Coincidence

An owl woke me. The windows were open, I was sleeping with night music, bugs and frogs, and that particular sound a light breeze makes in late summer leaves. White noise, really, the natural version. More than restful, almost narcotic, dreaming about some early love, Marcy, that mole in the hollow of her shoulder blade. Sleeping away, not a care in the world, when this owl sets up, outside my window, and I'm wrenched away from my sweet dreams. Actually the sound of the owl isn't unpleasant, just different, what I'm hearing at any given moment. Cage put me onto this. Merely listen. He'd have loved this concert. Background noise that's probably crickets, some tree-frogs, a breeze that rustles drying leaves. I think about Holly, some impossible contortion with one of the cirque girls, hey, I'm also human. And finally come to rest as a pile of dirty laundry tossed into a corner. Not what I would make of myself, given open parameters, but where I find myself. Fucking owl. I go ahead and get up, make a cup of coffee; shave and a sponge bath. Read for an hour, then off to the museum, first day for packing up the ODC show, it'll take several. Artist packed shows are a royal pain in the ass. D is gone to Columbus, to pick up more of the Doll Show, but TR has come in to help. He's excited to be handling art, thinks the white gloves are cool. First we have to bring up the fifty or sixty boxes from the basement, set up a couple of blanket covered tables. He's a fast study. He's reading "The Cistern" right now, slowly, as it needs to be read, and says he's never read anything like it, questions me about how I did it. I told him I really didn't know, that I just stepped things up a level and struggled to maintain it. That book was hard work, intense, but I needed that then. Writing it might have saved my life. We talk about music composition. The day moves well, we get a lot done, maybe a third of the show, but by 4:30 I'm weary and my feet hurt. When I close up, I consider going over to the pub for a pint, but I just want to get home. Pick up a footer and jalapeno poppers, so I won't have to cook, I was going to have a salad with a can of tuna dumped on top, but picking up fast food, assures that I will eat something, absolutely, because the smell will drive me crazy by the time I get home. I don't even get home, eat a couple of the poppers when I enter that section of Mackletree, in the state forest, which is now a cool, canopied tunnel. It shouldn't surprise me that I have a facility with language, I've been writing for a long time; like playing the guitar, you get better, shouldn't be all that surprising. But the real point comes, often reading over last night's post, to see if there was a direction I wanted to go, a specific thing I needed to mention, something to remember; and I'll find a great sentence, what I thought could be, and within a couple of hours I have several emails from close readers, out there, pointing to the fact that the sentence in question was very good. So across a spectrum of samples, we all find this sentence special, pregnant, something. Interesting. You see, right? how it herds meaning into a pen. Venn Diagrams. Misty picked up lunches at the pub today, and she walked the long way around, so she'd pass behind me on her way, I put out my hand, to stop her, asked if she'd like to go for a drink, some afternoon after work. She thought I'd never ask. I'm pretty confused by this but I see where it's leading. But why me, I can't help thinking, before I realize I am a writer, a poet, and all the ladies want to fuck a poet, it's like a notch on your garter-belt, whatever. I've only ever had failed relationships and making me a notch is as good as anything. Fine. A fraying signifier in a worn-out belt. Like that, for instance, how the hell can I say that? Read more...

