You take measures, wear a vest, carry matches, watch the footing, but a single misplaced step and you're over the rim. Some frogs fucking is no cause for alarm. It's Spring, today, I think, and this is what happens, the frozen world awakens, sheds the burden of ice and snow. Black stick trees are a thing of the past. You can't deny there is color now, fucking pink, man. I saw pink today, and the first blush of red-bud. When I was hunkered down, on that opposite ridge, smoking, out of the wind, with copious sunlight, I had to grin, another winter dead and gone. Not that we can't still get bad weather, but I've been warm and there is color. Hope springs eternal. I need to do my laundry because the house smells like dirty socks. My early warning system. But I think I'll just clip brush and read tomorrow, do my laundry on company time during the week. Paul Simon is a good song writer. The wind picks up from the northwest. The moon is insistent, out my writing window, a lost love, darting away. I try to not make too much of anything, but there was a crow, today, that bothered me. I was walking back to the house, from some excursion down the driveway, and there was a crow hopping along in front of me. I'm a sucker for crows, they seem to portend something. I only followed because it was the way I was going. One crow hopping down a logging road. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a crow. Wait. What is meaning? Read more...

Absolute Marginality

Sick of people who believe in God and worship idols. I'll take the entelechy of a hollow emerging from winter. Just today, some russet color, background pinks, and a few reds as the maples wake from hibernation. It's a lovely sight and I walk out the transverse ridge-line over to the graveyard. A perfect day for the shallow-black-pool method for identifying graves. The leaves are thick, and collect in the depressions where cheap pine coffins have collapsed underground. The indentations hold water, the leaves rot too. Shallow black pools. On the south slope of the next ridge over, the color is wonderful. It warms me. Back at the house, I drink chicken broth and eat saltines smeared with a dab of butter, reading Carlos Fuentes all day. A lively mind and a lovely writer. I know just enough about celestial mechanics to get everything wrong, so call Mac but he doesn't know the period between apogee and perigee of the moon either. Everyone else could find out the answer instantly, but I don't have a mobile device, or any service, for that matter. I do have some gorgeous celestial maps, brimming with just such information, but I can't find them. That German map publisher, who's name I've forgotten. One downside of a ceiling high bookcase, double sided, that's 12 feet long, is that stuff falls between. Clearly each side should have a back, but I built these bookcases for nothing. The uprights are peeled dogwood sticks, the shelves are one inch oak, milled from the beams, cut on-site. They cost nothing but a few screws. That sounds cheap. You know what I mean. I certainly couldn't afford even cheap paneling to put backs on the damned thing, besides I built it in place, and could never have slipped between to put on the second back. Pretty amazing bookcases, really, minimalist; strong support, and the loading is carried very well. I surprise myself, sometimes; not a bad thing. I had half a pork tenderloin in the freezer that I took o last night; a perfect, maybe, eight ounce cylinder. I butterfly it, pound it flat, roll it around a core of mango chutney with caramelized shallots, tie it up with cotton twine. Bring the cookstove oven up to temp, and hold it there, for thirty minutes, then let the fire die. The tenderloin, the roast parsnip and turnip thing (I rolled them in walnut oil with a lot of freshly ground pepper) and the sauce. The bread, who's in charge of the bread? there really needs to be a last piece of bread you trail through the drippings. If things were ordered and predictable. Which they're not. Still and yet, you should be allowed to clean your plate. Take one last dripping morsel toward your mouth, not pay for the additional dry-cleaning, if you held the drip away from your shirt, and just dropped it on the floor. As janitor I see desire paths, where we wish we might have gone. The dancer that struck me with her eyes. I have to think about that, I thought I was moving toward nothingness. Suddenly there is real shit, I have to deal with it, I'm the default number. It's you and me, not a good palisade, against an army that large. They merely send in enough troops and we are over-whelmed. No evacuation possible, you just jump off the cliff. Clutching a bag that might contain your salvation. I just mop the floors here, but I'm aware other things happen. The floors look really good. I may be nothing other than a decent janitor. Read more...

