cycloid sally

I made Harry give me Barris Mackey’s number and I called him to ask him about this thing at the Feuer Mansion. I really wanted to know how I was supposed to be dressed because I didn’t want to look like the freaking Little Match Girl again if it was going to be all dressed up people with makeup on. He seemed surprised I was going and not like he thought it was a great idea,. But he said I should dress ultra goth if I could.
Forager Girl says she can help me out.

So almost every weirdo I’m, met in the last month and a half showed up at Wednesday Wanderings and the air was just crackling. I didn’t understand a word of what anybody said to anybody and least of all what everybody said to me and to Forager Girl. The capper came when the Button Down Guy gave me and Forager Girl engraved invitations to some other big do at the Feuer Mansion and Harry accepted them for us.
I asked him what the, and he said we should go, just be careful and don’t do anything we know we shouldn’t, and also to be careful not to eat any food that is not in season, no matter how it’s done up. I asked what that meant, like no bread? Because bread is never in season or out of season. He just leered. And here I thought he had become a little less cryptic and forthcoming last night. The date of this do is December 11, four days from now on Sunday of all days.

I didn’t have to close tonight. I didn’t expect it but Forager Girl met me at the bookstore and walked home with me. She was upset about something but wouldn’t tell me what. We had noodles but noodles didn’t help. Chain called and said he was going to be late. Forager Girl made me so nervous I didn’t have the heart to hassle him about skanks. Barris and Harry showed up. That was weird too: I didn’t get a chance to open the door for them because Monkey somehow did it. I don’t know how: the chain was on. And that is very high on the door. Just once I’d like to catch him at it.
So anyway we all sat down – on the floor, we don’t have four chairs – and Barris and Harry told us this amazing yarn about the forces at work in the city and I’m not supposed to repeat any of it but I am supposed to believe it all. The thing is, I think I do, and so does Forager Girl, or at least I think I believe that something’s going on that may or may not be exactly as they say it is, but is probably of some similar nature. So I promised to be careful.
Now that I think about it, I realize I’m not supposed to repeat this to anybody “not in the house.” And at the moment that Harry said that, Chain walked in. Harry changed the subject, so I guess he didn’t want to talk to Chain about it right then, but I also get the impression that he knew Chain was in the house already.
Anyway, at least now I have a reason to pin all those weird people on.

Brunch at the Universal with Chain and Forager Girl. Harry and Barris showed up when we were about halfway through breakfast ( noyummy yummy jook, but I was really hungry and I had eggs over easy instead). I told Barris about my envelope full of invitations and he was quite concerned, so I ran back to the apartment and got it for him. He and Harry perused each and every one of them, turning them over and over and squinting at them in the light. Looking for watermarks? Why would there be watermarks on that kind of thing?
Anyway, Barris confirmed that none of them was a legitimate call for entries and said that a lot of the independent artists – he meant me! – were getting them. Forager Girl said she got some too. Then Barris asked if he could look at her work so we all got into Barris’s car, which is not big enough for five people – the back seat isn’t really meant for people, or at least not for grownups – but we managed. And so I got to see Forager Girl’s work.
She lives with a couple of uptight hipsters, wannabes who can’t figure out if they wannabe yuppies or wannabe bohos. But she gets the biggest room in the apartment and that’s actually where she works. Barris said she shouldn’t do that because of toxicity but she just shrugged. What do you expect from a person who eats the botanical equivalent of roadkill?
Well, her work. What can I say? We’re sisters. I think her stuff is slightly more edgy, and my stuff is slightly more complex, but we’re on a similar path, I think.
He gave her the same offer as me, and said we might consider a joint show, which makes sense to me.