Willed Spontaneities

Picasso was obsessed with Manet's "Olympia"; apparent, still, in the calculated clumsiness of his late work, decades after "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon". Then there's the work of Egon Schiele and the inevitable discussion of whether or not there's any difference between erotic art and pornography. Picasso famously said, "You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words." Consider that Picasso thought only Matisse (those odalisques) could challenge him as the greatest artist of the twentieth century. For me it's still the Modigliani nudes. Looking at nudes all day, actually, thinking about erotic art and what it's saying. It occurs to me that I could further research and write a coherent book about erotic art. The Carter nude drawings (life drawings), got me thinking about it, and I've been doing some reading. It occupies a place in mind now, and I can't shake it. Which is the whole point in a way, that you can't shake it. A nude is always sexual, even if it's other things too. I won't write a book, I'll just think about it; observe myself doing that, and report to you. It's a cleaner process, I think, and probably closer to what I really think, if I just jot down a few things after a day of reading. My idea of a good time. I do several open-faced tomato sandwiches in the toaster oven; one I top with an over-easy egg. Runny egg yolk and hot tomatoes on buttered toast is so good that I can hardly contain myself. I whoop. Insofar as I know how. A jig, or maybe St. Vitus dance, heat lightning, a shaft of fall light, coming through the trees. I can barely see to drive, it's an acid flashback, light and dark. Mackletree has become a tunnel, with these painful shafts of light. I have to accept as reality, whatever confab you've assembled. I'm sure I'll look bad. I usually do. A force of habit. The way I duck beneath the crook of my elbow. Hiding something, as a matter of course. It's the wrong time of day, but I need to sleep for a few hours. I'm worn out and nothing makes any sense. When I wake, after a couple of hours, I don't know whether it's morning or evening, I have to go outside and see where my shadow falls. Evening. I want a BLT but I have no bacon. I do have two chicken thighs that I want to marinate for dinner tomorrow, so I skin them and crisp the skins slowly in a cast iron skillet. Render enough chicken fat to fry potatoes another day and enough ersatz bacon for my sandwich. Chicken skin, lettuce and tomato. A great sandwich. B visits, to return a book, and concedes I know the Cello Suites better than any other non-musician he knows. Today I listen to Casals, giving voice to what is merely notes on the page, the start of it all. A transport of joy. I'm studying the painting of hands. Rembrandt's are not very good, but look at Caravaggio's in "The Supper at Emmaus", they seem to break the plane of the painting, real hands, reaching out to you. The folk art show travels, and I'm sorry the shit-on-the-floor interrupted the conversation Sara and I were having, because we have to pack that show for shipping. I have some ideas for hanging the large puppet-dolls. Some of the larger ceramic pieces for the doll show are problematic, the wall mounted pieces, as they need more than just a screw-head in a plastic anchor. We'll come up with something, those 'J' hooks we use for hanging very heavy painting on 'D' rings, or some mystical electromagnet that holds things three inches off the wall. I'm not a flutist, but I lived with a flutist once and she taught me how to breathe. It's not as simple as you thought, what you learned as a child, simply in and out, but a more complex thing, that starts deep within your diaphragm Wait, what we talking about? I don't have any control over anything outside a very small circle of events. I mop when I need to. There wasn't a diagram with the instructions. Tab A in slot B, or tabs A and B in slot C. Read Julian Barnes on Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa". What does a picture signify? Read more...

Nothing, Later

Blow it off as merely paranoid, but it was a tick, embedded in a place I couldn't see directly, so I had to use a mirror and attempt a remote extraction. I'm pretty good at this, because I've lived alone for many years. Be nice to have some assistance but that isn't in the cards, do what you can. When I cough the cough of the damned I sound like my father, and he's still alive, at 91, beating the odds; but a shadow, really, not the thing itself. Having a cigaret with Sara after work yesterday, we can smoke in her office after hours, talking about an upcoming folk art show and the difficulties of hanging certain pieces, when Pegi came to the door. Her face was white, she had her cirque clothes over her arm, so I knew she had been in the upstairs bathroom where she changes before she goes over to the studio. She said my name several times and I finally just asked her what the problem was in the bathroom and she said there was a mess on the floor. Putting it mildly. Someone with diarrhea had missed the toilet completely. Part of my job description is that when there is any actual shit, I clean it up. I don't even mind, it's just a job, not nearly as bad as the mess you back when you have your arm two feet up a cow's ass, trying to get an unborn calf turned in the proper position for delivery. Or had kids, for that matter. I'm not new to shit. I was staff today, so I mostly read about Delacroix. When he first saw Gericault's "Raft Of The Medusa" he went running and whooping through the streets. I think it's good to have an actual response to something. I encourage whooping. Saw Ronnie with Bear's daughters, leaving his stand at the farmer's market and he gave me some tomatoes. Soon as I got home I started eating tomato sandwiches, mayo, black pepper, on a very good multi-grain bread that I favor. I managed to do this one-handed, so I could read, turn pages with the other hand, but it required a large bowl to contain the drippage. I love these, sometimes I dump a can of sardines on top. The first sandwich is more or less a test of the tomato at hand, the second, I often add something: pickled peppers, some caramelized onion, capers. Because I know that's it, right? two tomato sandwiches pretty much would be my dinner, and this is all you're going to eat before you start drinking and writing. Straighten out that syntax, you know what I mean. Which raises questions. How could you? I don't know, myself. I poke at it, but I don't know what it is. I know that people who leave overhead cupboard doors open should be shot; but I'll never shoot them. Come on, I don't have a vicious bone in my body. Read more...

