5/14/98.. Energy rush.

Seasonal infectious enthusiasm: the Spring disorder. Peas are up, leaves are out (except for the cautious ash), lawn is lush, lilacs are verging, the town floats are in, and Delano and Sandy have moved aboard the houseboat.

It was the first boat in this year, and woodsmoke has been pluming up from Jimmy's dock since mid-April. A true vessel, unlike most of the local houseboats, it's a 40' barge you clamber down into, rather than a stickbuilt cottage on foam billets. Delano also has a big steel sloop, which he plans to launch in June. Supporting these habits is probably why they ran out of rent money last month, and had to slide the barge in early.

I met Delano my first day in Bowdoinham. He was the harbormaster then, drove a six-wheeled surplus amphibious vehicle, and packed a 45 on his hip. My first crack was, "I didn't know they let you shoot the fish." He laughed.

A gap-toothed pirate with grand mustache, Delano favors a Greek fisherman's cap, and carries a concealed weapon. The bumper sticker on his 4X4 diesel pickup reads MORE GUNS: LESS LAWYERS. Last summer he married his new lady love, Sandy, out on Brick Island. She's a petite blond grandmother, who wears teen fashions, and is tough as nails. Sweet, too.

Monday the three of us drove over to Eric's for some boat oak. Sandy perched on her cushion snuggled up against her man. I needed rails and ribs. Delano had picked up a salvage canoe that wants gunwales. Eric and his wife were running the mill when we pulled in, and finished sawing the pine log that was on the carriage. I noticed that he was wearing a section of truck innertube on his left leg, where he leans his weight against the logs. She probably got tired of mending his jeans.

It's always a treat to watch a couple of pros run antique machinery. No wasted moves, just a steady rhythm, rolling the logs, setting the dogs, feeding the big circular blade, and tailing off. Flip, clip, snip, and stack. Then he shut down the loud stationary.

"What can I do for you," Eric smiled, a slight man made of whipcord, with a patient manner.

He led us to a stickered stack of red oak boards, inch thick, foot wide, 14 feet long. $2 a foot. We yanked the two longest planks out of the stack and jammed them under Delano's toolbox on the bed, then traded lies. I passed Eric a Franklin. Delano and I will sort it out later. Last year he cut and sewed a new mainsail for sharpie. It all comes around.

Like the seasons. This week I finished feeding and spading the garden plots, despite the 9 days of rain. That was between downpours. I also scuttled back and forth from house to shop, moving my wood collection. Peggy could be right: I may have enough wood. I figure it took 40 hours to get it all reinstalled. Now the Eagles is ready to soar.

A serious archeological investigation, digging through 14 years of impacted sawdust. All the lost pieces of flyaway projects. Buried machines (TWO lathe beds?). Every precious scrap of exotic wood I couldn't bear to toss in the fire. After the third day of digging I began to chuck rosewood on the burn pile by the armload. Not that I didn't put plenty of old treeflesh in the new bins. When will I ever get more Hormigo? Or Bubinga? Of course I could spend a lifetime making pocket carvings out of the hoarded fragments, but that's beside the point. YOU NEVER KNOW when that last shard of Sapele will be just the thing.

The parlor floor groaned as I relieved it, and I swear the ridge line straightened up. That front room is actually a nice airy volume, with the toymaker moved out. Peggy wants to turn it into a white space. Sheetrock, paint, trim, new floor, a futon, Bryceart. Let it breathe. I was glad to beat the last of the dust off and empty the vac.

New winds are blowing through the "business", too. Last week I got a call from a gallery owner in Portland who had gotten an earful from a commission customer. She asked if I'd like to show there this summer. When I took in some samples she jumped at my Elvis, and proposed I fill one of her show windows across from the Art Museum for July and August. Nice exposure. Gave me carte blanche.

I see this as an excuse to pursue my Culture Heroes series. The American Planets. I've done Franklin (our Mercury) and THE KING (Pluto?) with a shaky leg. How about a mechanical MARILYN (Venus on the subway grate)? I've long envisioned a cycle of figures, like the occult decans of the zodiac, standing for the points of our cultural compass. As the people of the lawn, our mythic emblems should take the form of lawn ornaments in a circle, of course. So I've started painting the MARILYN ornament.

This is while I cogitate on how to make wooden skirts rise up in a wind. I figure MARILYN and THE KING, as ornaments and mechanical sculpture is a reasonable ambition for this window. I also imagine masks and tangibles, maybe a hound dog in blue (suede) shoes, and a feline poseur (possess?). Meanwhile I'm steeping in 50's images. A curious calling.

The web is a trove for this stuff, which might be a warning to us. I've looked at maybe 400 pictures of the Glitter Goddess, printed 40 odd and collaged them. Even have the quicktime of those memorable skirts in The Seven Year Itch. It's fascinating how tame that bit of celluloid exposure seems now. Just a bit of thigh, unlike all the stills we've come to remember the instant by. It's as though we have to revisualize our sexual history to excuse our former innocence.

And she actually had a woman's body, unlike the anorexic wraiths of today's dreaming, and small tits. Who'd have thunk it? Or guessed how hard it is to capture that face. A mask indeed. Out of all those takes only one or two faces have the clunk of recognition. Maybe we (boys) weren't looking at her face.

So I'm out in the Eagles drawing pouts, with Elvis on the box, cycling down to Jeanine's for free lunch and doing a daily watercolor at noontime, piecing oak into sharpie in the afternoon dry, whacking at the grass (a continuous ritual in May), then back to the acrylics and sawdust. Got an e-mail inquiry about a large wall sculpture for a restaurant this morning. Spinning like a new top.