I tried the matte finish fixative and it’s not great.
Then Chain made me walk all around the City with him and Monkey and he wouldn’t tell me why. It was the reservoirs, though we did a lot more than walk from each to each. He had the map.
Monkey was very interested in each of the reservoirs.
Then when we came home, completely exhausted, Harry said we should probably not do that walk a third time. How did he know we had done it at all, or that Chain and Monkey had done it before? And Monkey seemed to be arguing with him, or Harry seemed to be arguing with Monkey, but I was too tired to take much note of what Harry was saying. Monkey wasn’t saying anything, naturally, he’s a dog. What’s with Harry and the dog, anyway?
Chain showed me the metal collar that Monkey came with. It’s very heavy and the edges are not that smooth. Poor dog. He said that Monkey just showed up one day when Chain was hanging around at Moneybags Park and that was it. Chain gave him two-thirds of a panini sandwich and Monkey followed him around the rest of the day and came home with him, and a day or so later Chain got the collar off and translated. Mikey did it.

Forager Girl and I had a great day. We cooked lunch with the stuff she brought and it was fine, though odd, and I of course augmented it with noodles. I showed her what I was working on and some notes for some other stuff I’ve been thinking about and she asked all the right questions and gave me really useful critique. It was like drinking water on a really hot day, like hanging with Barris Mackey when he’s not going on and on about factions and politics. My next day off, or sooner if I don’t get one soon enough (fooey on Hugo), I’ll go to her place and look at her stuff. When she finally had to go I walked her down to the lobby and Harry met us there and made one of his usual remarks. He was really interested in the Cambodian piecework on one of her shoulder bags.

I want to go back and re-read everything I’ve ever seen about dynamic symmetry.

In other news, I’m getting weird mail. The kind of thing like those ads urging you to get some kind of credit card (Chain always talks me out of those and it’s annoying because I’d really like to use plastic now and then). But they’re not: they’re solicitations for art competitions, juried shows, and stuff like that. How did I get on those mailing lists? They’re so weird, not like the kind of letter you’d expect to get from galleries or foundations or schools or whatever – they look just like those credit card letters. Including the sticker that says “Yes” and the sticker that says “No.”
Chain says I should throw them away but I’ve been stuffing them in an envelope to show to Barris Mackey whenever I see him again.

Barris Mackey was at the Universal Café! And he paid for breakfast (yummy yummy jook, but Harry and Barris had huge plates of sausage and fried eggs and pancakes and and and). But they wouldn't talk about art. They kept talking about factions, and I tried to be a good girl and pay attention because who knows? someday maybe I won't be working in isolation, I'll have a whole "school" of mixed media artists that I belong to, and maybe this political stuff might become relevant. But it was boring. At least something concrete came out of it. Barris said if I wanted to have a show, to put together a new portfolio and call him -- and he gave me his number! -- and he'd introduce me around. He said under no circumstances was I to allow myself to be patronized before I had another public show, and especially not to take commissions from random people who seemed to know more than they ought to be able to. I guess Harry told him about that woman who keeps coming to the bookstore. She hasn't been back in a while and frankly I'd sort of forgotten about the intriguing cylinder project. For a minute there I felt like the naughty little girl who tried to get the liquor down from the top shelf.
So but that was good. That was not bad. That was an offer to get me a show when I have enough new work. I asked him how many pieces it took to make a portfolio and he said "I don't think you're going to like this, but it all depends." And then he laughed. "No, really, but you should have at least ten in your portfolio, and at least six of the pieces should be really new work."
That will keep me busy for months.
Work was work. A few quaint individuals, but nothing to get excited about. Found The Secrets of the Masters on the wrong shelf again, so I took some time to read it for a while.
After I got home I found a message from Forager Girl. I wish she had a real name. Forager Girl sounds like something out of a precious fantasy story, the kind with mystical sex in it. She was at Wednesday Wanderings last night, and she spent the whole time drawing these cool patterns. She said they were notes about what Harry was saying about universal symmetry, but I didn't get those from what he said. I didn't get much. I said so, and Harry, who was slouching around nearby, said that was a good thing and I should cultivate it. I said, "what, not getting things?" And he said yes.
Forager Girl and I are getting together tomorrow, when I am not working. I don't think Hugo has noticed that he has me working six days on a good week, seven sometimes, and only two days off in a row every month and a half. Or maybe he has and is playing dumb so he doesn't have to hire more help. That's probably it: my paycheck was way more than I expected again last time and when I tried to get him to fix it he said it was too much trouble and he'd take it out of some other check. The last time he said that he never did.
Note to self: remember to ask how come Monkey’s called that instead of a normal name.

