back from New Jersey. we went to help Beth's mother move, and also to chill out. Beth's mother and aunt have lived together for the past 2 years. in which time they discovered that their living together compatibility didn't quite exist, being as one is highly energetic and tother highly laid back. they go to their separate corners, the aunt leaving the place she lived in so long by the shore, the sale of which house will help finance the future. Beth's aunt had contracted a painter to paint her new condo before the move. this painter, tho he had a deadline to meet, did practically nothing except outrageously ask for more money, tho he'd been paid half, which was a bad move on the aunt's part to begin with. so with clock ticking (oh god, Reader, I've bored you already!), and in the face of perfected unreliability, the aunt fires the painter's ass. the aunt colourfully said on the phone to him, I don't care if you're Michelangelo painting the Pope's prick. so upshot, or upshit as I initially typed, Beth and I offered to do the painting. and when we got to the condo, a suspicious watery sound greeted us. water leaking from the valves of both toilets, and thru the ceiling, tra la. should I say long story short at this point? it appears our painter friend, when collecting his gear, tampered with these valves. he also scrawled a nasty note on the wall. so someone to dry out that mess, plus police report, plus change of locks. the plumber enjoyed piecing together a possible scenario (we supplied the motive for the alleged crime). one toilet could be a normal screwup but two incriminates... the guy knew that I wasn't going to be indigenous to this condo, but he took the trouble, inspired by native exuberence, to show me how he adjusted the ball thingie so that the tank wouldn't fill quite so much. I admit the workings of toilets are rather fascinating, but I'm sure what I witnessed was not quite the wonder that he saw. Beth and I did our best to paint during all that commotion. it got worse when the fans and dehumidifiers were set up, hellish noise. and air conditioning was turned off for a while, then nobody could figure out how to get it back on, with the temperature close to 90. so, basically, didn't relax much. I'm an inexperienced painter and born slob, so it is especially difficult for me to bear down and not paint the carpet, myself and everything else. at one point the neighbours, a young couple with their 1st baby due, came by, offering drinks, and the husband, former professional painter, helped for an hour. which meant a lot to us, the gesture. Beth cried. and so. the aunt has lived in the same place for some 40 years, has bigger than big issues about that, to the point of not wanting to sell her place, tho that money is integral to a lot of things going right. basic shit + fan meeting, as we learned driving back last night and so. I don't want to talk about it. well listen, I brought Tony Towle's Memoir with me. I had read it before and enjoyed it again. TT was lucky enough to live in a milieu of O'Hara, Koch, Berrigan. he's neither awed or ascerbic, is charmingly unassuming. I'd love to read more such memoir. he mentions his and Frank Lima's stagefright at their 1st big poetry reading. and Paul Blackburn somehow going on too long, so that people actually left the reading. I could name names of a couple poets who went on too long. one poet was boring from the beginning so that anything was too much, but the other had some good chops. I survived 2 Ginger Baker drum solos when I saw Cream lo these many, so I have a good sense of just taking it too far. the poet wated to read the entire chapbook, which was of a piece, but the poems blurred after a while (he'd read other stuff as well) and the clock tried and tried to say no. anyway, I haven't read Ron Padgett's portait of Joe Brainard but I'll bet it's good. Brainard seems so likeable. I've read 2 memoirs of Berrigan. Tom Clark's is workmanlike, as is everything that he does. Ron Padgett's is much warmer and useful. I don't connect too often with other artists, this wee blog is about the extent, but memoir is a sort of writing I'd like to do. would that I were interesting. anyhoo, I wrote some 10 pages while away, thick with New York and poets identified with it. it's a way of reacting to and imbibing my reading without the nature of thesis. I'll probably put a bit of it up, as well as some of the pictures I took. I also managed to read some of a history of the Latter Day Saints. otherwise it was eat, paint, and drive between the three basecamps. you know, New Jersey has a lot of traffic. perhaps the proper authorities could be informed about this.