Sour Note

I was doing fine, with a bunch of extremely mundane chores: washing dishes, scrubbing toilet bowls, re-mopping some heavily soiled areas of floor. Then, later, D and I were downstairs, looking at the gallery SPACE, trying to figure out how to hang the puppet dolls. The Fed Ex guy delivered a printer, which Bev signed for, at the reception desk. I ask D if he had ordered a printer, and I could see he was upset. He's our IT guy and he hadn't been consulted. Major whoops, it seems to me, I'd at least ask his opinion, even if I had known all about printers, 20 years ago, in Vero Beach. I want to be careful here, because I do love my job, and I care about the museum. What a sunset, saturated color, emptied of figurative content. Like Rothko, and even, strangely, like Turner. The way my mind works perplexes me. Anyway, I followed D upstairs, to hear what he would say to Pegi; there was a second witness to this, TR was printing-out some lovely loan forms for Sara's next show, completely redesigned, printed-in-color loan forms. That D had redesigned, along with 4-color envelopes; and membership forms, that he had redesigned. He's good at this, maybe very good, and they hadn't even ask him if this printer would interact with their system, which he maintains on a shoestring. And he asked her (Pegi), in a very casual voice, why they had bought that printer. Pegi exploded, TR and I were shocked, if I'd been a victim of that, I would have turned around and gone home. But hey, the show in the main gallery comes down next week, and I'll be busy, can fill my time displaying art and not thinking about office politics. I may mop floors for a living, but I have a certain dignity. At this point in my life I'd be hard-pressed to not say what I actually thought. It wasn't just me, TR took offense. I sprang for beers after work, so we could talk this though. D admitted he couldn't see a fast ball after Little League. I admitted that the curve ball, in college, defeated me completely. I was a great fielder but my hitting was lousy. Had to let the preceding sit over night, but find I still have to mention it. A lovely day today, stopped at the lake to watch the vapors rising. Cooler nights, and the water gives off heat. Last night read about Modigliani. One of the most crazed drives toward self-destruction ever. I love his nudes. Then about Rothko and his "trembling voids of pure, saturated color". Giacometti worked on the first set of "Waiting For Godot". I knew a student of Giacometti once, on Cape Cod, who was quite a good sculptor himself, and I published a book of his wife's sonnets. I'd forgotten about that. There are times when your past subsumes you. When you remember something not in a fictional way. The absolute sequence (as I remember it), a very specific place and time. Do I trust you or not? Do I trust myself? Memory is a wild card. Because of its removal. Right? A memory is not the thing itself, that should be obvious; if it were I'd be allowed living with a sexy woman who had a job with benefits. As it is, I'm living alone, making the best of the day. Allows me to say certain things.
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Still Later

I just compose blocks of text. It's what I do instead of otherwise having a life. Never fails to engage my attention, or rather, I don't do it unless it engages my attention, I read, instead. Reading usually leads to writing. A pretty simple way to order your life, if you don't mind being alone for much of the time. My friend Kim, who also lives alone, works a job, always has a building project, plays guitar and writes songs, carves incredible spoons, and is the construction-site dumpster diving champion. Boggles the mind. I used to be more like that, but the last ten years I've narrowed it down to working at a museum (handling art), reading and writing. A minor in cooking. Linda sent me a couple of emails, she reads me closely and I value her opinion. Liked a couple of lines and shot them back at me. I had to read myself, to find the context, and I hadn't read back over anything for a couple of weeks, so it was like reading someone else. I quibbled with certain punctuation marks and questioned whether or not some words might be deleted. Less, of course, being more. Opens out, as Olson said. There was a cricket in the house and this I cannot abide. I intend a live release but if I have to kill the fucker I will. A cricket, in the room with you, is worse than a Whip-O-Will outside the window. I make a point of finding the damned thing before I get a drink. Perform a live extraction. I'm proud, you know, that I can still do that, catch a cricket and release it without any broken legs. That smell permeates everything. A stink bug, right? You touched it, didn't you? Found it on the way to the cricket and couldn't resist. Fucking stinkbug and you actually engaged the fear and flight program. Where I simply left, the next train going anywhere.You see the choices. Read more...