I'm going to try spray fixative in a matte finish.
The Wheel of Things is almost done.
Harry told me to get him up for breakfast tomorrow and take him to the Universal. I think I'm supposed to pay. Well, he is an old guy with no visible means of support, so I guess it will not harm me to buy him breakfast at the Universal.
Tonight, Wednesday Wanderings again.

Barris Mackey was at the Universal but I couldn't hang out because I was due at work. He said he'd try to drop by the store but he didn't show. But he said hello to me, which means he remembers me, and that's something. Maybe he knows the answer to my problem with The Book of Crinkly Things.

So this has been, as usual, a weird weekend. For once Hugo and Josh gave me the weekend off, and I took it, because I forgot that Chain's off biking with Mikey and I would be on my own. Which, when you think about it, is actually a good idea for me, since it meant I'd be undistracted and free to work all weekend long. So I was undistracted, and Saturday I got up really early, before light, to get a lot of work done, and I got into one of those moods where everything I touched seemed all gray and unappealing and I kept dropping things and crap. So I was unproductive and bored and eventually I took off with Monkey for the longest dog walk I've ever taken. I didn't just head for a park or something and I didn't use the leash, which seems kind of demeaning with a dog like Monkey.
After a while I kind of let Monkey do the leading, and we went all over the City. It seemed like we were going to all the reservoirs. I guess Monkey likes the smell of water. But I thought that was funny, because of the map that Monkey brought to Chain. Like he knew that was a water system map and he wanted to take this walk and check in with all his favorite places.
The reservoir system is pretty well designed, actually. They're all set up a little above the local street level, and they're about equidistant from each other -- not on a square grid, though, I looked at the map when we got back and they're radially symmetrical, kind of like a Wheel of Water, and that got me all charged up about the Wheel of Whatever again and I made a whole bunch of things for it. It's coming along, in spite of the fact that I never glue anything down because I'm afraid I'll have to rethink the Wheel or some of its parts or I'll decide I made a bunch of things wrong.
So I worked all morning Sunday on the Wheel -- we got home after dark on Saturday and I was exhausted and all I could do was read the map and drink tea. Chain buys weird tea, by the way, with sinister images on the fronts: this one has a dragon, but it doesn't look like the wise, beneficent Chinese kind, it looks like an agent of darkness wants to devour somebody. And there's a trick of the lines that if you look at it sideways and tilted in the light it looks like one of those paintings of Hell where all these naked people are flailing around in molten lead. I study it even though it gives me the creeps because if it was done on purpose it was a magnificent piece of work. Even though it's alarming. Chain likes alarming art.
And then, right in the middle of putting teats on a lioness, it hit me: what I need for the Book of Crinkly things is something like gesso to hold the ink off the fibers of the paper, but clear. So the brown of the paper shows through. Or maybe I could tint the gesso to the same brown as the paper. Because I can't imagine anything that's clear that would act like that but isn't glossy, and gloss is the last thing I need.
But by then Birdy's was closed. Stupid Sunday hours.
I wish I knew an animal behavior specialist who could explain this thing about Monkey and the reservoirs.

If I cut the bags perfectly and feed them one at a time I can print on them, but it still looks like crap.
I've been passing by the Universal every day in case Barris Mackey is there. But he never is. I guess he doesn't come into the City all that much, after all.
I saw this guy out on the street today -- I swear he was that biker guy from the street fair. I'm seeing these weirdos all over the place now. I guess it's a small world. I know it's a small City, as Cities go.

