It was the way I was washing the dishes that kind of tipped me off.
John was down in New Brunswick for the new Wednesday evening Eucharist service at Christ Church, and I was making baked macaroni and cheese, partly because I kind of like to make baked macaroni and cheese, and partly because the cheese drawer is a little too full, and I hate throwing food away. While the pasta water was gradually coming to a boil, I wanted to do a little clean up, so the kitchen would look a bit more calm and presentable when we were dishing up our meals.
And as I was racing through the process, I noticed the feeling in the pit of my stomach -- a familiar feeling, certainly, but it hadn't occurred to me to trace back to its origins. Why should washing the dishes, while John was probably now on his way home, fill me with such urgency and dread?
What a surprise it must be to discover that this behavior, too, springs from my childhood -- specifically, from the period between my brothers' return from the Orphanage, and their being shipped back again, barely eighteen months later. My father and stepmother would often leave the house in the late afternoon or evening, and, because I was the oldest, I was left 'in charge' of my brothers. (My half-sisters would invariably go with my step-mother, to stay with their grandmother, who couldn't buy them enough dresses and toys) We all had homework to do; there were assigned bed times to be observed, and each of us had a list of chores to have finished before being locked into bed for the night. My job, usually, was to clean up the kitchen and wash the dishes.
I think I was all of twelve, or maybe as old as thirteen. I was good at getting my homework done quickly, if no adults were around. And while my brothers sat at the dining room table, struggling with their arithmetic and spelling lessons, I would do one of the many forbidden things -- I would turn on the stereo in the blond wood case, and play the one 'classical' record in my dad's collection -- 'The Peer Gynt Suite', by Edvard Grieg.
I suppose it was understandable that my dad didn't want his stereo equipment ruined by his oldest son -- even though he himself rarely listened to any music at all -- but I wasn't certain why I'd been specifically forbidden to listen to the Grieg album. It's not as if it was poisonous, I thought. And of course, the taboo is always more attractive than the permitted, so I would listen to these melodies over and over again, allowing the music to transport me. The only cut I wasn't particularly fond of was 'In the Hall of the Mountain King', because it got so loud that I was sure my parents would be able to hear it in the car, on their way down the hill and up our driveway.
And of course, because I was under the spell of this seductive, evocative music, time was passing, and my chores weren't getting done. Until the very last possible minute, at which time I would race as quickly as possible to sweep the kitchen floor, wipe down all the counters, take out the trash, and wash and dry the dishes and put them away. Washing and scrubbing and rinsing in a blur of hands and soap suds, all the while expecting to hear the crunch of the tires on the concrete drive. Dreading what would happen, if I weren't able to finish my work in time. Working as quickly and yet as carefully as I knew how.
This, of course, is what I realized I was doing this evening, in spite of the fact that no one is assigning me anything at all, that my father is dead and I stand the very good chance of never seeing my stepmother again, and that if I want to, I can play the Peer Gynt Suite on my boom box, as often and as loudly as I would like.
But the habits are more stubborn and durable than I would have expected. The postures I adopt, and the inner stresses that reassert themselves without the need of threat or thought, all act as a backwards-looking mirror, if I'm awake enough to notice this.
As I was, this evening, for once. And when I literally had to remind myself that John is nothing like my father or step-mother, or my horrid grandmother either, for that matter. Because I was washing the dishes as though I was about to be punished again.
These aren't things I look for, as though they were old merit badges or especially excellent report cards from grade school. These behaviors permeate my daily life, usually in ways of which I am completely unaware. I was just recalling to John how, two years ago, on one of our last visits with his mother, she had remarked, after I'd planted a flat of some 50 spreading rosemary seedlings in her back yard, that I always seemed to work so fast. For someone who was always made to feel that he'd never done enough, and certainly hadn't done what little he'd managed to accomplish in anywhere quick enough a pace, this was a startling observation. She noticed that... I was working? She though that... I was working... quickly? Why was I working at such a driven pace, after all? The shrubs weren't going to die if they stayed in their cozy flat for another ten minutes. What was the rush?
There's always a rush, because there always was a rush. It's never enough. And I wonder if, someday when I'm washing the dishes and expect John to be pulling into the driveway any minute now, I can finish the chore without the feeling that I'm about to be punished, no matter what.
There's a lot recorded in my bones and my muscles, that's for sure. I wonder what other late-breaking realizations I'll have, as my life winds down, and the hope of altering any of these rediscovered behaviors becomes less and less likely?
Now I'm going to wash some more dishes, and see if there isn't some Grieg I can listen to, without worrying about who overhears me.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
A Cat's Life, Sort Of...
It's so not what you think. Though I certainly wish it were.
Today, following the advice John culled from the internet yesterday, on the topic of shoulder injuries, I spent most of my time slumped back on the sofa in the den, trying to keep my ice pack from slipping down my back, or down my arm, or down the front of my tee shirt. Hour after hour after hour. Just sitting there. Napping from time to time, thanks mostly to the pain medication. But mostly just looking into space, or trying to find something interesting on my little portable exobrain. Odd, how with everything in the world virtually at my fingertips, I still have the nerve to complain about being bored.
The cats, as we all know, have no such problem. Even though, as far as I can tell, one day of Silas' life, for instance, is pretty much indistinguishable from any other day of his life, yet he sleeps all the time, as though worn out from exertion (which no one on earth would believe possible), and even seems to dream. But what can he dream about, except the same life he has, over and over again, without any apparent variation? If I ask him, he just glares at me with his yellow-green eyes, and then waddles off to find a different place to sleep.
I did manage to do something intriguing, while waiting for the planet to turn in space, so I could take my afternoon dose of antidepressants -- I looked up the website of the doctor/artist I met last week at Combat Paper, Dr. Eric Avery. (His web address: www.docart.com) When he was giving us a tour of his exhibit at the Print Center of New Jersey, and was talking about a particular self-portrait in one corner of the room, he mentioned the time he'd spent in Somalia, decades ago now. Correction -- he mentioned the grueling, unbearable time he spent at a refugee camp, struggling with nearly no meaningful help, to feed children who were so malnourished that they had to be force-fed, because otherwise they just wouldn't swallow food anymore. He mentioned getting out of the jeep, upon arrival, and being stunned by his surroundings, in that they seemed to consist of a great expansse of mud, and starving human beings, and flies. He said that, in those first moments, as he tried to get his bearings, he gasped involuntarily, and inhaled a fly. The first of many, no doubt, during his year-long stay there.
I also looked up this camp itself, and found some more recollections Dr. Avery had provided the author of the book 'Para-Site'; this was so compelling that I bought a copy, and can't wait to read it, although at the same time I'm afraid it will give me nightmares.
All this interest because, for some reason, the scant few images he tossed out, while we were in that particular corner of his spacious, art-filled exhibit, have continued to resonate, and I think I may be on the brink of writing something -- some poem, I think -- about this experience of his. How cheeky. But, when I told him I thought this might happen, if he didn't mind, he gave me the go-ahead. Now, I just have to permit myself.