Send Later

I drink, so I often Send Later, which gives me a chance to add a comma or two, remove a word, or delete a repetition. I don't catch all the pesky little awkwardnesses, but I do like to be as clean as possible. The last rain today, I collected a few gallons of water, a bonus, and when the power came back on I heated it so I could shave and take a sponge bath. Such are the creature comforts. I don't consider it a negative thing, that I wash with rain water, but I don't think of it as positive either. It's just a fact. My stomach was growling and I realized I hadn't eaten enough today, so I got out a tube of saltines and opened a can of tuna (in oil, so much more flavor) along with little piles of sundry olives and pickles. I always keep a jar of wasabe powder close at hand, and a dollop of chili paste. A dozen of these mounded crackers, over the course of an hour, reading at the island, would make you believe there is a god. Though you might know perfectly well otherwise. Belief systems are weird. They allow for the unallowable, cover their back that way, and it's cool, I don't have argument with anyone who believes anything. What I see is a fairly stark reality, people die, born with deformities and conditions that have no cure. Other people live, some of them evil. Go figure. As clean as possible is extremely relative. I don't know what to believe, so I drink, occasionally someone sends something, peyote buds (which always make me throw up) or some magic mushroom, and I take them mostly because I can. I have a digestive system that can process almost anything. A white shark's stomach can dissolve horseshoes. The pre-plumbing crew arrived early at work, this crew cut and jack-hammered out a section of the basement floor, then removed fill down to about three feet to expose the main waste line. An awful piece of work but somebody had to do it, too big a job for D and I to tackle. Five guys, took them all day. Meanwhile, we're upstairs with the appraiser, going through the Carter paintings and drawings. Franklin (great name for an art appraiser) knows his Carters, he's dealer for the estate, was quite impressed with the collection. All the insurance values are about 40-50% too low. Instructive to listen and talk with him. The large portraits of members of the family are not worth what we thought, he assigned the highest values to the large oils that seem to convey a narrative. The watercolors have all doubled in value. Everyone needed to go, so I stayed as the ditch-diggers were laboring on. Read upstairs, couldn't get Hulu to work, wandered the Carter gallery with my newfound knowledge. The world of art commerce, about which I know an increasing amount, is driven by people like Franklin, who control estates and do everything possible to drive the prices up. In his defense, there weren't many Carters on the market until the estate decided to sell. They're solid investments. One painting we had valued at $125,000 he said he could sell for $250,000 tomorrow. Dude probably lives fairly well. He was, of course, dressed completely in black and had to wear his prescription sunglasses because he'd broken or misplaced his indoor glasses. American painters, late 20's through the 30's seemed to be his thing. It was an interesting period. Realism holding an imagined high ground over Modernism. I hold a neutral space here. I tend to like the best of anything, not that I buy it, but that I like it. Often I put my hands behind my back, and just look at things. Safer that way. Hands behind the back, you don't tend to interfere like an Italian Mom harbored thus. Your imagination is probably as good as mine. I love the idea of setting the beast loose, but this doesn't seem like the time or lace, oops, place, you would choose, maybe the Thames, flowing slowly past. Look up the Fram, she pretty much did it all. Perky little thing. Her knees were placed so close together they almost touched, no room for any intrusion. So she bobbed up on top of the ice and was never in danger of being crushed, besides, she had that diesel engine, ready to crank, the first in a long line of Nordic icebreakers. Finnish carpenters. This Send Later shit is killing me. Everything is fraught with meaning. Read more...

