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I sometimes upload pictures to Flickr. But I'm not shooting as much as I'd like to lately. |
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It's the hallmark of a true songwriter, I think, that makes you feel like he has reached into your heart and crafted a beautiful, thoughtful piece of music in response to your very specific pain and confusion and turmoil. — November 20, 2004 |
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There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. — Alfred Korzybski
The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it. — Ursula K. LeGuin
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I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here. |
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November 16, 2005
Housepainter
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been painting houses for cash. Last week I mentioned this over lunch to my old creative director, and his shaggy white eyebrows shot up. "Painting houses?" he asked. "As in... wall, roller, tray... painting?..."
Yes. That kind of painting. Not Van Gogh stuff. No canvases or teeny-tiny brushes or tubes of raw umber.
Attention, world: I'm 31 years old and I have no idea what I'm doing with myself professionally.
Painting has been surprisingly refreshing. When you paint, you get out of bed and put on your painting clothes (for me, this means wearing the same pair of jeans for a week straight). You show up early at the work site, and you turn on the radio and hear the last of the morning show. You pour your paint and get started. There's really not a lot to it.
It feels nice to have something to show for your work at the end of the day. When you drive home on Friday, everything looks better than it did when you started. The yard is tidy, flowers are planted, and you have a wad of cash stuffed in the pocket of those filthy jeans.
I haven't yet stopped to pick up a six-pack on the way home from work, but I've considered it.
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On most days, I share the work with Melissa, a petite and charming and slightly spastic 23-year-old. She's the daughter of the man who owns these houses we're fixing up.
During the day we talk about boys and work and God. Til recently, Melissa did video production for a local TV station. Media production was her major in college, but she quit when she realized that the station was running over her, asking her to work ridiculous hours and paying her a deplorable $8.50/hour.
She's not so sure what to do with herself professionally, either. We talk about that a lot. We bond.
In some ways she reminds me of myself at that age (and this age). She talks about her undying crush on the news anchor of the station she worked for. She talks about wanting to move out of her parents' place. She talks about her religious uncertainty, her desire to please and to rebel at the same time.
Last week we were outside on a gorgeous fall afternoon doing some landscaping. Melissa was messing around in the dirt, planting flowers — for some reason she refuses to wear gloves. According to Melissa, gloves are for sissies. Her hands were plunged into the ground, dirt caking her fingers. At one point she grew annoyed: her hair kept falling into her face as she worked, but her hands were so dirty that she didn't want to touch her hair and face to pull it back. Finally she let out an exasperated sigh, walked up to me and gestured with her soiled hands toward her face. I tucked the errant strands of hair behind her ears. Then she gestured toward her forehead and I smoothed her hair back firmly from her face with my palms.
It felt like an amazingly intimate gesture, taking her head in my hands that way. It felt like a little benediction over both of us, over all of our combined uncertainty.
Today's been a good day. I've picked up a few design projects this week, so I've been working from home. Today I stayed in my bathrobe until 3:00 pm. I made a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and ate it at the computer with some alphabet soup. I like days like this.
Today, my dining room table (also known as my "desk") is graced a dozen gorgeous yellow roses, which I bought last night at the grocery store. I am working as a day laborer, but for some reason it feels important to have fresh flowers in the house as often as I possibly can.
When's the last time you bought yourself a dozen roses, anyhow? Maybe it's time.
I wonder where the next flowers will come from. I'm self-employed, but I deplore the thought of "selling myself" in the way that I should. I should be out there pounding the pavement. I should be calling people and (finally) getting my professional website online and getting business cards printed and having important lunches and showing off my "book."
Somehow, I'd rather just paint houses than do all of that.
There's time for all that stuff. I'll do all of that eventually. Really. For now, I'm finding a surprising peace here in this cash-based no-man's-land.
I'm okay with being a general failure at marketing myself. I'm okay with having no ambition to change that right now.
On the long drive out to the house where I've been painting, there's a giant field of pink flowers. It's in the median of the highway, and it always startles me when I drive past it. A giant field of pink flowers in the median of the highway — in November — feels like a frivolous little gift from the gods.
In the morning the sunlight hits it from behind, the flowers look like they're lit from within. They're cosmos daisies, and there are thousands of them. There are also eighteen-wheelers driving right by, people tossing random trash out the windows of their cars into the median.
Last week I finally stopped on the road in the morning on my way to the job site. I wanted to look at the flowers. I got out of the car and waded out into the field, which was wet with very poetic dew. There were styrofoam cups and fast-food bags along the edge of the field, but once I got into the flowers, the sound of the road died down, and it was just me and a million pink daisies, and an unmistakable light warming everything.
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