Late in the afternoon, I started getting ready for this evening's music rehearsal -- I'd been excused, because of a conflict, but it turns out that, when I filled out the conflict form, I managed to get the dates for the Contemporary Artists' Forum meetings all wrong, so I've been excused on the weeks when I'm free, and scheduled for rehearsals on the weeks when the group gets together. In a way, it doesn't really matter all that much, as I haven't been making any artwork at all anyway, so all I would be doing, while everyone else unpacks work and displays it as best as possible in the meeting space, I'd just be kicking around, waiting for the critique part to begin, and then mostly biting my tongue.
In any event, there I was, at a rehearsal I wasn't scheduled to attend, and grateful to be there. We worked on three of the group numbers, and I'm really looking forward to doing this singing on stage -- it's the jazziest stuff I will ever have sung in public. The fact that, at the end of the show, I'll be, for all intents and purposes, nude on stage, is something about which I try not to think. Besides which, I'll be one of six naked guys, and if I have my way, I'll somehow be in the back...
And now I'm here at home again, with a fresh, dry long-sleeved tee-shirt on, over a short-sleeved tee, and with a sack of ice shoved down over my right shoulder. Re-arranging said sack from time to time, to make sure that most of my shoulder is receiving at least some coolness. When I showered before rehearsal, I was surprised to see that there seems to be no surface discoloration, or swelling, apparent on my shoulder. It would be too much to hope that this will all heal itself up by the weekend, but I'm going to do what I can to help things along, while also continuing with my workout schedule -- I just won't do anything that uses my shoulders, that's all. (He said, not believing a word he was saying...)
Well, substance-free as this seems to be, I think I'm going to leave things as they are for the time being. I believe I'll take another one of my enriched acetaminofen tablets, curl up with a long book, and drift off to sleep down here on the big sofa. I hate sleeping with John when I'm carrying a rattling bag of ice in my shirt, just waiting to leak all over the bed clothes. Plus, he still has a chest and head cold, which means he'll be snoring, and I won't be able to sleep there anyway.
Maybe, in my dreams, I'll be one of the cats -- perhaps gorgeous Coco, who I've decided is a reincarnation of Elizabeth Taylor, except I think the dates are all wrong? And I can dream that I'm asleep, and dreaming about sleeping. (Yawn.....)
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Today, following the advice John culled from the internet yesterday, on the topic of shoulder injuries, I spent most of my time slumped back on the sofa in the den, trying to keep my ice pack from slipping down my back, or down my arm, or down the front of my tee shirt. Hour after hour after hour. Just sitting there. Napping from time to time, thanks mostly to the pain medication. But mostly just looking into space, or trying to find something interesting on my little portable exobrain. Odd, how with everything in the world virtually at my fingertips, I still have the nerve to complain about being bored.
The cats, as we all know, have no such problem. Even though, as far as I can tell, one day of Silas' life, for instance, is pretty much indistinguishable from any other day of his life, yet he sleeps all the time, as though worn out from exertion (which no one on earth would believe possible), and even seems to dream. But what can he dream about, except the same life he has, over and over again, without any apparent variation? If I ask him, he just glares at me with his yellow-green eyes, and then waddles off to find a different place to sleep.
I did manage to do something intriguing, while waiting for the planet to turn in space, so I could take my afternoon dose of antidepressants -- I looked up the website of the doctor/artist I met last week at Combat Paper, Dr. Eric Avery. (His web address: www.docart.com) When he was giving us a tour of his exhibit at the Print Center of New Jersey, and was talking about a particular self-portrait in one corner of the room, he mentioned the time he'd spent in Somalia, decades ago now. Correction -- he mentioned the grueling, unbearable time he spent at a refugee camp, struggling with nearly no meaningful help, to feed children who were so malnourished that they had to be force-fed, because otherwise they just wouldn't swallow food anymore. He mentioned getting out of the jeep, upon arrival, and being stunned by his surroundings, in that they seemed to consist of a great expansse of mud, and starving human beings, and flies. He said that, in those first moments, as he tried to get his bearings, he gasped involuntarily, and inhaled a fly. The first of many, no doubt, during his year-long stay there.
I also looked up this camp itself, and found some more recollections Dr. Avery had provided the author of the book 'Para-Site'; this was so compelling that I bought a copy, and can't wait to read it, although at the same time I'm afraid it will give me nightmares.
All this interest because, for some reason, the scant few images he tossed out, while we were in that particular corner of his spacious, art-filled exhibit, have continued to resonate, and I think I may be on the brink of writing something -- some poem, I think -- about this experience of his. How cheeky. But, when I told him I thought this might happen, if he didn't mind, he gave me the go-ahead. Now, I just have to permit myself.
Late in the afternoon, I started getting ready for this evening's music rehearsal -- I'd been excused, because of a conflict, but it turns out that, when I filled out the conflict form, I managed to get the dates for the Contemporary Artists' Forum meetings all wrong, so I've been excused on the weeks when I'm free, and scheduled for rehearsals on the weeks when the group gets together. In a way, it doesn't really matter all that much, as I haven't been making any artwork at all anyway, so all I would be doing, while everyone else unpacks work and displays it as best as possible in the meeting space, I'd just be kicking around, waiting for the critique part to begin, and then mostly biting my tongue.
In any event, there I was, at a rehearsal I wasn't scheduled to attend, and grateful to be there. We worked on three of the group numbers, and I'm really looking forward to doing this singing on stage -- it's the jazziest stuff I will ever have sung in public. The fact that, at the end of the show, I'll be, for all intents and purposes, nude on stage, is something about which I try not to think. Besides which, I'll be one of six naked guys, and if I have my way, I'll somehow be in the back...
And now I'm here at home again, with a fresh, dry long-sleeved tee-shirt on, over a short-sleeved tee, and with a sack of ice shoved down over my right shoulder. Re-arranging said sack from time to time, to make sure that most of my shoulder is receiving at least some coolness. When I showered before rehearsal, I was surprised to see that there seems to be no surface discoloration, or swelling, apparent on my shoulder. It would be too much to hope that this will all heal itself up by the weekend, but I'm going to do what I can to help things along, while also continuing with my workout schedule -- I just won't do anything that uses my shoulders, that's all. (He said, not believing a word he was saying...)
Well, substance-free as this seems to be, I think I'm going to leave things as they are for the time being. I believe I'll take another one of my enriched acetaminofen tablets, curl up with a long book, and drift off to sleep down here on the big sofa. I hate sleeping with John when I'm carrying a rattling bag of ice in my shirt, just waiting to leak all over the bed clothes. Plus, he still has a chest and head cold, which means he'll be snoring, and I won't be able to sleep there anyway.
Maybe, in my dreams, I'll be one of the cats -- perhaps gorgeous Coco, who I've decided is a reincarnation of Elizabeth Taylor, except I think the dates are all wrong? And I can dream that I'm asleep, and dreaming about sleeping. (Yawn.....)