Out Tom

I wouldn't actually kill anyone for getting glitter on the floor, but I do get upset when shit gets in the grout joints, my fellow staff members laugh nervously. I feel the same way about eating grapes indoors. Certain things just shouldn't be done, grapes are good, anti-oxidant, all that, but they shouldn't be eaten, the red ones especially, indoors, on a tile floor, because you will drop a grape, and someone will step on it. Making up the truth, where ever that thought came from, it seems to me whatever I imagine is true. A particular kind of shoe, when you get cancer, you have to accept certain things. People lie, you never know what to believe. Beyond the business stuff. Mississippi John Hurt, the way the blues bleed healthy blood. I don't know. The whole glittering panoply comes crashing down. The world as we know it. Listen to Skip James, Robert Johnson, Son House, the edges are blurred. The depth of feeling is without measure. Skip James is doing it for me tonight, that sloppy guitar, the missed notes, the way his voice rolls over the music "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" is a great tune. Meeting Son House was a lot like having dinner with Beverly Sills. You knew you were in the presence of greatness. Say a little prayer, look at your napkin. I lost a day, yesterday, it's gone. I know I did something, thought about some things, listened to the Cello Suites transcribed for double bass. Edgar Meyer might be the best musician of our age. Like Casals in his dotage, still able to draw on deep resources. I'm not talking about age here, but the ability to do certain things. To draw, freehand, a perfect circle. I've only ever known one person who could do that, it's not a trick. You can either draw a circle or you can't. I can't. I've drawn ten thousand and not a single one is perfect. Something so simple that I fail so completely. Actually, the story of my life, and I'm not complaining, that I always come up short, or trip, whatever, generations of frost-heaves, come on, road-beds notoriously follow the path of least resistance. Desire paths. The way we want to go. Hey, listen, those bugs, infringing on your sleep, might be a good thing. Power goes out, I open some windows on the leeward side from the rain, and read sitting on the floor with my back against a glass door. Stopped raining but the light is strange outside, a suffusing orange glow, like before a hurricane in Florida. Quite lovely. Julia (a board member) came in the museum on Friday with husband Ralph and another couple, she introduced me, and we chatted a few minutes. When I should have been out of earshot (my hearing is quite good) I heard Ralph turn to the other couple and say that I was very bright. I wondered about that for a while, it was as if he were explaining why I had been introduced to them in the first place, a janitor in jeans and a tee-shirt, with a ball cap from the Smithsonian Network. Truth is I like Julia and she likes me. One thing the museum provides, in spades, is a wide spectrum of social interaction. I've never lacked for this, even in Missip people came over from Oxford or flew in from out of town, and in Colorado, what made it so hard for me to leave there, was an incredible group of friends. All bright, facile, and verbal. My talent is that I attract talented people. It's not that difficult, if you're willing to listen. I never saw a shrink, personally, though I've talked with several about friends who seemed self-destructive. Listening is key. Sara and I, sitting on the concrete smoking ledge, often bridge silences with a cryptic comment. I know she worries about her kids, she knows I worry about mine. Then there's the rest of the real world, where everything is distorted, and nothing is what it appears. Read more...

Got It

Wedding party in and setting up, I haul trash from the kitchen. Then a staff meeting that lasts until lunch. After lunch Sara, D and I hang around in the vault and talk about the appraisals on Monday. Logistics, who does what. The white gloves fall to me. It should be very interesting and instructive. My idea of a good time. A day of museum business, mostly I just like handling art, but I'll do a certain amount of business to make that possible. Quid pro. Late in the workday I take the 10 foot ladder back to the basement (the decorating committee had hung a bunch of those bamboo stiffened paper covered balloon-like things), and drop power to a perplexed trio who couldn't find an outlet. This wedding is purple and white. White balls against white walls is a subtle touch. The bride roared off with the music guys, after the sound-check, and I thought that was a hopeful sign. Sara saw the glitter, spread on the tablecloths as decoration. turned to me and asked if I hadn't mandated that glitter was banned from the building, which I had, but this was not glitter. It was the next generation of glitter, a crushed, and tumbled so there are no really sharp edges, though I'd hate to walk on this shit in my bare feet, product. That I don't even understand the need for its existence, product. Craft items we can do without. I'm still finding fake feathers from the last wedding. I'm not a romantic when it comes to weddings, mostly marriages fail, if we're honest, almost no one is with who they were originally with, though my parents have been together 67 years and it slants my view. Turkeys everywhere on the way home, more than I've ever seen in a single day, maybe a hundred, they're impossible to count. When you see a large flock of them, as I did today (one of several), over thirty at least, harvesting shattered grain from a bean-field, they move so fast and so erratically within a given grid, that you really can't count them. This largest flock, today, was in a back field, beyond a hump, almost a terrace, and there was a place to pull off the road. I'd seen them there before and scoped out the terrain. I watched them, for a while, from the side of the road; there's dip, from the side of the roadbed to the bottom of the terrace, so I ate the half-sandwich I'd saved from lunch and watched from a distance. Then moved the truck into the dip and scurried up along the tree-line with my optics. I've gotten very good at not being noticed, got within 200 feet and settled in the duff. Turkeys communicate constantly, proto I-phone, and there are sentries, young males, that guard the boundaries. I watch them for nearly an hour. Not sure I learned anything, but the colors in the crest seemed to change. Purple was the issue, was it more red or more blue? I don't remember. Read more...

