[268] Screed City

[268]

10/30/2023 Monday. Kitchen Microwave On Shelving. Studio Bueno. Vista Chalet. Lower Granville, Vermont.

Well, 10 days of moving. Tomorrow is my birthday. 46. The last day at Beaver Haus. Three years to almost the day. All we got left to do is deal with the trash, move a few things out of the fridge, pack some stuff into the Real Estate Wagon, some stuff into Junior Mint and that's it. Good riddance. The most productive years, artistically, of my life, coming to an end. I can finally move on to Phase 2 of my plan.

This new place is great. Just up the hill from the old New Landlord's place. We got vistas and a deck and a hot tub and a wood stove and a couch and a Lazy Boi. A car garage. A dead grouse on the deck. All things considered, it is basically the same money. Except the new New Landlord actually give a shit about the place. They want us to thrive and be comfortable. They care about their house. She is pregnant, about to give birth. She moved down to Florida for the year, with her partner. She's from Montpelier. Her partner is from Florida. I think she just needs to not be fully pregnant and then have a new born during a Vermont winter, which, I don't know if you know, but the winter is brutal around here.

The studio is perfect. I have a fire blaring right now. There is a dead mouse behind the stove. He looks like he died while he was walking. I thought he was alive when I saw him. The room is about 12 x 12. 10 foot ceilings. Concrete floor. Windows. Cedar walls. The guy that built this place was Austrian. I think this room was his sauna. I mean, first fire, we'll see how hot it gets.

I also just signed a lease for a studio in Ridgewood. $580 per month. Roughly the same dimensions. It has a sky light though. And the walls are sheet rock. Which is good. A good thing to have. 10 minute walk from our apartment. I can set up my base of operations for Phase 2 there. I can cook Ticklers and edit and write and get out of Professor Curly's curlies. I mean, I guess I need to make sure and have work from now until forever, but if I can pull it off, I will be self-sufficient in about a year from now. I just need to stop drinking the Ticklers and actually do the hard work that is required to move forward. Which, I mean, at this point I have months of editing to do and design work to do and global thinking to do. I hired The Facilitator to help me. Once I get back to the City on Wednesday, it is all systems go. I guess.

I mean, fuck. Me and PC and Paddington have been working our asses off moving out of Beaver Haus. I mean, you acquire so much garbage in life. Especially if you have a place to put it, and if you are like me and you have a thousand projects going at any given time. I mean, there is three chafing dishes I have no idea what to do with. Cubby Bubbys aint done yet. Just on hiatus. Shit, that's a good Scrabble word, hiatus. The h and the u and it's a six letter word, not ideal, but I'll put in the memory banks.

Paddington is back in New Ham now, but she was here for six days and we worked her poor elderly fingers to the bone. She must have wrapped 20 paintings. Professional-style. The very last painting that didn't need to get wrapped, but there was a tiny discussion about was this thing I made like 10 years ago that is a mirror with this invisible face made out of tape and the words: Learn it. Love it. Suck it. Written in black marker on the mirror. Paddington said:

"That one is a little bit messy."

I said: "Yeah, that's on purpose. It doesn't need to get wrapped though."

She said: "Good, if you ask me, it should go straight to the garbage dump."

She's not wrong. But she's also not right. It is one of my best pieces. It really gets to the heart of the matter. You know, about what to do with it. It's like instructions, which is helpful.

It's been wild times around here. Every day, packing. Packing and more packing. Jony came up to help, which is awesome, but there was a mis-communication and he came a week early, so we had to move all the big stuff out of the apartment on day one instead of the last day, which I guess is tomorrow. In a sense it kind of helped things along. In a sense. It was one way to do it. Kind of the opposite of what I had planned. I mean, I have been sleeping at Beaver Haus while Paddington and Professor Curly slept at the Vista Chalet. Getting up at dawn and packing and packing. I mean, I know how Brother Charley's llamas feel now. You know? Cause all they do is pack?

But PC stayed down at Beaver Haus last night. Paddington hauled ass back to New Ham after lunch yesterday. Her fingers bloody, her forearms like Popeye's. A train of 10 cars behind her as she crept down the highway, worried about moose and rain. A cigarette dangling from her lips and a few curse words spewing from her mouth whenever she saw something she didn't agree with. I mean, I love her, but she is like a cat. Everything, EVERYTHING, is her business, but once she gets what she wants from it she moves onto something else. She has no consideration for anyone else's experience and is relentless in her enquiries. At the same time she is so damn cute that you can't help but be charmed by her.

It is crazy though to move out of Beaver Haus. For moi. Time is insane. To think of all things that happened since October 2020 to October 2023. I mean, life in general is what it is. There is nothing dramatic or special about what I personally went through, but it is a little like how the summer of 2020 was called the Last Good Summer. I mean, it was tongue in cheek at the time, the world was collapsing and society was on the brink, but for a few months in Vermont, on The Publisher's farm, some interesting things were happening. It felt good and was odd to feel good, even as the world seemed to be disintegrating. I mean, the following three years, the fallout from that summer, for me, personally, I mean, I don't know how to state how productive I have been since that first time I reported about life on The Compound and Rockwood Freedom and DogBoy Beach and et cetera and et al. But what is production? What is anything? Who let the dogs out? Putney, no! Come back! Get that out of your mouth! Putney, no!

I don't know, I don't mean to make a big thing about it, I'll just lure myself back into politics or something. Which, whatever. People are pretty good to tell you to shut up about politics, but did you ever notice that nobody compliments you for not doing politics? What's that all about? I can't catch a break, that is what that is all about.

I mean, this studio is hot stuff! The fire is really doing it's job. It is very exciting. It puts the Garbage Room to shame. I mean, I can't lock the door, so that makes me a little nervous. Tonight when I got down here I couldn't find the light switch and I assumed somebody had squatted the place when I was gone, like I was going to hear a guttural noise from the darkness and would be tackled by a vagrant as I was reaching for the light switch, but that didn't happen. And the other day I was driving up the hill and the radio was playing movie themes from horror movies because of Halloween, and The Shining [italics] theme was playing. And I laughed about it. Because there is an aspect of what we are doing here that is reflective of what happens in that movie/book. You know, it is odd and almost dark, with the tinge of optimism that could easily descend into madness. A turning point is happening, but where things go is uncertain. I only know I have to get my shit together, and soon, otherwise things will get out of hand. But also, I have no internet down here, so I need to haul ass back to the Chalet in order to send this out and get to bed in time to get back to work in the morning. I mean, it's Vermont, we have to shoot the needle to get rid of the years of trash we have, I have, procured, but at the same time everything is garbage. I think it is very interesting that putting a microwave on top of another surface is the perfect height for typing on. Big Microwave strikes again.

Whatever. Things are nice. Things are good. I think I am in a good place. It's complicated and life is wild. I'm going to slink back up to the Chalet and see if I can shoot this out and then hit the sack. We need to get at it by 8a tomorrow, which is same 'ol, but I am done with it all, I am looking forward to getting the hell out of town. I have airport/casino brain, tantric slog. I mean, I have some other issues I haven't even mentioned. Including these apples that have such strong skins that I have to spit them out because they are like leather, and the meat inside is like cardboard covered in dust. Cough an apple down. Or something.

[Insert Vista Chalet Photos]