cycloid sally

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?