Janitor Mode

A wedding on Saturday, then a mid-day brunch concert on Sunday. On Monday we reappraise the Carters, expert coming in from Chicago. I'll be there on Monday, but Pegi insisted she and Trish had Saturday and Sunday covered, and that I should stay home. We'll see. Anyway, full janitor mode to get the facilities up to snuff. Cleasn and stock the bathrooms, sweep and mop the various floors. First problem was the five giant dolls, sitting on blankets in the back hall. No place to put them. Three of the offices have two guest chairs, so I put one doll in each extra guest chair, another just outside D's office on a chair there, and the last one I put in the chair that flanks the office space in the center of the common space. It looks like she's doing a job interview. The ladies all loved the idea and rearranged the limbs of all the dolls into much better poses than my merely dumping them in chairs had produced. Spent several breaks in the library, reading about dolls. This show examines the grotesque. Batted ideas about hanging the dolls. An interesting challenge. D has a problem with the stairs, in the new old house, we'd been talking about it for a couple of weeks. They had been carpeted, and the old pad was now an integral part of the structure. He had tried everything including some industrial grade orange cleaner that we'd used to get up the adhesive residue in the basement. The ultimate cleaning product. Didn't work. The only thing that worked was taking off a thin layer of wood with a giant chisel (called a 'slick') and that would take forever. I explained to him how to secure runners down stairs, with those cute, usually brass, rods that held the carpet, at the back of the tread, against the bottom of the riser. In the trade these are called, in a mind-numbing flash of obviousness, stair rods. You have to love it. The way things are named. Churned mud surrounded salt lick, ten thousand hand prints don't mean a thing, what you thought you were saying. Is that three things? Is someone counting? Read more...

Dolls

Creepy dolls. Quite the obsession with some ceramic artists. Then today D got back from Cincy with five stuffed dolls that are eight feet tall with articulated arms and legs. They're hysterically patch-worked and beaded, clever writing all over them, completely stitched faces, odd headdresses. Next week he's getting more ceramic work, really good faces on odd bodies with the wrong appendages. It's going to be a difficult and interesting installation. The large stuffed ones are audience interactive and require multiple pulleys and lines. The first batch of creepy ceramics are fairly delicate. We need to repair one, damaged at its last venue. It's an interesting job. Went over to the pub for a beer, alone, after work, chatting up the help, all of whom I know well; and the new girl, Leslie, came in to work the evening. She's stunning, tall; long, fairly tangled hair, nice ankles. Jenny Richards came in, with a group, she's the Naturalist for the State Forest, a pert pixie and sexy as anything you ever saw in a Forest Service uniform. We talked about rattlesnakes, she's got two in her office right now, to be released tomorrow, and both of them, she said, were yellow rather than the usual black. Said it wasn't just a molting color, that some of the Timber Rattlers were just yellow. I tend to believe her, because she's kept the damned things. Gives me the creeps, really, there are a lot of snakes hereabouts. A wonderful fog on the way into work this morning, thin, hugging the draws, but a luminous blue in the morning light that was totally unexpected. We respond to color, sound, smell, shape, texture, in ways we can't predict. It's what makes art work. The unpredictable. Read more...

Smart Talk

These lunch-hour talks are always good and usually interesting, but they put a hole in my workday. Setting up tables and chairs then putting them away. Sara did a fine job, talking about the Carter painting. She actually had a chance to talk with Carter about it before he died. We got the history of the painting, then an interesting talk about certain compositional similarities with other paintings. The museum has the core of a Carter biography, letters, scrapbooks, photographs. I'm starting to get into it. Took a few minutes today to start reading the history of dolls. There's one in the British Museum, fifth century BC that has articulated arms and legs; another, 2nd century AD, about nine inches tall, carved from ivory, that's an incredible piece of work, also fully articulated. At the very beginning it's difficult to tell where the fetish objects (the various Venus and such) leave off and the dolls begin. The early stuff gets my attention, the rest of it, not so much. Several books ordered on library loan about the change from steam to diesel. Reading that the Fram was the first diesel powered boat, when was that, a couple of weeks ago, still puts a smile on my face. I love stumbling unto cool facts. A really cool fact can make up for an otherwise lousy week. On the weekends I mine for them, the ore is usually non-fiction, when I'm fact-checking something I'd made a note about. I shouldn't exclude fiction, I look up a lot of things that I read in fiction, so I'll know if it's real or not, given that we've circled that tree often enough, about the real. I could almost live within the confines of my library. But the truth is I require social contact, dialogue. The monologue runs full time in my head, a video with Dolby sound; you are, in fact, the most important person in the world. Show business. I'm just saying, I don't have a vested interest. You are. And I respect that, what you choose to believe. I might choose to believe something different, but it's just a matter of opinion. That pesky pink elephant. I don't mind what's not there, but I'm often disappointed when I allow myself to expect anything. The new guy, the volunteer/intern person, TR, is an interesting guy, a music composition major. We talked about bookbinding today, about how scores could be bound so that the pages could be turned and the leaves lay flat. Interesting enough that we went to the pub after work, drank a draft, talked about our past. Barnhart, the music guy, arranged this, you can see him, hanging from the rafters. He's in China now, with a glee club, when he gets back I intend to nail him to the wall. I am not now, and have never been, anything other than what I appear to be. Jeans and a tee-shirt, the guy sitting at the back, a Red Sox cap pulled over his eyes.
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An Owl