I should talk about Thanksgiving but I've got something else on my mind
That lady with the spirograph shoes -- the first one, who wanted to buy my Wheel -- came into the shop again today with another proposal for me. She gave me her card. Her name is Alida. She doesn't want the Wheel anymore. Now she wants a cylinder as big as a person, with finely-drafted designs on it. LIke the ones I tried to copy from Harry that time, the ones in that book, I think.
She said she'd leave materials to me but she thought some translucency would be good. She says she'd like to fast track it but she knows it will take a long time to do. It's an intriguing project. What materials would you use? What immediately comes to mind is mylar or that parchmenty stuff, I forget what it's called, that you can get in big sheets. Then you could glue it or somehow bond it to a plexiglass or lucite tube. The lady's rich, she could have the cylinder specially made.
I told her I'd consider it.
We've been so busy I still don't know what Chain thought of the food I left for him the other night.

Harry stopped me on the way to the bookstore and gave me a book. Very puzzling. It's all designs, meticulously drawn by some nineteenth-century nutter, apparently nonrepresentational but gloriously complicated and symmetrical or dynamically symmetrical. Kind of like the ones that Harry drew that night at the Wednesday Wanderings. But for some reason the designs all have these strange metaphysical labels on them, which is why I call the artist a nutter instead of a genius draftsman.
He said I should study them but not reproduce them. When I asked why, he said it was because I was a twenty-first century City girl and not a nineteenth-century farm boy, which actually makes some sense.

A nice day in the shop. I only had to work for about three hours but I ended up staying for longer because Hugo had this storyteller in who was reading books and telling stories to a little gaggle of kids from the neighborhood. Really nice. Mostly quest ones, which are always interesting. And really nice pictures.
There's something familiar about that man. I can't think of who he is, but I've at least met him before. He didn't seem to recognize me especially, but he didn't seem especially interested in me either. I didn't catch his name
Oh, and Monkey came to the shop with me. I didn't invite him, he just came. I guess he's decided he likes hanging out in the bookstore. He was really calm and grave when the children pet him and sniffed the storyteller all over, including a rather rude place, which the storyteller was gracious about.
Then I came home and arranged blobs of Fimo on the Wheel and when I couldn't stand that any more I worked on the Book of Crinkly Things. I've been testing printing methods. The brown paper bags are a little hard to work with but to my mind they are essential to the project, since nothing else crinkles just right.

Got some amazing things at the farmer's market but will they keep till Thanksgiving?