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Monday, March 11, 2013
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid...
And I'd been so looking forward to it...
For this last week or so, I've been unusually busy, at least in terms of what my life has become. Most of my time had been eaten up by work on my newest useless sculpture for a group show in Millville NJ, so I wasn't able to squeeze in my routine bi-weekly workouts at the Y over in Summit. Even though I have to drag myself out of the house every time -- and often having to come back home for something I've left behind again -- once I get into the locker room, and change into my tatty workout gear, I slip into a kind of automatic mode. I've constructed a routine that I can usually do in about half an hour, that's followed by 20 minutes or so on a treadmill. And frankly, I've been very pleased -- more pleased than I would have expected -- with actual, visible physical results!
So, what with something like real progress taking place, even at my advanced age, and the added incentive/threat of an upcoming theatrical performance in which I will be one of only six practically naked men on a very small stage, I've been even more intent on maintaining my routine. One week off, I told myself, wouldn't do that much damage. I told myself. And today I could get back into my comfortable discipline, I told myself.
Well, aside from not having remembered to bring the usual t-shirt to get all sweaty in, I was only half an hour later than usual when I began what I had been hoping would be a nice, uninterrupted investment of time and energy, even if it might seem superficial to others. And, in celebration of my return, I even increased some of the weights by five pounds or so -- really an almost negligible amount, in most cases -- and it wasn't difficult at all. It had only been a week, after all.
Then, with only three more exercises to do, before that walk to nowhere on the treadmill, I decided that I wanted to try something different. The shoulder press station has always given me trouble, so I thought I would take advantage of the free weight room -- ordinarily empty at 2 or so in the afternoon -- and thought that starting with the modest weight of 25 lb. should be easily manageable.
To tell the truth, I've never felt comfortable in that particular weight room -- there seems to be something unanchored about the perfectly orderly arrangement of benches and other equipment. It just seems... rounder than I'm used to. In any event, one I found the 25 lb. dumbbells -- they've got an extensive collection, all apparently brand new -- picked up a pair, and turned to one of the mirrors, to keep an eye on my form. One weight in each hand, straight up from shoulder height and then back down again -- what could be simpler?
What could be simpler? What could be simpler would be confronting myself without recoiling, it seems. Maybe it's the lighting in the room -- though it doesn't seem that much different from the other place I exercise -- but what I saw looking back at me, with a 25 lb. dumbbell in each hand, was a washed-out, deflated, haggard old man. I raised the left dumbbell, a little startled that such a modest weight should feel so unwieldy; I started to raise the right one, but didn't even get the weight above my head when I heard an awful tearing in my shoulder, and immediately had to put the weights back where Id' gotten them, feeling shamed before the two solid college-age kids, sleek in their youth, who were in reality paying no attention to me at all.
I asked one of the trainers what she thought I should do, if I'd torn a muscle. She gave me one of those chemical ice packs, and said I should go home and take some tylenol, and then see my doctor. I was grateful for the coolness, and surprised, once I got out to the car, that I couldn't even get the car key into the ignition with my right hand. I had to shift from park into reverse with my left hand, and could only grip the very bottom of the steering wheel with my right hand, to steady it. I got home with no apparent difficulty, and have had ice on my shoulder ever since. John looked up 'shoulder injuries' on Google, and read me a list of symptoms and recommended treatments. I tried to get comfortable on the bed, without sliding my home-made ice pack down my back.
But mostly I was being furious with myself. Pointlessly furious, of course, but furious nonetheless. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so careless? Why wasn't I more cautious? More important, what kind of damage have I done myself, and how long with it take to recover, to whatever extent might be possible?
Stupid,, stupid, stupid. Oh, I know it could have been a billion times worse, and that at the worst, I'm still a billion times luckier than the vast majority of my fellow humans on the planet. But as I know I've mentioned before, I'm terrifically superficial, and for someone with such a low sense of self-esteem, I'm still semi-obsessed with my external appearance. And even more important, any diminishing of my ability to do things for myself, and to be (relatively) fit, is extremely upsetting to me. I keep seeing myself as one of those crochety old men in a disreputable nursing home, the sort of resident the underpaid attendants fervently hope will die in the night. How resentful I'll be, of their heedless strength and agility, their unappreciated mobility and quickness. I think I hate them already, and I don't even know them yet.
So, it's another whole day of ice on my shoulder, with the occasional fortified acetaminofen to keep the swelling down, and the pain more or less at bay. Perhaps another visit to the doctor on Wednesday -- it seems as if I've spent more time in doctors' offices in this past year or so, than whole earlier decades put together. A friend, who's in his mid-80's, has informed me that, in his opinion, everything is fine with us humans until we hit 70, and then... poof! It's like hitting a wall, he said. In his opinion. And I was reeling inside, because that gives me just four more years of (relatively) carefree living, before things begin to get really serious.
I don't think I'm going to like this. I don't think I'm going to like this one tiny, minute bit.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
For this last week or so, I've been unusually busy, at least in terms of what my life has become. Most of my time had been eaten up by work on my newest useless sculpture for a group show in Millville NJ, so I wasn't able to squeeze in my routine bi-weekly workouts at the Y over in Summit. Even though I have to drag myself out of the house every time -- and often having to come back home for something I've left behind again -- once I get into the locker room, and change into my tatty workout gear, I slip into a kind of automatic mode. I've constructed a routine that I can usually do in about half an hour, that's followed by 20 minutes or so on a treadmill. And frankly, I've been very pleased -- more pleased than I would have expected -- with actual, visible physical results!
So, what with something like real progress taking place, even at my advanced age, and the added incentive/threat of an upcoming theatrical performance in which I will be one of only six practically naked men on a very small stage, I've been even more intent on maintaining my routine. One week off, I told myself, wouldn't do that much damage. I told myself. And today I could get back into my comfortable discipline, I told myself.
Well, aside from not having remembered to bring the usual t-shirt to get all sweaty in, I was only half an hour later than usual when I began what I had been hoping would be a nice, uninterrupted investment of time and energy, even if it might seem superficial to others. And, in celebration of my return, I even increased some of the weights by five pounds or so -- really an almost negligible amount, in most cases -- and it wasn't difficult at all. It had only been a week, after all.
Then, with only three more exercises to do, before that walk to nowhere on the treadmill, I decided that I wanted to try something different. The shoulder press station has always given me trouble, so I thought I would take advantage of the free weight room -- ordinarily empty at 2 or so in the afternoon -- and thought that starting with the modest weight of 25 lb. should be easily manageable.
To tell the truth, I've never felt comfortable in that particular weight room -- there seems to be something unanchored about the perfectly orderly arrangement of benches and other equipment. It just seems... rounder than I'm used to. In any event, one I found the 25 lb. dumbbells -- they've got an extensive collection, all apparently brand new -- picked up a pair, and turned to one of the mirrors, to keep an eye on my form. One weight in each hand, straight up from shoulder height and then back down again -- what could be simpler?