A little cooler, and I hadn't run the AC all day, the windows were open and I had the ceiling fan over my bed on low. Even had a light-weight blanket across my legs, wadded between my bony knees, as is my habit; deep in a dream where I was riding an old horse across a rocky field in moonlight. An owl starts hooting very close to the window where I'm sleeping, and it wakes me; I'm confused, momentarily, about the nature of reality, because the dream is so real that the intrusion of the owl seems like fiction. Several minutes before I realize the owl is real and the horse-ride is a product of my imagination. The owl is incessant, wins the day, when it comes to what you believe; I put on some pants and go downstairs. First thing I always do, in a similar situation, is roll a smoke and just listen. An owl's hoot seems to be merely a call, but I don't know, really, if something is being said, even a call says something. G. Spenser Brown and that entire field of what's said. Often, my entire thought process is interrupted by a sound from the natural world, a fucking owl, hooting, not unlike a whip-o-will, or those god-damn bugs that fill the summer. If you live in the natural world it's always subject to interruption, trees falling, something going on, a sound you can't make sense of, a scratching at the door. Needed to do laundry, so I spent most of the day reading at the museum. The place is quiet when it's open, when it's closed it's like a tomb. Great place to read. More of the beef strips for dinner. Rereading Pynchon's "Vineland" and I have to say not only that I think he is the best, but that he can also be very funny. Sara's giving a talk on the Carter painting, "River Boat Pilot", in the steamboat show gallery, so I'm on facilities detail tomorrow. D's on the road, getting the first two sets of dolls for the next show, Pegi's taking a vacation day, Trish will be buying and preparing the lunch spread. I've got some work to do on the roof, so I plan to get up there before it gets too hot, on a black rubber membrane, EPDM, which is a great roof, as is any roof, if installed correctly. The question then becomes how well do you know your roofers? I have a foot up, in this conversation, because I was a roofer, during the period I speak about; so I can filter through that, I understand, more or less. Roofing is just a way of casting, a shadow. If I were in touch with you. Consider the various connections. Bolts, and various lag screws. Brads, and the sundry nails you might shoot. A phone call late at night. Eyes locked across a crowed room. It's all the same. Peas in a pod. Attachment. Read more...