Okay, this week has been strange enough. First, the coincidences. Chain and I met the same weird person at about the same time, it seems like, but on opposite ends of the city. I wonder how that works. Chain says I must be mistaken about when she walked into the store, but I know what time it was because I was doing the midday register snapshot (Josh insists, though it's stupid, and I only hope he doesn't get any more efficiency and accuracy ideas). So that was weird. She's pretty strange but I get a good feeling about her. She was toting around like four bags, each one different and filled with different found things. Sometimes I do art pieces with found things so we have something in common there, though what she was saying was that she does her whole life mostly with found things. I told her about the Wednesday Wanderings -- just for her amusement -- and she was more than interested, she was stoked. She says she's there. Well, there'll be another person in the store who's not eligible for Social Security, anyway. Other coincidences: I keep running into people who seem to know all about my work but they act like they're talking about something else. There's that lady that Harry said not to trust, and there's that Button-Down Guy who showed up again from who knows where and he was I swear he was talking about the Book of Crinkly Things. What's that about?
Actually, somehow, I kind of like Button-Down Guy, though Chain doesn't. Chain doesn't like anybody.
Second, there was Wednesday Wanderings, as usual. That's where Button-Down Guy showed up at. Forager Girl didn't, but she had said she might not make it this week but she'd probably come later on. Wednesday Wanderings is weird enough for any week. Something weird always happens. Always. This time it was some kind of psychodrama that erupted between the
guy who takes the weird notes and this lady I had never seen before. She was kind of overdressed by the standards of the Santos, sort of like the lady who wanted me to make a Wheel of Animals for her own self, with those same shoes that Harry objected to before, with the spirograph buckles. Anyway, about an hour into the lecture she interrupted with a question I did not understand about the role of moon phases and tides in -- the harmony of the spheres? That can't be right, that's too medieval. But it was something that sounded like that.
And note taker guy accused her of complicity in murder. Essentially. It took a lot more words and back and forth than that, but that was about what it amounted to. She naturally got huffy and she accused him right back and it went on like that for several minutes, Harry just laughing that weird soundless laugh he has and having a high old time. Finally he raised his
hand and said there was a time and a place for everything, and that this bookstore was not the place nor his lecture the time for factional infighting. They subsided right away but they were doing that dagger gaze thing ever after. So that was weird. I couldn't tell if anybody else in
the store knew what any of that was about, but Harry, who for once stayed behind while I cleaned up, though he did not actually help, wouldn't answer any questions at all.
So Harry's also involved in the other weird thing this week. He commanded my presence at some high-tone art wank event at the Feuer Mansion. I thought what they did at the Feuer Mansion was bigger deal stuff than simple art exhibits, but I guess I was wrong. He didn't tell me till the last minute where I was going, exactly -- I only went because Josh and Hugo and Chain all agreed that I should probably go because it would be interesting if Harry cooked it up, and he did tell me that it was someplace where artists would be, which made me think it would be a tumbling-down shanty on the beach at Avila Landing, but no, it was the Feuer Mansion and Harry didn't tell me until our ride came and I didn't have time to go change my clothes. "You're dressed perfect," Harry said.
And then his ride -- oh my, it was Barris Mackey, who is one of my heroes, this Renaissance man from the old days. I don't mean the literal Renaissance. I mean he does all these different kinds of art, and he also has a radio show, and he writes a column for a webzine. And he looks like he's maybe half the age of Harry Smith, which means he looks like he's at least eighty (which is about right, if I remember his bio right). So that was exciting, even though I was dreading the whole Feuer Mansion thing.
Which was about as bad as I thought it would be. How any of those guys have any time for art after they've finished gussying themselves up I'll never know. The event I never did figure out what it was for, but it was this immense party, filling up almost all of the bottom floor of the mansion, and there was practically no place to sit. Everybody was milling around showing off for each other. Barris and Harry abandoned me immediately though I tried hard to tag along. I ended up having these awkward conversations with men who were wearing makeup and they weren't even in drag. I mean these guys were in tasteful, subtle makeup, like they were actors in a movie just trying to look good, not like they were playing around or anything. Two of these guys seemed to be hitting on me and I couldn't figure out why. I just pretended I didn't notice, which is what Chain says he does. I don't have a lot of practice dealing with men hitting on me which is why I wasn't even sure. I wished Chain was there, or Monkey even, or that Harry and Barris had not abandoned me.
There was music. I can't even describe it. It was live, and it was very sophisticated I guess, but there was like a note every five minutes and some of them were painfully loud and some of them werfe too quiet to be heard even if you were pretty close.
So the art. Well, there was a lot of it, by the time you had gone all around the whole mansion, but it seemed like there wasn't very much of it for the amount of space. I'd like to be all superior and say it wasn't any good, that it was empty and soulless and totally sold out, but honestly, a lot of it was good. There were a couple pieces I wish I had done, actually. I guess maybe that was the point of me being there. Harry maybe wanted to show me that there's a place for my work in the City, but I honestly am not sure I could stand to operate at those levels. On the way back we stopped at the Universal Cafe where everybody seemed to know Harry and Barris, and well, they all know me too, so that was weird in a different way, an "excuse me, I didn't know we were family" kind of way, kind of good. So Barris and I had a long talk about art and Harry laughed at us the whole time and then Harry and I walked home because we were only a couple of blocks away and Barris drove back to Avila Landing.
Maybe the next time Harry wants to drag me somewhere he'll take me to Barris Mackey's place instead.

Two things: I found a book that will revolutionize my work. The Secrets of the Masters is an old old book about how the Renaissance painters mixed their paint, what they painted on, and how they figured out stuff like perspective and composition. I am so mixing my own paints real soon.
Second thing: One of the weirder Wednesday Wanderings people is a completely regular looking business lady and I swear she has ESP or something because she just asked to commission me to do something I'm already doing. Harry warned me off her, and insulted her shoes, but the only remarkable thing I could see about them is that they had a fancy buckle, with a design on them sort of like something you'd get off a spirograph toy.