Perigee

The moon is as close as it gets. Full, tomorrow, will be the largest for years. Finished the walls in the basement and it's a dramatic improvement, isolates places that need isolating. One space, now enclosed, can morph into a greenroom for the theater. A place to lounge. Still have water issues to deal with. I clean the new space, think it all works pretty well. Built a nook for the prop table and fridge. Some doors that we left standing, now make sense because of the walls. I don't think we ever drew any plans, just empirically connected wall planes. Some of the concrete work, the basement of a bank, is fairly crude, massively overbuilt and crude. The wall planes are skewed. K is in, in the afternoon, to man the desk, and I talk with her about museums and life. D and Sara emailing back and forth about the brochure for the new membership drive is pretty amusing. One liberty I allow myself, as the person in charge of the library, is that I can check books out. Started a biography of Thomas Hart Benton we had, and I'll need to bring it home for a few days. After I finish the new Fuentes. So many books. Anthony was at the back door, quitting time. I had asked him for a glossy black bowl, to replace the one that had been stolen, and he had for me this utterly beautiful vessel. He'd just made 80 bowls for a benefit or something, and I seem to have gotten the pick of the litter. I have a lot of bowls, as it happens, because I like the possible shapes; I like the idea of containment, wherefrom I'm spooning my chicken soup. I had set Anthony's bowl, on the white synthetic cutting board, centered on the lower tier of the island, adjusted the track lights. Anthony's bowl, installed, at my house. I start pulling out other bowls, I stop myself at 20. I know I have to put them all away again, and I have bowls everywhere: on the stairs, on the drain-board, on the island, an ephemeral installation of bowls. Most of them are handmade. I imagine a show that might be based on the concept of vessel. Put the bowls away, Anthony won best in show, probably means I don't want him to know. Wait, fuck, I lost some lines, there was a transition, something about the chicken or the egg, it flew past, so fast I hardly breathed, but I remember something. A bat wing, the way your wrist smelled, tangled up in glue. Clearly, you need an alibi, where were you last Tuesday? Oh god, now I remember, I was taking notes. That was this. Read more...

Apple Gone

I communicate with the fox via apples. I've been putting one on the compost pile. A accumulation of compacted stove ash is on top on the pile. A very good medium for looking at tracks. Definite fox prints. Don't know if it's the same one or not, but that, and the three crows, seemed omen enough. St. Anthony was an Egyptian ascetic monk, considered the founder of Christian monasticism. He popped up on the Met Museum calendar today. I usually look up whatever it is and today's reference took me through an article about the systematic destruction of holy images, which is called iconoclasm. I don't know if I've ever heard that word. Hung a few things at the museum, in the offices, did a brilliant patch and repair on the front staircase wall. Looked on the paint schedule, to identify the color, then down to the basement, to see if by chance we still had some. We did, and the paint was still good, but the can was rusting away. I mixed the paint, had to, it was completely separated. There seems to be another short paragraph stored in Mail Waiting To Be Sent, I'll send it along, I had to save, because of an approaching squall line, and found it there, when I opened back up. Anyway, stirring the paint added flecks and flakes from the can, so I had to strain it, recover what I could. Stored it in a plastic container, with saran-wrap right down on the paint surface. I need this paint, because I don't want to paint that wall. The surface never gets sunlight, there's a chance the color will match well enough. It was funny, because Pegi had just noticed the patch and repair, wondered how I was going to fix that. The match is close enough. I went in to rag Pegi a little, she harasses me all the time, so I have my due, that the repair she had noticed, an hour ago, was now history. I am the gallery manager, after all. Part of my job description. Along with 'everything else' which, literally, includes everything. May have made a mistake driving up the driveway, I might not be able to get out tomorrow, not a concern, in terms of spreadsheet, I have hundreds of hours banked, but D and I had planned to do a certain piece of work. Wouldn't bother me if the schedule, as amended, didn't indicate anything. I just respond. It's really all I can do. Throw a dodge ball at me and I duck. Hello. I learned to duck in the first grade. Read more...