Excess

One more drink, one more cigaret, I don't see what harm it can do. I'm dead already, for god's sake. Surely I've rattled myself into the grave at this point and there is no turning back. What I choose, and the reasons, are a closely guarded secret. It's generic, or something beyond that, that I don't understand. Universal maybe. What we feel. Why does Duck Hill seem further back than Kay's Basement? I feel the same way. Maybe because the move was so retro, I mean Mississippi, come on. We had a great life there, no complaints, but we didn't feel we could raise a child in that atmosphere. Even in 1981 it was about segregated as you could get, but we were so self-contained, it didn't really matter, we left the farm maybe once a week, and then for just a few hours. The most focused I've ever been, on anything other than writing. Toward the end, I left more often, to build another of the patented "Bridwell" barns. I was younger, and I could build one in a week and clear $1000, which was lot of money, to us, then. Maybe not the most focused, probably an over-statement. As a stage manager, calling a musical or an opera is a pretty tight focus. Big line of thunder showers moving through, I make some judgement calls about turning the computer off and on. Being at end of the grid sucks, always something getting fried. But I want to write, and I now do that at a keyboard. Clearly need something that has a battery, that I can send and print-out from work. Everyone knows how to do this but me, a fucking dinosaur. I don't even want to know, and yet, I have to know. I went in today merely to open the gates, Sara was staff, and the gates have gotten difficult. Unwritten part of the job description. We've become close, I think, because we think alike; and we both smoke, so several times a day, we retire to the loading dock and blow rings, which we puncture with any handy object. More storm, I have to shut down. Read for a while, by the light of the head-lamp McCord sent me, excellent light, and ate a cold can of pork and beans. Stumbled on the stairs in the dark and smashed my forehead against one of the steps. A little blood in my eye, but no real damage. Don't look at yourself, in a dark house, with a flashlight and a mirror, late at night, with blood running down your face, and expect not to be startled. You don't really have a good side right then. I clean up the small cut, put on a band-aid, go to bed. This morning, because I had been damaged, I read reclined on the sofa for six hours, B came over. We talked about books and his trip to NYC. Our friend Jana took a fall, while they were walking and gawking, and I need to contact her. When he leaves I get an early drink and step over to the kitchen area to work on dinner, particularly a dish that is probably most like a Korean BBQ. While it is still mostly frozen, I slice another London Broil, a small one, one-and-a-half pounds, using this very cool knife D and Carma gave me. Which must be a dinosaur de-boning knife or something, because I can use it to slice frozen meat quite thin. A marinade of peach nectar, ground green chili from New Mexico, many grinds of pepper, and a goodly squirt of a balsamic vinegar hot sauce from the Minnesota State Fair. I caramelize two large yellow onions, taking over an hour, and they're perfect. Remove them, then heat a wok very high, 500 degrees, and sear the strips of beef quickly. I had added the marinade back to The Sauce, and boiled that, before I cooked the beef; cooked some egg noodles, and opened a bottle of old vines zin. Doesn't get any better than this. My vantage on the rest of the world. I'm eating these strips of beef, that evaporate in my mouth, and these onions that are the ghosts of all the onions that ever existed. It's a good meal, I'm sorry I usually dine alone, there should have been a witness. Read more...

Growing Up

After I was about 15 I never asked anyone for help, except for the occasional librarian and the guy at the local hardware store. My Dad was a Navy Medic, gone a lot of the time, and my Mom could always put a meal on the table. A perfect combination, as it happens, because you need to eat, and the physical self is always getting damaged. More than that, the emotional self is always getting damaged.Breeding shows. You learn to stay afloat, grab hold of anything and keep from drowning. Thinking about them today, while plugging away at the things to do that the board president passed down through Pegi to me. It finally happened that the speed and efficiency with which we install a show backfired. We've opened most of the recent shows a day or three early, to meet the demands of some other event. Pegi asked yesterday, if we would be able to open a show next year, that's been scheduled for over a year, several days early, and we just can't do it; it can't be done, one of those things you don't want anything to do with trying. She'll have to reschedule whatever it is, because our dates are locked in. I'll do what I can, I used to be able to do more than that, but now it's all that I can do. On the roof this morning, collecting debris, I have no idea for a source, from which we get debris on the roof. I can imagine a few methods but they're all so far-fetched I won't regale you with them. There is enough humus, in the southwest corner, beneath a four-foot parapet (it never gets light) and there are lichens and a couple of small shade-loving plants. The hidden garden at the museum. The roof is EPDM membrane, which is what you'd use on a house that was covered with sod and had sheep grazing. It's a bomb-proof barrier and actually benefits from not being exposed to light, so covering it with sod is a good thing. Exposed to UV it has like a 40 year warranty. Often used for Koi ponds. I only ever kept a few things that I wasn't eventually going to eat, never a fish. I enjoy aquariums when I run onto them. There's one in the Cleaning Supply place I use. Turtles. Very cool. I like to go there with D, so he can conduct business and I can watch the turtles. I lied, I think, I did keep fish; owned a small lake in Missip, stocked it, fed them the collected bugs from the rest of the farm. You can't imagine how easy it was to catch fish in this small lake, an acre, maybe; you just put a hook in a piece of dinner. I used barb-less hooks, so I could release anything I didn't want to eat, but getting a meal was easy. Marilyn had a way of smearing a filet of any white fish with a smear of mayonnaise and a couple of capers, a slice of lime. I like it, you know; in a removed kind of way. Better your recipe than any other, who you think you are, I get that, who I think I am. Read more...