What could be simpler? What could be simpler would be confronting myself without recoiling, it seems. Maybe it's the lighting in the room -- though it doesn't seem that much different from the other place I exercise -- but what I saw looking back at me, with a 25 lb. dumbbell in each hand, was a washed-out, deflated, haggard old man. I raised the left dumbbell, a little startled that such a modest weight should feel so unwieldy; I started to raise the right one, but didn't even get the weight above my head when I heard an awful tearing in my shoulder, and immediately had to put the weights back where Id' gotten them, feeling shamed before the two solid college-age kids, sleek in their youth, who were in reality paying no attention to me at all.
I asked one of the trainers what she thought I should do, if I'd torn a muscle. She gave me one of those chemical ice packs, and said I should go home and take some tylenol, and then see my doctor. I was grateful for the coolness, and surprised, once I got out to the car, that I couldn't even get the car key into the ignition with my right hand. I had to shift from park into reverse with my left hand, and could only grip the very bottom of the steering wheel with my right hand, to steady it. I got home with no apparent difficulty, and have had ice on my shoulder ever since. John looked up 'shoulder injuries' on Google, and read me a list of symptoms and recommended treatments. I tried to get comfortable on the bed, without sliding my home-made ice pack down my back.
But mostly I was being furious with myself. Pointlessly furious, of course, but furious nonetheless. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so careless? Why wasn't I more cautious? More important, what kind of damage have I done myself, and how long with it take to recover, to whatever extent might be possible?
Stupid,, stupid, stupid. Oh, I know it could have been a billion times worse, and that at the worst, I'm still a billion times luckier than the vast majority of my fellow humans on the planet. But as I know I've mentioned before, I'm terrifically superficial, and for someone with such a low sense of self-esteem, I'm still semi-obsessed with my external appearance. And even more important, any diminishing of my ability to do things for myself, and to be (relatively) fit, is extremely upsetting to me. I keep seeing myself as one of those crochety old men in a disreputable nursing home, the sort of resident the underpaid attendants fervently hope will die in the night. How resentful I'll be, of their heedless strength and agility, their unappreciated mobility and quickness. I think I hate them already, and I don't even know them yet.
So, it's another whole day of ice on my shoulder, with the occasional fortified acetaminofen to keep the swelling down, and the pain more or less at bay. Perhaps another visit to the doctor on Wednesday -- it seems as if I've spent more time in doctors' offices in this past year or so, than whole earlier decades put together. A friend, who's in his mid-80's, has informed me that, in his opinion, everything is fine with us humans until we hit 70, and then... poof! It's like hitting a wall, he said. In his opinion. And I was reeling inside, because that gives me just four more years of (relatively) carefree living, before things begin to get really serious.
I don't think I'm going to like this. I don't think I'm going to like this one tiny, minute bit.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Morgen, Morgen...
It's really too bad that procrastination isn't an Olympic sport, because if it were, I would so have gold medals coming out my ears...
I say this because I'm going to such great lengths to avoid writing this. If I were just a little more dedicated to the fine art of avoidance, I would be painting the kitchen already. Instead of sitting here, making letters appear on an imaginary piece of paper, to send to some imaginary place, where other people may or may not read it...
Part of my yearning to avoid today's entry, in particular, is the fact that the past two days have been so chock-full of events, and I find it exhausting just to think about them, let alone describe each one in the detail each so richly deserves.
Of course, I could follow one of my very favorite pieces of all-round behavioral advice: If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Or, perfection is the arch-enemy of excellence. Or, le merlaine aime la friture.
So. Yesterday, I had my first dancing rehearsal with my lovely stage wife, Madison. We tangoed and cha-chaed, and the more we repeated the steps, the more confused I got. I need to write it all down, in code I'll understand and remember -- we're only talking about two minutes' time onstage anyway. But it's my character's entrance, so I'd like it to be good. Madison is an excellent dancer though, and she said it'll be fine. Everyone will be looking at her anyway...
Then, later that same afternoon, I went back to the same building -- South Orange's Baird Cultural Center -- to the opening of an exhibit by a local book arts group. It turns out that I know a few of the artists represented, and as I was already wearing a jacket and tie for rehearsal (which is what Harold would wear), I supposed I might as well get some use out of a freshly-ironed shirt. The opening was crowded, and as usual, I couldn't really look at the work, but ended up having some nice conversations, and made a date for a curator to come over to the house on Wednesday, to look at some work of mine for possible inclusion in a show he's putting together.
And, as if two events in one day weren't enough, later that evening, after John got up from his sick bed, I told him that I wasn't going into New York, to another opening, because I didn't want to leave him here alone when he wasn't feeling well. He said I was being silly, so I checked the train schedules, and had plenty of time to get myself down to the station (still wearing the same semi-dressy outfit from the morning's rehearsal), into the city, down to 14th St. and the opening at Heller Gallery, where I saw a handful of my very favorite people from the world of glass -- everyone said how great I looked, so I didn't tell them that the only reason I've lost so much weight is that I've been too depressed to eat. I stayed for about an hour, and then got back uptown in just enough time to catch the train back home again, and then went around the house, resetting all the clocks I could find. Except for the coffee maker. I don't understand how that one works.
And, today, I set out for the wilds of Western New Jersey again, but this time only as far as Madison, to be part of a reading for a play-in-progress. I was a Bulgarian cartographer who is in Antarctica with a group of other scientists, and I've come down with altitude sickness, and am comatose for nearly two weeks. Very easy to convey to the audience. Later in the draft, though, I had a lot of reading to do, in my cheap fake Bulgarian accent. The play turned out to be much funnier read live, than read on paper, and maybe it's just because I have an active imagination, but I seem to remember, not so much the reading, but the events we were reading about, as though they are now actual events in my past. Strange and wonderful.
And now, I face a sinkful of dirty dishes, and my evening medication, before going to bed. Maybe, now, this blogue entry is the avoidance, and the kitchen work is the thing I'm trying to put off as long as possible?
I also don't like going to bed. The first few minutes of lying there in the dark are often unpleasant for me -- I will feel a wave of generalized anxiety, with what I experience as a continuous reality sliding aside a bit, and allowing -- or forcing -- me to see the arbitrariness and fragility of my existence, and how little holds everything I think of as 'my life' together. A kind of coming loose, I guess.
I also have bad dreams -- or at least I used to, until the new medication that either makes me sleep more soundly, or inhibits remembering my dreams. ln the really bad ones, I tend to hold my breath, because it stops me from crying.
On the other hand, in the morning, I hate hate hate to get up. Maybe it's transitions as a whole that are the problem? And if I had an on/off switch, I'd be more content?
Well, tomorrow looks as though it'll be much less stressful -- taking John to the train station (if he's feeling well enough to go to work, that is), then doing some chores, and going to the gym (at last!) in the early afternoon, and driving down to New Brunswick for choir rehearsal at 7:30.