11/10
Bella

That Harry Smith guy is a trial upon my life, I do swear. I got stuck with the Wednesday Wanderings again last night but honestly all I wanted to do was to get back to the house and make Fimo animals. I have a better idea about what the wheel of animals ought to be like, and it's like all I can think about for any amount of time, not even the Book of Cirnkly Things gets my attention for long.

So I took Chain's advice and I brought Monkey along and that was amusing. He seemed to think it was his personal job to inspect and pass on all the people who came to the shop. I swear he wasn't going to let a couple of them in, but Harry said it was okay! And then he gave me one of those looks. He keeps giving me those looks and I don't know if he wants to do one of those old men seduces the young women thing and he's trying to mesmerize me but I'm not falling for any Svengali number. Just give the damned talk, and let me sell the books and give out the tea and cookies.

Hugo came round for part of the evening this time. He approved of Monkey being there. It had me worried for a while, because most people don't trust dois in stores. But Monkey isn't just any dog. He's my bodyguard. Chain said so.

So most of the evening was just like the other one but all of a sudden Harry was going on about D'arcy Thompson. This weas odd, because I thought Harry was strictly into the metaphysical stuff, or at least his audience is, but D'Arcy Thompson is straight science as far as I know. Growth and form. Form follows function. Function follows form. Everything is beautiful because beauty is function and form and everything.

But he wasn't talking about beauty. He was talking about revelation. All of a sudden from nowhere he dragged out this huge poster I think he hand-did hnimself with fountain pen and colored inks. It was a geometric design, more or less, kind of organic in a way, kind of architectural in a way, symmetrical, incredibly detailed. I immediately wanted to make one myself. Especially when he began pointing to places on the design and saying stuff about the music of the spheres and the rhythm of the stars, like not hyperbole but as if there was something precise and telling about that. I don't know. I made a little sketch of a piece of it, and Harry looked me in the eyes and said, "Not yet you don't, kiddo."

Which was unnerving and I lost my place and the drawing I ended up making wasn't much like the thing I was trying to copy, and he seemed to notice that and take great satisfaction from it. One of those ones that Monkey hadn't really wanted to let in, a woman who was here last week, also gave me a look and raised her eyebrow at Harry. Who naturally smiled a really dirty smile back at her. I don't know why she didn't stomp out. I would have. Ick.

She's a pretty strange duck herself. She came and asked to look at my drawing afterwards and I showed it to her and she like critiqued it or something. What's that for? She seemed to think she knew what she was tlaking about but her suggestions were all "put a dot over here, probably," and "that line is too close to the other." Like she knows.

I know I sound like a cranky brat but I'm tired. And I won't see Chain hardly all weekend because I'm working hours and hours extra so the lover boys can go have a twenty-third honeymoon down the peninsula.

Guy Fawkes Day. I can almost remember what it's about. I wish we had bonfires and fireworks here. But it's something to do with religion, right? That would be a problem. Anything to do with religion gets a scary gloss here in the City. I gather they're more relaxed about it in England, at least nowadays, after having had wars and crap over it for a long time.

