{my topography}

18 hour days. New muscles in my wrists. Thousands of square feet of paint and flooring. More rain. I’m so tired I could almost sleep standing up. Polyurethane fumes, and the report of the pneumatic nailer over and over again.

Last night listening to the radio at 2:30 am we realized we’ve become their target audiance: depressed, financially strapped, and awake doing things we’d rather not be doing.

But somehow we keep putting one foot in front of the other. Friends came and helped us move the big stuff and left us with maple candy and red wine, and soon the floors will be dry and we’ll be able to sleep early and deep wrapped in the sound of rural silence: a chorus of frogs and owls welling up. Tomorrow we’ll be sleeping somewhere else. Not sure where yet, but somewhere.

Gratitude that the rain has stopped, at least for now. That sun, hot and bright, is pouring down on the fields of dandelions and lilac hedgerows. That my body, sore as it is, allows me to do this: to keep these hours, to tile, to rip out the ugly bathroom vanity upstairs plying it with a sledge hammer and crowbar, delicately so as not to destroy the wall. That my inlaws have been here all week, caring for Bean, making meals, helping to paint.

Gratitude at looking up and seeing a bowl full of dark ink and stars spilled out across the heavens.

Gratitude at driving the washboard bumpy road to the house and seeing a fox slink into the high grass almost every evening, a wisp of orange, a fleeting hint of wildness.

Gratitude standing under the apple trees and hearing the hum of a thousand bees, the air pulsing with their honey-gathering vibrations.

Gratitude that today we start flooring, and that when the inlaws leave my dearest friend and her boyfriend are coming to help us move.

So much to be thankful for, even now when every muscle in my body aches. When my head zings from lack of sleep. When, as I type, I can feel tenderness in all the tiny ligaments in my wrists and fingers.

This process is something like labor: there is no alternate way out. We must simply make do. Confronting each day and moment with everything we can give, and trusting we’ll get there. Now, only a handful of days.

The furrows between my brows have gotten deeper this month. No time to breathe, uncoil, rest. Everything is push-pull, pell mell, full throttle. More than can be done, must be. And every off color remark, every comment that could be recieved as criticism, IS.

In this picture, my eyelashes are wet from tears. Haphazard, overtired tears. Hormonal, exhausted tears. Tears because of nothing I can remember today.

We’re living off of large cups of gas station coffee, purchased on the way to the house, and determination. I dream of sleep, of a dry basement (many of my paintings were ruined), and SUN (it has now rained for a week and a half, non-stop.)

So this is a different introduction. Another side of me, careworn, frowning, furrowed, exhausted. One more week, and then we move–even though we won’t have a kitchen yet.

DH and I have realized that we really, really, need super powers to finish the house. Baring that possibility, it won’t be finished when we move in. So we’re at the point of creating priority lists: we need a shower, washer, dryer, toilet, sink. We need floors. Currently we have none. GAAHHHHHH!

Here are some pretty pictures to distract you while I work.

Oh, and did I mention, it’s STILL raining? The basement in our apartment is under 8 inches of water…along with all of our boxes in “storage.” When it rains, it pours, right?

So it’s been RAINING for days and days here. I’m growing gills. The fields are slick lakes, flooded with rain. The road a narrow ribbon snaking between shimmering expanses of blue.

Every available hour is spent at the house. No time to sit back, put my feet up, write. Bean turned 15 months, and I’ve been composing a post about this in my head, packed with the immense unbounded gratitude I feel at having him in my life, but it hasn’t made it to the page. Nothing has, though my computer (after repairs were done in safe mode) seems to be behaving, which is a huge sigh of relief.

The downstairs bathroom has tile! Today, grout. And pictures. I’m bringing the camera today.

15″ x 30″ mixed media collage.

Here are some up-close shots.

***

Of course, the good ideas always hit at the least convenient times: in the shower maybe, when I’m out on a run, or just drifting off to sleep—any place far from pen and paper. I know why this happens. My mind will start to dislocate then, slipping out of the present and into the luminous space between what is real and what is imagined.

Then, images like bright sun spots start to dance across my internal page. Sometimes I’ll see an entire picture, as though the bulb on a slide projector were suddenly flipped on and the scene dances towards me on the particles of light. Other times I get only a slight inkling. A whisper of theme or color, wending it’s way into the chinks of my busy mind, catching my attention the way the tiny rainbows do, that scatter out about a café, refracting light from the diamond on a lady’s finger as she raises her cup to sip café au lait.

For days after I get an idea, I’ll carry it around in my mind like a pocket full of sea glass, carelessly fingering each smooth shard a hundred times. Then in an evening after the house is quiet and my baby is asleep, I’ll pick out a canvas, and begin, smudging the page with dark blues or pale ochres and white. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know the colors of the rainbow—nor can I remember not knowing how colors blend: my young fingers holding stubby beeswax crayons already understood that bright yellow mixed with emerald would make the chartreuse hue perfect for drawing new foliage.

Color always comes first, for me, followed by shape and the juxtaposition of realistic sketches and collage. It is rare that I am able to put into words what I will paint before I do. Even when I think I know exactly what I want to draw, I also know it will be different from what I’ve imagined when I’m through. This is the secret I am always learning: painting is about the unexpected, the crazy, haphazard, willy-nilly, process of imagination, and it cannot be defined or controlled.