What would I want my life to be like, otherwise? Is this not nearly perfection? Why am I constantly filled with such dread?
Now, I think that, instead of pondering these deep thoughts, I'll go get my hands wet and soapy, and then climb the stairs, take those little pills, and lie awake in the dark for a while. Until tomorrow arrives. If, as usual, it does.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
I say this because I'm going to such great lengths to avoid writing this. If I were just a little more dedicated to the fine art of avoidance, I would be painting the kitchen already. Instead of sitting here, making letters appear on an imaginary piece of paper, to send to some imaginary place, where other people may or may not read it...
Part of my yearning to avoid today's entry, in particular, is the fact that the past two days have been so chock-full of events, and I find it exhausting just to think about them, let alone describe each one in the detail each so richly deserves.
Of course, I could follow one of my very favorite pieces of all-round behavioral advice: If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Or, perfection is the arch-enemy of excellence. Or, le merlaine aime la friture.
So. Yesterday, I had my first dancing rehearsal with my lovely stage wife, Madison. We tangoed and cha-chaed, and the more we repeated the steps, the more confused I got. I need to write it all down, in code I'll understand and remember -- we're only talking about two minutes' time onstage anyway. But it's my character's entrance, so I'd like it to be good. Madison is an excellent dancer though, and she said it'll be fine. Everyone will be looking at her anyway...
Then, later that same afternoon, I went back to the same building -- South Orange's Baird Cultural Center -- to the opening of an exhibit by a local book arts group. It turns out that I know a few of the artists represented, and as I was already wearing a jacket and tie for rehearsal (which is what Harold would wear), I supposed I might as well get some use out of a freshly-ironed shirt. The opening was crowded, and as usual, I couldn't really look at the work, but ended up having some nice conversations, and made a date for a curator to come over to the house on Wednesday, to look at some work of mine for possible inclusion in a show he's putting together.
And, as if two events in one day weren't enough, later that evening, after John got up from his sick bed, I told him that I wasn't going into New York, to another opening, because I didn't want to leave him here alone when he wasn't feeling well. He said I was being silly, so I checked the train schedules, and had plenty of time to get myself down to the station (still wearing the same semi-dressy outfit from the morning's rehearsal), into the city, down to 14th St. and the opening at Heller Gallery, where I saw a handful of my very favorite people from the world of glass -- everyone said how great I looked, so I didn't tell them that the only reason I've lost so much weight is that I've been too depressed to eat. I stayed for about an hour, and then got back uptown in just enough time to catch the train back home again, and then went around the house, resetting all the clocks I could find. Except for the coffee maker. I don't understand how that one works.
And, today, I set out for the wilds of Western New Jersey again, but this time only as far as Madison, to be part of a reading for a play-in-progress. I was a Bulgarian cartographer who is in Antarctica with a group of other scientists, and I've come down with altitude sickness, and am comatose for nearly two weeks. Very easy to convey to the audience. Later in the draft, though, I had a lot of reading to do, in my cheap fake Bulgarian accent. The play turned out to be much funnier read live, than read on paper, and maybe it's just because I have an active imagination, but I seem to remember, not so much the reading, but the events we were reading about, as though they are now actual events in my past. Strange and wonderful.
And now, I face a sinkful of dirty dishes, and my evening medication, before going to bed. Maybe, now, this blogue entry is the avoidance, and the kitchen work is the thing I'm trying to put off as long as possible?
I also don't like going to bed. The first few minutes of lying there in the dark are often unpleasant for me -- I will feel a wave of generalized anxiety, with what I experience as a continuous reality sliding aside a bit, and allowing -- or forcing -- me to see the arbitrariness and fragility of my existence, and how little holds everything I think of as 'my life' together. A kind of coming loose, I guess.
I also have bad dreams -- or at least I used to, until the new medication that either makes me sleep more soundly, or inhibits remembering my dreams. ln the really bad ones, I tend to hold my breath, because it stops me from crying.
On the other hand, in the morning, I hate hate hate to get up. Maybe it's transitions as a whole that are the problem? And if I had an on/off switch, I'd be more content?
Well, tomorrow looks as though it'll be much less stressful -- taking John to the train station (if he's feeling well enough to go to work, that is), then doing some chores, and going to the gym (at last!) in the early afternoon, and driving down to New Brunswick for choir rehearsal at 7:30.
What would I want my life to be like, otherwise? Is this not nearly perfection? Why am I constantly filled with such dread?
Now, I think that, instead of pondering these deep thoughts, I'll go get my hands wet and soapy, and then climb the stairs, take those little pills, and lie awake in the dark for a while. Until tomorrow arrives. If, as usual, it does.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Saturday, March 9, 2013
A Few of My Favorite Things...
Comments having been made about a certain consistent dourness in these posts (in spite of the title, which I don't think promises finger chimes and marshmallow fluff), I've decided to try something completely different today. And see how long it lasts.
This all began, really, with my realization that my favorite place in the house is my bathroom medicine cabinet. Such confined little spaces seeming almost the perfect cliche for dense little riots of disorder, it was with some amusement that I watched the expression on the face of the efficiency expert we had work with us once, to try to figure out how to make our lives more orderly. She approached the old medicine cabinet as though it was booby-trapped with an especially deadly and painful shrapnel bomb, but she had no choice...
What a surprise! I think she looked three inches taller, just from opening the mirrored door! Her face brightened, and she seemed to revel in the sight of such relative minimalism, which I myself had voluntarily created, and maintain. On the top glass shelf live the medications and irrigating bulbs for ear care, and a small badger shaving brush on a stainless steel stand. Below that, the shelf with shaving cream (I use a kind that comes in a tube, and so can stand up on its cap, a razor, and a neat stack of new and used blades. On the bottom shelf, on the left there are two cups, holding toothbrushes and nail scissors; a glass (which I blew, by the way) with a tube of toothpaste and more toothbrushes than are absolutely necessary; beside that, a little collection of aromatic oils that I used to use, as supplements to my soaps and deodorants. (Unfortunately, the world-wide demand for sandalwood oil, my favorite, has outstripped the supply; the alternatives, from Australia and Micronesia, smell okay, but I seem to be allergic to them)
And that's it. No wads of cotton, no cluster of dental floss boxes, or heaped razor stems. It even smells nice when I open it, which is gratifying, even if I can't manage to get any of that aroma where I'd prefer to have it. I think, oddly enough, that this may be, not only my favorite place in our house, but also is my favorite place on earth, for which I am solely responsible.
Now then, it's quite apparent that there is no end to the 'favorites' with which I might regale my readers. I've even made a partial list of subjects to ponder, in terms of being my favorite...
Activity;
Shortcoming or flaw;
Possession that I actually know where it is;
Possession that I have no idea where to find it;
Piece of clothing;
Pair of shoes;
Amusement park ride;
Style of architecture;
Physical exercise;
Kitchen utensil;
Household chore;
Job I've ever had;
Living thing, warm-blooded;
Living cold-blooded vertebrate;
Living thing, invertebrate...
