[305] Screed City

[305]

12/15/2024 Sunday. Cardboard box on top of a pink shelving unit. Studio. The Chalet, Granville, Vermont.

My question is this; Do you think all of this will add up to anything one day? I don't mean my ambitions or this writing or anything other than work. Its nuts. It just never ends. Maybe you've noticed, but I am in Vermont now. I spent a million days in the City working with Jack. Finished that job, had exactly one day off to do some laundry and pack and then immediately drove up to Vermont where me and Scott have been working our fingers to the literal bone. Sawing, routing, stapling, nailing, gluing. So much wood. Moving wood from one place to another place. Even when I get back home to the Chalet, I have to go out to the wood pile and drag a bunch of fresh logs inside. And then the dust. Sawdust everywhere. Log dust everywhere. And now the supply of logs at the Compound, where me and Scott have been working, is covered in chicken shit. Fucking chicken shit logs. And not only that, but yesterday I was routing a bunch of things, making dust, sweeping the dust into a pile and suddenly Skweekill, the bobtailed cat, a psychopath cat, came over and started playing around in the sawdust. I thought, Well, isn't that cute. And then suddenly she was bent over about to make a Lincoln Log and I yelled at her, Get out! No! She did not get out. She did not heed my no. She turned around and started making a Lincoln Log from another direction. And then when she was done, she darted off like she was being chased. I had to scoop the log into the wood stove. I mean, it was nice, the log burned hot and long like a Hannukah miracle, but still, that damn cat! And now Putney, the dog, knows how to open the garage door so if you aren't paying attention all the heat goes away. Fucking Vermont.

Its a funny job we are doing. This cruise line hired us to build a set for a cruise ship. The set is for the juke box musical, Rumours, the Fleetwood Mac album. You know the one, it has the song with the cool bass lick called Chains, with the lyrics, If you don't love me now, you will never love me again, I can still hear them saying, you must never break the etcetera and such. The job has a deadline, but we can't just work until the job is done. Next Thursday we have to get to West Leb so we can stay the night at a hotel and get on a bus at 5a so we can get to Logan Airport and fly to Clit Airport and rent a 24 foot truck and drive to a drape shop and pick up a million dollars worth of drapes and drive them to Fort Laudy where we do some install at a pseudo dry dock and then on Sunday I fly back to Logan and drive back to Vermont work on the set for a few days and Scott drives the truck and the rest of the drapes to the other side of Florida and I fly down and meet him there on Thursday, at which point we install some more drapes and then I guess we fly back to Logan and get back to Vermont and finish the set and Jony comes up to take the set down to Florida and me and Scott fly down to meet him and then we set sail with the set install it while the ship is at sea. After that I don't know what happens. It is possible we then fly to Asia to install more of the drapes somewhere between Tokyo and Bali. I guess. All of this, this entire itinerary is a moving target. It's funny and very odd. And a whole shit load of work. But its money and maybe I am asking the wrong question when I ask if it will ever add up to anything, because this is America, hard work is its own reward as the bridesmaids say, but I don't know, if all goes as planned, I am taking the entire month of February off, because, fuck you capitalism, you may be able to take my time, my heart and my soul, but I refuse to let you take my Valentines Day Month with my sweet curly red. February is for lovers! And Black History. Black History and lovers and lovers of Black History!

I had a dream last night that I was cutting Paddington's hair. It was wild. She had the most wiry, tangled gray hair that I couldn't even cut with the scissors. Also, there was a piece of gum stuck in the hair. When I noticed the gum I told her. Instead of letting me cut it out, she grabbed it and started chewing on it. Then she smiled at me. What kind of dream is that? It would be one thing if it was my hair or G's hair or something, but Professor Curly's mom, or mum, as it were. They call moms, mum, in New Hampshire by the way. And every four years the Queen or King of England gets more votes than any of the people running for president. I heard they are considering a vote to rejoin the Monarchy and would succeed to Canada if the measure passes. Its just a rumor, but they also elected that guy with a boot for a hat for mayor of one of their biggest cities that one time, so who knows, those wierdos are quite odd. Just yesterday their Republican party put out a statement that said, "if you can't afford health insurance you should just die," direct quote, but hey, gas is seven cents cheaper there than Vermont, so who is laughing now, huh? I'm not. Its a two hour drive to save that dollar and fifty seven cents. And by the time I get back home I have to turn around and do it all over again. Its unbelievable. Typical. Come January though, those gas prices will drop to nothing and all the Commie Bastards driving around their electric BolshovicMobiles will be crying snowflake tears into their liberal manifestos when they see all the real men raking in all the benefits from the anti-woke agenda, you'll see.

I am a fan of irony. I used to not be. Not because I didn't believe in it, in irony, but because it rings hollow when it gets used incorrectly. Irony can be quite telling. It is a debunker when used properly. For too long it has been a substitute for sarcasm. Specifically racism and misogyny. Ironic racism and ironic misogyny is still racism and misogyny, just mocking things does not make them ironic, do you know what I mean? What, because he's Black? or what, because she's a woman? That is not irony. Pointing out that something is something is not ironic. It's lazy writing and performance is all it is. But irony itself, pure irony, is going to be making a come back. Soon, and it is going to last for a very long time because things are about to get very ironic. I mean, go back to the joke I was just making about gas prices. Gas prices will never go down. They can't. First of all, unless, say, a global pandemic happens and nobody is driving, but between Capitalism and the nature of the oil industry, you can't have cheap gas and a booming oil industry at the same time. When gas is cheap the oil workers and oil businesses suffer. When gas is expensive, the car driver suffers. You can't be both pro car driver and pro oil worker at the same time. That is, unless you do something like nationalize the oil industry which, in America, will never happen. Therefore, guess what? Irony.

I mean, do we really need to have a discussion of irony? Would it be helpful? Like I said before, irony cloaks itself in mockery, sarcasm. True irony is more nuanced and frankly, more interesting. It is the way the world works. Almost a quantum understanding of things. You know? There are not two sides to all things. That lie is lazy and foolish, but there are two different perspectives because, like light and time, the world, the universe can only be measured in parallax. The way you see the world as a teenager is not the same as you see it as a middle aged man. I mean, speaking from experience. But my point of view is no more valid than a teenagers point of view. It isn't. I might be running a oil rig, but I need teenagers to work on that oil rig. Maybe not teenagers, but people younger than me. But those same youngsters don't have decades of savings and growth, they want cheap gas prices too so when they fill their cars up, trucks up, it doesn't cost too much. But then when the gas prices sky rocket, guess what? Here comes the good money.

I don't know. How did we get here? I don't mean that globally, I mean that about now, right now. My studio is hot. The tiny logs I have been pushing into the stove just burned a blister onto my right middle finger. A mouse or two ate the insides of the glove I use to put more wood inside of the stove. Outside it is brutally cold. A clear night. A full moon. There are two planets next to the moon. Bright as Uranus. And Uranus is nice. A zombie fly just started buzzing around. How do those fuckers do it? I assume that they hibernate once the air gets cold, but then what? Once the room gets hot they wake up and act like idiots? I was telling Professor Curly earlier that one of them flew into my cup of coffee and I fished it out with a fork and chucked it into the kitchen sink but the fucker didn't drown long enough so it dried out and started harassing me again. What the fuck? I mean, I take my coffee like I take my women; redheaded and listening to the Allen Parson's Project.

[Insert I am eye in the sky and I can read your mind]