I must I must I must remember this. Chain and I went up to the Upper Santo Street Fair. Dog knows why they waited until now to have it. It could rain at any minute, though the lady at the shave ice booth said that in thirty-five years of having the street fair on the first weekend in November it's never rained once. (dog it was cold, why on earth did we even buy that thing? It hurts to eat shave ice on a cold day, just freaking hurts) Anyway, it was a fun fair with lots of artworks going on in it. This one guy had a table -- I don't know what it was for, but he had these rectangles of yellow varnished plywood about the size of a standard bathroom mirror -- four or five or so, maybe a frew more than that but not a lot. And the plywood was like those displays people used to make for science fairs and agricultural exhibitions and stuff but they weren't informative like a real one, they were strange and mysterious. The one he showed me had samples of materials -- every damned thing, a two-inch square of turquoise green carpeting, a hardened ribbon of red acrylic paint squirted out of a tube, a sparkplug, no sense at all. But get this. There was sense to it. There were about a hundred of these little metal cups nailed to the board, and there were samples in say maybe sixty of them, more than half anyway, and he showed me how the objects were ordered by color, by their place in the spectrum, which kept repeating over and over, and he hinted there was some pattern in the way the spectrum repeated itself but Chain was getting impatient and wanted to pull me over to the teriyaki wings table and I followed him, trying to figure out what the guy was trying to tell me about it.
Something about the next object -- its color and, what? material? shape? Provenance? Some moral aspect? and like he expected me to do something about it.
The next color was indigo. I got that. And what's scary is that the wheel of stacked animals is indigo. I think that weird guy knows I've been working on it and wants me to finish it. But that's crazy. I've never seen him before, so I hardly think he's ever seen me before. Most of the people who know me don't even know about the wheel of animals unless they read this journal. (and that's nobody but Chain and ritaxis, right?) And Chain doesn't pay attention to it except when I'm whining about it. The elephant stack that Monkey took away, and like that. And even then he doesn't pay much attention to it. It's just art and he has to pretend to be an utter philistine and not care about art at all in case he might happen to hate something I do and then he thinks he'd be in a tight spot. But it's not true. He's not required to like what I do. Got that, Chain? Nobody gives a shit whether you like my artwork, so you can stop pretending you don't know anything about art.

You know, just entertaining for a moment the idea that maybe that guy at the street fair had the slightest idea who I am and what my work is -- maybe he's one of Chain's bike messenger buddies, in which case why didn't they greet each other like they knew each other? -- but just entertaining that idea for a second, wouldn't it have made sense if any of the other materials samples had anything special to do with my work? But they didn't, as far as I could tell.

Oh, and I found one of the missing elephants in the lobby today.

Well, that was weird. I guess it was mainly unpleasant, but not very. Josh and Hugo pretty much abandoned me to do the gig on my own. I'll probably find double time in my paycheck or something but I didn't expect them to cut out like that.
I'll say this. Harry is an odd duck. He starts every conversation with this blank leer -- honestly I think he doesn't know what planet he's on and he's stalling for time so he can pick up clues before he gets into it. The old coots that came in to hear him talk weren't phased by any of it. They just nodded their heads when he talked and they asked questions that as far as I could tell had nothing to do with what he was talking about but that seemed to be all right because his answers seemed to have nothing to do with the questions they asked. And yet. They all seemed to think they were making sense.
Well, it was billed as "Wednesday Wanderings," and I suppose that's what it was, really. Wanderings through the mystical brains of Harry and his followers.
I have to admit I was kind of disappointed, because Hugo said Harry was going to talk about the pull of pattern, whatever that might be, and I thought that he would maybe just hit on this thing that's been happening to me lately but not, as far as I could figure.
He had quite a lot to say about paper airplanes and the rhythm patterns of disco and techno music.
I was down there till one o'clock, folding tables and sweeping up cookie crumbs. It's a good thing the store is only a few doors down from our partment, because if it had been any farther, I would have slept over. It was creepy out there!
I shouldn't have said that. Chain, you are simply not allowed to go all protective and knightly on me. You will not walk me home from the bookstore when I'm there late at night. Though next time I may bring Monkey.

In other news, I have a plan for the Book of Crinkly Things. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, only the choices of which pages to go to will be determined by a mathematical sequence. Why may necessitate numbering the pages out of sequence to get it all to work. I have other technical problems anyway so I won't be starting it too soon. I have to figure out how to run brown paper bag paper through the printer. Should I crinkle the paper before or after it has been printed on? And I have to decide aboiut text. Part of me wants a strong text presence, and poart of me thinks that's hokey and the visuals should speak for themselves.

I wish Monkey hadn't ditched that stack of elephants. I wish there had been lasagne left. How did it go so fast -- were there a jillion bike messengers in the apartment while I was listening to Harry? Or skanks?