So, for today, I think I'll pick two from the above list. I think it's going to be... favorite living invertebrate, and favorite possession I have no idea where to find it. Which seems like a nice, counter-intuitive jumble, for now.
My favorite living invertebrate is the praying mantis. They appeal to me because of their formal beauty, and their lethal appetites. I've seen pictures of mantises that have adapted to their surroundings so as to be virtually indistinguishable from the orchids on which they live -- delicate, pink and white death traps, lying in wait for the next unsuspecting pollinator who comes buzzing past.
But even our more mundane, plain green mantids are pretty amazing, I think. I remember once watching a mantis having dinner. It perched somehow on the outside of a window pane, five stories up in one of the Louis Kahn towers at the University of Pennsylvania. I worked there, as a computer operator, mostly at night, so I really don't understand how I managed to witness this gustatory marvel. Maybe it was the end of my shift, after the sun had come up, and the mantis was having breakfast?
In any event, this creature had snared a common house fly, and was holding onto same with its two front legs -- from which no escape was possible. And, gross though it may seem, it was fascinating to watch this example of insect dining habits. Instead of picking out the choice parts, or starting with the appendages and working in toward the main attraction, the mantis was treating this fly like an ear of corn -- zip, went the mouthparts, and a layer of fly's head vanished. Zip, another pass of mandibles, and another layer of fly head disappeared. Back and forth, with a kind of mechanical pitilessness, such as one so rarely sees on those nature shows. I don't know whether I was more impressed at the mantis' eating habits, or the face that its insect victim didn't fall apart, but instead seemed to be constructed to provide just such a dining experience for someone a bit further up the food chain. I didn't stay to watch the entire repast. Watching the head disappear was quite vivid enough.
And my favorite thing that I don't know where to find it would be my own hard-bound copy of my Master of Fine Arts thesis. It's probably in a box up in the attic, in one of those more or less inaccessible hidey-holes into which I've stuffed so many unmarked boxes of... well, they're unmarked, so why would I know what's in them?
Regardless of where it is, I am really quite pleased -- I almost said 'proud', but early church indoctrination makes that statement nearly impossible -- not only with the written content, but also with the formal decisions that I was able, not only to make, but also to realize, with the invaluable help of my dear friend Ed Mineck (the sort of dear friend that you know is so special because neither of you calls the other one, everz0, in achieving the planned printing processes.
I had five pieces of sculpture in my final MFA thesis exhibit (I actually participated in two shows, one on campus, the other in an alternative art space in a part of town considered 'bad' by many Rochesterians, because one might on occasion see someone of darker complexion, from time to time. And even though the thesis had no set minimum length, I thought it made sense to do a bit of descriptive writing about each of the five. Meaning, there would be five 'poems', five illustrations, and five narrative descriptions, one for each work in the show. Ed made it possible for me to print out the 'poems' -- really a list of comparative analogies for each piece -- on a semi-sheer paper, under which were the photos of the work under discussion. And then, for each separate art work, Ed produced a very faint shadow of the last photo in each section, which we printed onto enough sheets of paper, so that beneath or behind the narrative, there was the shadow of the work being discussed. I was pleased with the assembled work, and have only become more amazed at what Ed and I were able to accomplish, under a fairly inflexible deadline, and with me coping with the untimely death of a dear friend, at whose bedside I spent the last week of his life, out in Seattle WA, while my home address was considerably further east.
I was a wreck, but managed somehow to focus on the task at hand -- perhaps because in this case, dawdling (my favorite past-time, it seems) would have incurred more expenses, and I felt that I'd borrowed way enough money for the degree -- I didn't need to take out another loan form, I felt.
Ed, who was at the time teaching full-time with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, re-organized his days, in order to shepherd me through the printing of the shadow pages, the proper reloading of the pre-printed paper, and binding the entire thing, for submission to the bood binder. I still feel that, with the layout of onion-skin paper with text on it, overlaying color images of my work, and which images seemed to cast a shadow over the text that was to follow, I had manged to evoke something glass-like, but in print.
Plus, I think the writing is pretty good too. But who am I to judge?
At this point, I believe I'm going to cease ruminations for the evening -- it being that night that is different from other nights, because we cut one end off our blanket, sew it onto the other end, and decide to tell each other that we've succeeded in making our blanket longer. And I've got to go attend a play-reading in Madison NJ tomorrow, and must get what passes for beauty sleep, in my case.
i wonder what favorites I'll go into next? There's just no telling, is there?
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
This all began, really, with my realization that my favorite place in the house is my bathroom medicine cabinet. Such confined little spaces seeming almost the perfect cliche for dense little riots of disorder, it was with some amusement that I watched the expression on the face of the efficiency expert we had work with us once, to try to figure out how to make our lives more orderly. She approached the old medicine cabinet as though it was booby-trapped with an especially deadly and painful shrapnel bomb, but she had no choice...
What a surprise! I think she looked three inches taller, just from opening the mirrored door! Her face brightened, and she seemed to revel in the sight of such relative minimalism, which I myself had voluntarily created, and maintain. On the top glass shelf live the medications and irrigating bulbs for ear care, and a small badger shaving brush on a stainless steel stand. Below that, the shelf with shaving cream (I use a kind that comes in a tube, and so can stand up on its cap, a razor, and a neat stack of new and used blades. On the bottom shelf, on the left there are two cups, holding toothbrushes and nail scissors; a glass (which I blew, by the way) with a tube of toothpaste and more toothbrushes than are absolutely necessary; beside that, a little collection of aromatic oils that I used to use, as supplements to my soaps and deodorants. (Unfortunately, the world-wide demand for sandalwood oil, my favorite, has outstripped the supply; the alternatives, from Australia and Micronesia, smell okay, but I seem to be allergic to them)
And that's it. No wads of cotton, no cluster of dental floss boxes, or heaped razor stems. It even smells nice when I open it, which is gratifying, even if I can't manage to get any of that aroma where I'd prefer to have it. I think, oddly enough, that this may be, not only my favorite place in our house, but also is my favorite place on earth, for which I am solely responsible.
Now then, it's quite apparent that there is no end to the 'favorites' with which I might regale my readers. I've even made a partial list of subjects to ponder, in terms of being my favorite...
Activity;
Shortcoming or flaw;
Possession that I actually know where it is;
Possession that I have no idea where to find it;
Piece of clothing;
Pair of shoes;
Amusement park ride;
Style of architecture;
Physical exercise;
Kitchen utensil;
Household chore;
Job I've ever had;
Living thing, warm-blooded;
Living cold-blooded vertebrate;
Living thing, invertebrate...
So, for today, I think I'll pick two from the above list. I think it's going to be... favorite living invertebrate, and favorite possession I have no idea where to find it. Which seems like a nice, counter-intuitive jumble, for now.
My favorite living invertebrate is the praying mantis. They appeal to me because of their formal beauty, and their lethal appetites. I've seen pictures of mantises that have adapted to their surroundings so as to be virtually indistinguishable from the orchids on which they live -- delicate, pink and white death traps, lying in wait for the next unsuspecting pollinator who comes buzzing past.
But even our more mundane, plain green mantids are pretty amazing, I think. I remember once watching a mantis having dinner. It perched somehow on the outside of a window pane, five stories up in one of the Louis Kahn towers at the University of Pennsylvania. I worked there, as a computer operator, mostly at night, so I really don't understand how I managed to witness this gustatory marvel. Maybe it was the end of my shift, after the sun had come up, and the mantis was having breakfast?
In any event, this creature had snared a common house fly, and was holding onto same with its two front legs -- from which no escape was possible. And, gross though it may seem, it was fascinating to watch this example of insect dining habits. Instead of picking out the choice parts, or starting with the appendages and working in toward the main attraction, the mantis was treating this fly like an ear of corn -- zip, went the mouthparts, and a layer of fly's head vanished. Zip, another pass of mandibles, and another layer of fly head disappeared. Back and forth, with a kind of mechanical pitilessness, such as one so rarely sees on those nature shows. I don't know whether I was more impressed at the mantis' eating habits, or the face that its insect victim didn't fall apart, but instead seemed to be constructed to provide just such a dining experience for someone a bit further up the food chain. I didn't stay to watch the entire repast. Watching the head disappear was quite vivid enough.
And my favorite thing that I don't know where to find it would be my own hard-bound copy of my Master of Fine Arts thesis. It's probably in a box up in the attic, in one of those more or less inaccessible hidey-holes into which I've stuffed so many unmarked boxes of... well, they're unmarked, so why would I know what's in them?
Regardless of where it is, I am really quite pleased -- I almost said 'proud', but early church indoctrination makes that statement nearly impossible -- not only with the written content, but also with the formal decisions that I was able, not only to make, but also to realize, with the invaluable help of my dear friend Ed Mineck (the sort of dear friend that you know is so special because neither of you calls the other one, everz0, in achieving the planned printing processes.
I had five pieces of sculpture in my final MFA thesis exhibit (I actually participated in two shows, one on campus, the other in an alternative art space in a part of town considered 'bad' by many Rochesterians, because one might on occasion see someone of darker complexion, from time to time. And even though the thesis had no set minimum length, I thought it made sense to do a bit of descriptive writing about each of the five. Meaning, there would be five 'poems', five illustrations, and five narrative descriptions, one for each work in the show. Ed made it possible for me to print out the 'poems' -- really a list of comparative analogies for each piece -- on a semi-sheer paper, under which were the photos of the work under discussion. And then, for each separate art work, Ed produced a very faint shadow of the last photo in each section, which we printed onto enough sheets of paper, so that beneath or behind the narrative, there was the shadow of the work being discussed. I was pleased with the assembled work, and have only become more amazed at what Ed and I were able to accomplish, under a fairly inflexible deadline, and with me coping with the untimely death of a dear friend, at whose bedside I spent the last week of his life, out in Seattle WA, while my home address was considerably further east.
I was a wreck, but managed somehow to focus on the task at hand -- perhaps because in this case, dawdling (my favorite past-time, it seems) would have incurred more expenses, and I felt that I'd borrowed way enough money for the degree -- I didn't need to take out another loan form, I felt.
Ed, who was at the time teaching full-time with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, re-organized his days, in order to shepherd me through the printing of the shadow pages, the proper reloading of the pre-printed paper, and binding the entire thing, for submission to the bood binder. I still feel that, with the layout of onion-skin paper with text on it, overlaying color images of my work, and which images seemed to cast a shadow over the text that was to follow, I had manged to evoke something glass-like, but in print.
Plus, I think the writing is pretty good too. But who am I to judge?
At this point, I believe I'm going to cease ruminations for the evening -- it being that night that is different from other nights, because we cut one end off our blanket, sew it onto the other end, and decide to tell each other that we've succeeded in making our blanket longer. And I've got to go attend a play-reading in Madison NJ tomorrow, and must get what passes for beauty sleep, in my case.
i wonder what favorites I'll go into next? There's just no telling, is there?
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Friday, March 8, 2013
Post Partum, Perhaps?
Well, I certainly didn't expect this...
Although, of course, I should have done. Because, doesn't it always happen like this?
I have the artwork to make. I have a deadline. I spend as much time as I can, between beginning the work, and the deadline, wasting as much time as I can, between beginning the work, and the deadline. While also living as though this work is the most important thing I have to do, which gives me the excuse to ignore everything else, except the few other things I feel like doing. Laundry, for instance.
And then, the deadline finally arrives. The drama of installation ratchets up the tension. I was once completing the assembly of a work, in a group show at a very influential New York City glass gallery, and felt totally at home while I arranged the glass just so, just fifteen minutes before the doors were to open for the reception guests. I asked the gallery's co-owner, who seemed just a little worried at how long I was taking, if he'd ever known anyone to be even later than I was. He laughed, and as I began packing up my tool kit, he told me about an artist who actually showed up, to install his work in an invitational exhibit, after the opening had already begun. And then took the awaited artwork downstairs to the workroom to unpack it, and then dropped it on the floor. Which is never a good thing to do with a piece of glass work.
Of course, in meeting my most recent deadline, just yesterday, there was nothing like this level of drama. and I was even able to drive myself back home in time to take my afternoon antidepressants. I intended to more or less lie about for the rest of the evening -- John had his usual Thursday night rehearsal, and wouldn't be home until 11 pm at the earliest -- and then I had a full list of activities planned for today. I was especially eager to get to the gym again -- finally -- after more than a week away from my routine.
But the much-ballyhooed storm of the century actually did brush past us in the night, leaving an appreciable, if not exactly overwhelming coating of snow everywhere. Picturesque, but also demanding of much clearing of automobiles, and preliminary shoveling of sidewalks, and, finally, clearing the driveway, so John could more easily drive in, after the funeral he'd played this morning. This proved to be so much more work than I'd anticipated, that I decided that a trip to the gym would be a matter of overkill.
The shoveling wasn't really the main issue, though. I'd been feeling kind of blue since early in the morning -- aimless and restless and grumpy. The snow only gave me a plausible excuse for not venturing to Summit to raise my heart rate. I did manage to get some rudimentary shopping done, but just wanted to come home again, so I could be gloomy by myself.
And it was while I was glooming (and gathering the laundry -- something I seem capable of doing, no matter what else is happening), and looking with despair, again, at all the enormous heaps of messiness I seem fated to create, whenever I sit anywhere for more than ten minutes in a row, that I understood, both that I was now without the focus of making art work -- which focus I allow to free me of nearly every other concern or obligation -- and that I was now... facing those enormous heaps of messiness.
Now, it's odd -- when I'm working in the glass hot shop, I'm fastidious. In the theater (I've been doing some acting recently, I may have mentioned), I like to keep my dressing room neat, and sometimes, if I can, enjoy sweeping the stage before a performance, as a kind of meditative act, and a service to the rest of the cast and crew.
It's when I'm at home, or in my own studio, that I seem incapable of maintaining order. That I seem, as I've said before, somehow determined to undermine and sabotage whatever efforts I think I want to make -- whether it's drawing or painting or making something three-dimensional, I have this unconscious knack for losing the tools I'll most need, while piling any amount of random stuff right in front of the place where I'll be working. I was thinking, today, that it would be interesting, in a kind of horrific way, for someone to document how I work -- I think most people would develop hives, confronted with the sea of confusion on top of which I try to keep track of a wrench, or a power drill, or a box of machine screws and matching washers and nuts. I don't think I ever want to know how much time I've wasted, either looking for a box knife (while cursing at the top of my lungs), or driving to the nearest tool spot, to buy the forty-seventh box cutter in my enormous, but fugitive collection.
This habit, of insisting on living in a kind of genteel dishevelledness, is why I feel like a disease, instead of a human being. And why my recent realization that I may have reached the practical limit of the creative work I can make, has thrown me into such despair. Because now there's no evasion of this compulsion to create disorder, and I have nothing to do but to look at it, and to try to make at least some of it go away. Somehow.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Although, of course, I should have done. Because, doesn't it always happen like this?
I have the artwork to make. I have a deadline. I spend as much time as I can, between beginning the work, and the deadline, wasting as much time as I can, between beginning the work, and the deadline. While also living as though this work is the most important thing I have to do, which gives me the excuse to ignore everything else, except the few other things I feel like doing. Laundry, for instance.
And then, the deadline finally arrives. The drama of installation ratchets up the tension. I was once completing the assembly of a work, in a group show at a very influential New York City glass gallery, and felt totally at home while I arranged the glass just so, just fifteen minutes before the doors were to open for the reception guests. I asked the gallery's co-owner, who seemed just a little worried at how long I was taking, if he'd ever known anyone to be even later than I was. He laughed, and as I began packing up my tool kit, he told me about an artist who actually showed up, to install his work in an invitational exhibit, after the opening had already begun. And then took the awaited artwork downstairs to the workroom to unpack it, and then dropped it on the floor. Which is never a good thing to do with a piece of glass work.
Of course, in meeting my most recent deadline, just yesterday, there was nothing like this level of drama. and I was even able to drive myself back home in time to take my afternoon antidepressants. I intended to more or less lie about for the rest of the evening -- John had his usual Thursday night rehearsal, and wouldn't be home until 11 pm at the earliest -- and then I had a full list of activities planned for today. I was especially eager to get to the gym again -- finally -- after more than a week away from my routine.
But the much-ballyhooed storm of the century actually did brush past us in the night, leaving an appreciable, if not exactly overwhelming coating of snow everywhere. Picturesque, but also demanding of much clearing of automobiles, and preliminary shoveling of sidewalks, and, finally, clearing the driveway, so John could more easily drive in, after the funeral he'd played this morning. This proved to be so much more work than I'd anticipated, that I decided that a trip to the gym would be a matter of overkill.
The shoveling wasn't really the main issue, though. I'd been feeling kind of blue since early in the morning -- aimless and restless and grumpy. The snow only gave me a plausible excuse for not venturing to Summit to raise my heart rate. I did manage to get some rudimentary shopping done, but just wanted to come home again, so I could be gloomy by myself.
And it was while I was glooming (and gathering the laundry -- something I seem capable of doing, no matter what else is happening), and looking with despair, again, at all the enormous heaps of messiness I seem fated to create, whenever I sit anywhere for more than ten minutes in a row, that I understood, both that I was now without the focus of making art work -- which focus I allow to free me of nearly every other concern or obligation -- and that I was now... facing those enormous heaps of messiness.
Now, it's odd -- when I'm working in the glass hot shop, I'm fastidious. In the theater (I've been doing some acting recently, I may have mentioned), I like to keep my dressing room neat, and sometimes, if I can, enjoy sweeping the stage before a performance, as a kind of meditative act, and a service to the rest of the cast and crew.
It's when I'm at home, or in my own studio, that I seem incapable of maintaining order. That I seem, as I've said before, somehow determined to undermine and sabotage whatever efforts I think I want to make -- whether it's drawing or painting or making something three-dimensional, I have this unconscious knack for losing the tools I'll most need, while piling any amount of random stuff right in front of the place where I'll be working. I was thinking, today, that it would be interesting, in a kind of horrific way, for someone to document how I work -- I think most people would develop hives, confronted with the sea of confusion on top of which I try to keep track of a wrench, or a power drill, or a box of machine screws and matching washers and nuts. I don't think I ever want to know how much time I've wasted, either looking for a box knife (while cursing at the top of my lungs), or driving to the nearest tool spot, to buy the forty-seventh box cutter in my enormous, but fugitive collection.
This habit, of insisting on living in a kind of genteel dishevelledness, is why I feel like a disease, instead of a human being. And why my recent realization that I may have reached the practical limit of the creative work I can make, has thrown me into such despair. Because now there's no evasion of this compulsion to create disorder, and I have nothing to do but to look at it, and to try to make at least some of it go away. Somehow.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Thursday, March 7, 2013
A Round Trip...
Lying about in the den, pleasantly exhausted, and watching people kill each other on TV.
Today, as planned, I loaded my newest piece of useless sculpture into the van (it fit!), and drove down to Millville NJ, and WheatonArts' Museum of American Glass, to deliver same work for an upcoming exhibit. The trip was simplicity itself; I stopped once, to gas up and grab a coffee, at the Walt Whitman Rest Area. (I'd much rather stop at a place commemorating Whitman, than James Fennimore Cooper, or Joyce Kilmer) And then onward, to Rte. 55 and Vineland, the Eggplant Capital of the World. In case you didn't know.
Once I got to Wheaton, the only apparent obstacle was the firetruck that was leaving the grounds, as I was trying to get to the Museum's delivery door. We squeezed past each other, and aside from my usual struggle getting the van's side doors to open, things continued to unfold gracefully. Until...
I'd expected to be installing the work, where it would stay for the run of the show. On a low plinth, about 6" high, I was told. But when I walked into the exhibit hall, all I was shown was the general area where the piece was going to stand. This made me very nervous.
So we began looking at various (unworkable) options -- some pedestals that looked like window sills, some that looked like door stops, but none that looked like low, 6" high plinths. And it became apparent to me that there was probably no budget for building a low, 6" plinth (which, had I known, I could have built myself -- there was plenty of room in the van, once I figured out how to open the side doors...), and we were going to look at every single pedestal-like construction in the building, until we found something that would work.
Which we did, first having to thread our way through the entire permanent exhibit -- past the Victorian-era baby casket, and the reproduction of a nineteenth-century dining room. Sitting on an enormous 6" plinth, as a matter of fact. Up in the cramped little pedestal loft, there were actually a couple of low-ish items that would, if laid down side-by-side, serve as a support for my work. