Vibrations

I am tired tired.

Yesterday, for an instant, I held the aroma of a fresh cup of coffee in my nose and noticed that my body was completely relaxed. I could not remember the last time I had started sipping coffee with so little anxiety. Most days, as I anticipate the caffine's effects, I already have a restless electricity buzzing through my limbs, drying out the moisture in my meat. I was surprised to admit to myself that this affliction (if I can call it that) hasn't felt too bad.

Today I worked at Heller Gallery on 14th street with Kenny and his dog Shadow. The gallery shows and brokers glass work from all over. I held pieces in my hand that cost more money than I have ever made in a single year. A few pieces in the current exhibition were sheets of glass that had varying grades of color running horizontally across them. (Okay, I'm too tired to fully explain them and I don't remember the artist.)

I write about these pieces because the textures of the glass and the deep color grades would make them literally vibrate in the eye. Staring into one of them, I felt as if I was looking at the physical form of a song or a voice. It was a sine wave making a personal appearance, a cameo of the electricity from deep inside peering at me under a muted surface of cloudy, gorgeous ice. It looked just like I thought a soundwave would look like if ever I met one. It also recalled for me Dylan singing "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face" in "Visions of Johanna" a song that, even two years into living here, is the greatest song I have ever heard about New York City.

I wanted to purchase one of the glassworks for 9,000 dollars. But I'll have to work a few more days at the GAllery to make that kind of money.

As I swept up the sidewalk one of the managers of the gallery came out to give me a dust pan.

"This is what your parents sent you to school for," he said to me in a pleasant voice. I didn't feel the need to tell him that after the Fall of 1989 when I spent 7 of the 11 thousand dollars I had for college on an 84 Ford BRonco that never ran right, I paid for school myself. (Who cares, really.) And I certainly didn't have time to explain to him how a job like sweeping or packing and unpacking crates of artwork can, aside from paying rent, be a welcome change from doing work where you are rarely sure that the work is DONE. At least here I could see and know what I'd done and not worry about anyone seeing it much differently.

Um, sleep is winning this one. I'm too tired to go on