Heaven's Door

I like that version where Dylan plays with The Dead. The flood recedes, a drift of things at the high water mark, down four or five feet in 24 hours. Two crows in a dead snag on Mackletree, I stopped, to hear what they had to say. Doom and gloom, which I really don't buy. Walked K through the physical plant, and we stopped, in the library, she got out books that pertained to the exhibit, displayed them. I'd never thought of that. I use the library more than anyone, but I hadn't thought about keying open books to what was on display. Old dog. New tricks. Nothing matters, but everything does. Saint Paddy's day, I forgot to wear green and got pinched a lot. Reminded me I was not a complete monad, a hermit. Sargent painted one, right at the end, a gestural thing I like quite a lot. Last trip to the holy lands, a grain of salt; an over-exposed photograph of you, shading you eyes, looking at what could be the grail. It might be an academic question, but what is right in front of you? Could be just a trail of horse poop, but might be more than that. Strip away the habit of light, strip away drawing, replace everything with a charged brush. Color, and the stroke, are everything. Look at those Cezanne's from that time. 1905. I make some notes. Color was everything, outlines were a thing of the past. And that's just a first take on what floats in the field. All this water, it bothers me, all the ground is saturated, all the wet-weather springs are spitting forth, water is everywhere. I think about the desert Southwest, where there is no water. Maybe a sprite, the odd outpouring, however many pounds of molten iron. Read more...

Dignified Tenseness

I forget where it started. I was defending J. S. Sargent as a great painter of portraits. Had to go to the museum library to see if I could find a picture of the painting I saw in Naples, Florida. No luck, but I did read some interesting text; his sitters were/are known for their dignified tenseness. Warm day, warmest of the year, pigeons mating in the parking lot. This time of year, you develop an aesthetic of insinuation. Preparing to stand-by. The wind in the stick trees, the wind generally on the ridge, is a kind of moan, a breath blown in your ear. I feel old, and held together with baling wire. Don't recover as quickly as I used to. To make up for the extra day I work, I think about spending an hour a day in the library, sitting, reading. An art history update, now that I know what I think. I take care of the library anyway, so I can justify my time there. There was a post-it note on the book I'd just gotten from the public library, the newly translated book by Carlos Fuentes, "Destiny And Desire" (can't wait to read it, I skip lunch to read a chapter), and the note refers to a question that had come up about naming. Frust is that small line of debris that refuses to be swept into the dust-pan, also that debris (I use a newspaper) that accumulates when you trim your toenails and pumice off whatever dead skin. I had said that there was a word for anything, or you coin one. Anthony Burgess has added a lot of words to the language. Maybe more than anyone recently. Robert Graves always looked for absolute clarity. I was rereading recently his account of the First World War, "Goodbye To All That", a terrific book, and a good opportunity to use that word correctly. My day hinges on events like this. To use 'terrific' correctly. Get a copy of McCord's "The Man Who Walked On The Moon", this has been reprinted, so there should be copies, look at the attention to detail. I steal from anything that might be germane. Push-pin recipes over the top of newspaper clippings. Layers of stuff. Meaning in a different mode. Irish dancing is down, a hard push with those fixed arms (we're not dancing, merely passing the time), and ballet is up. Every point Irish dancing makes is on the downbeat. See for yourself. The pub is so crowded I can'r not go there for a drink, but the crowd is such, I turn away at the door. I'd rather drink alone. Read more...

Going Home

Luncheon with a talk by the curator of the Modernism Show. Informative. Set-up involved the morning, clean-up the afternoon. Hung over, too many whiskeys, but the music was outstanding. Anthony, K and I, met for a round then Anthony had to back to a kiln he was firing, K and I stayed for the music, jam, really good. Sat at the reception desk, the last part of the afternoon, read about Fauvism. 1905, only lasted a couple of years. I like some of the work a lot. Doing away completely with drawing on the canvas, and filling in what is drawn. Just color. Paint on canvas. The first round of frog eggs bought the farm. Frozen solid, disappeared into the muck. Warmer nights late this week, and I expect the 2nd frog fuck fest. The first sign of Spring, being awakened in the night by copulating bull-frogs. Excellent. The scene is still as stark as can be, a few buds, the poplars; no green to speak of, just a few tufts of those earliest plants, pushing through the leaf-litter. All the young bramble, the first year growth, is twisted by the wind. Under-story grows fast, to catch the sun, but is weak compared to even a very small tree. Which then shades out the under-story and you work to whatever climax. I add some hyphens just because the red lines are driving me crazy. On the way home, I had to stop at the lake, the ribbon of water, going over the spillway, was between eight and ten inches, a blanket, flowing to the sea. The flooding is significant but not a real danger. Some roads are closed. Go around the long way. Sometimes a way you've never been. At the museum, I seem to be the docent of the moment, and I'm more than ok with that. By the time a show is installed, I know it pretty well. One of the board members asks me for guidance. I walk her through the show, pointing out things, she makes notes. I felt a little weird, a feeling I looked at later, considered. Not unlike that feeling you get when you take credit for some fortuitous coincidence. It looks like you did something, but you didn't really do anything. I'm on this like a Blue-Tick on a coon. The way we assign meaning. It's a joke, right? Fucking Robins, shitting in my yard. Or whatever. A wave of leaves, from down the block, they had to blow them somewhere, and I'm in a fenced yard without a blower. You know what that means, up the creek. Not only my own leaves, but everybody's else. I start sentences with something in mind. Usually just a vague idea, usually a noun, and I don't have a verb yet, but I have sources for verbs, I can always find the action. A soft light falls. Make what you will. Read more...

Completely Still

The quiet is what you notice first. No wind. Then the birds resume. I suit up in there black Carhartt bibs, with a thick canvas shirt, long-sleeved, to ward off the briars and blackberry canes. Set about clipping the yard. The drive out from town, I think the water is higher, in the Ohio floodplain, than I've ever seen it. 54 feet, and the Great Flood of 1937 was 20 feet higher than that. Reading accounts of that, last week; it had rained for three weeks straight, and there was no where for the water to go. Lovely outside, cool enough to work without raising a sweat. Need a new pair of leather gloves, and saw some nice ones, fairly cheap, at Portsmouth Cement And Lime. Should have bought a pair when we were buying the concrete blocks. I use fairly tight fitting, thin gloves for this, so I have some hand-feel, but, of course that means they get pierced by bull-vine thorns. At least a pair a season, then thicker leather gloves Iuse for working firewood, then an insulated pair of gore-tex that I use mid-winter. Another pair than I only wear when I walking up and down the hill. I started a fire from a rick in the house, perfectly seasoned, having let go its last moisture in side the house, where I need it. Warm enough at 60 degrees to heat some water on the cookstove, strip down and take a sponge bath, wash my hair, shave. I make some rice, a wonderful aromatic Louisiana rice that tastes faintly of pecans. I make a rue of flour and butter, cook medallions of pork tenderloin in butter and walnut oil, add the rue and some mushrooms I'd cooked separately. Lousy presentation, because, really, everything looked the same, pale gravy on rice with pale meat. Tasted fantastic, and I wasn't cooking for presentation, I was cooking dinner. Did you ever wonder about how you had brokered a certain deal? Not trying to be mysterious, or anything, but when I'm clipping, or doing any other chore like that, my mind drifts by free-association. One thing reminds me of another. I have to stop, sometimes, in the middle of whatever I'm doing, think about point-loading or stress failure analysis. So I need a job that allows that. I can't really accept anything less. I've always found it, wherever I found myself, even at the worst, which in my case has been pretty bad. I've made a lot of mistakes, almost died several times, but still, here I am. Back in the middle again. Must be a line from a song. Keep one shoulder against the wall, you always need to find the door. I try to surprise myself, in what might take my interest. I could control it more, but I choose not to. Whatever happens is usually good enough for me. Go home, and go to sleep. I don't even make any phone calls. Why bother? Essentially, you're on your own, take the traces in your teeth. What is Modernism, exactly? Read more...