Each time I come to the canvass with my brushes, my pallet thick with paint, and my heart wide open. Then I follow with bold marks the wild flight of my imagination through some internal landscape of wonder.

PS–I’ve added this one to my gallery.

“….but you know that 98% of my daily happiness comes from my laptop,” and then I gasped, because I really just said that. And because it’s true.

I use my laptop more than any other tool: for writing, photo editing, web stuff, music. And tonight after I came out of the bedroom from putting Bean to sleep, it had gone and fried itself. Just like that. Nothing works. It will start, but refuses to run any programs. It sounds like a jet preparing for take off. And me? I’m like an old Datsun spinning in deep mud without it.

So anyway, I’m typing on DH’s computer. I hate his keyboard (it feels HUGE because I’m used to using my laptop keypad), and it’s in his office, being used all day, so until the situation resolves itself, I’ll be forced into an internet sabbatical. Probably I’ll be feeling the effects of this more than you will–but still. Feel my pain. Whimper with me.

Sound • track: a thin strip at the edge of a movie reel or videotape on which sound or the soundtrack is recorded

At the edges of my mind there is a narrative, a song, a whisper, a laugh, a sob, a steady pulse. Even in the wildest times, the times most pressed with worry, when there is little air and even less time for reflection, if I listen, I hear it. In the place between the reality of every day, and the wonderment of dreams, is the thin strip of lyrics, the soundtrack that plays out across my consciousness, defining my world.

In bed just before sleep; in the car driving the half hour stretch between our house and apartment listening to jazz on VPR; in the shower with hot water running in rivulets between my shoulder blades where wings would be, if I could fly; or standing at the stove stirring soup, I hear it. This is when I tune in to the words that slip edgewise into the conversation I keep with myself. The things I hardly say out loud, or never. The things of intuition and inkling, that shape my drive, my fears, my love.

Right now I’m trying consciously to tune in. It is hard to do. The dialogue is illusive and when I try to pin it down, it is as though static is lacing the airwaves. When I listen closely I hear this: below the joy of being offered a job I’m excited to accept, and beyond the worry of finding a daycare program for Bean that will nurture him, is the battle cry of my creative self begging not to be abandoned with these upcoming changes.

It is startling to find myself here, on the brink of so much change, again. It’s been just over a year since change tore through our lives like a river in flood, redistributing everything, shifting our very geography, altering our sense of home.

Last May we were packing our house in CT and trying to imagine what life here would be like. I remember sitting at our kitchen table (I loved where it stood, in a nook off the kitchen with a big bay window facing the backyard) looking towards the living room, the hall, the front door, noticing with sudden clarity and attention how familiar those angles and rooms were were. Noticing the quality of light on the tiled kitchen floor; the Prapluie-Revel umbrella poster between the front windows, the jars of sugar and rice on the counter, and wondering how it would be not to call that space “home.” Our first real estate investment, a noteworthy stamp in the passport of adult hood.

This May everything is different, and yet we’re packing again. On the brink of moving to a place saturated with promise. Like honey comb, drenched with sweetness this house is drenched with our hopes, our longings, our dreams. Everything in it bears the mark of what we have become: a family.

This time, as everything shifts; as the river fills with spring rains and floods its banks, and the shape of the valley is forever altered, I want to be more conscious about holding on to the things I’ve grown to love: my artist self, my writer self; my camera’s lens, my runner’s thighs. Looking back I’ve started to see how easily these things slip to the margins of my life, when other louder more demanding things push to the fore. This time I want to keep an ear to the ground, attune to the beating of my heart. This time I need to remain whole, even as my life divides.

The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

–Mary Oliver

Carefully pressed into the small nooks of my mind are thoughts waiting to be shaken out, like sheets after a winter’s storage in cedar scented drawers. I’m aching to tell you about a painting I’ve finished, to let down my hair and write wildly, with gusto. But not today. Today, my mind feels like the fine shards of slate that sheer away from the main piece, exposing layers of mineral color; patterns variegated and delicate. Too much in too little time, still. Every moment at the house, now often with Bean in tow (and like the trooper he is, he plays with wrenches and ratchets in the Pack&Play, narrating to himself softly in babblespeak.)

Yesterday, the rollercoaster of sheer delight: the job. A first grade position at a school very near my house; abundant with professional development, resources, support. I can see this next transition—shifting back into the mode of teacher, but with the newly gained clarity, patience, organization, and rest that this year off has afforded me. I can imagine loving the daily challenge, the vibrancy of full-force ahead involvement, the laughter and camaraderie of colleagues. And graduate classes. Finally.

But today dawned drenched with rain and dark, and with the weather came other somber thoughts: finding Bean a just right morning daycare program (DH can pick him up at noon every day) looms now more daunting than any job search ever did. How do I do this? What should I look for? Ask? Say? (Advice please.)

Sunday I’ll get to write, and finish another painting—but tomorrow, it’s all day at the house again. We’re painting, and during our breaks, we saunter about inspecting the wild thicket of green and blossoms everywhere. Here, I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. Some pictures:

Oh–and and I absolutely HEART you all for all the sweetness of last post’s comments.

I got the job!! 150+ applicants. 10 interviewees (is that really a word?), 2 final candidates, and I was it. WOOOHOOO!

And now I will continue with my happy dance (which really consists of tiling our new bathroom with my beloved husband, while the smell of apple blossoms wafts through the open windows, but still.)

Oh, and did I mention, they’re going to pay for grad school?

Happy dance. Happy dance.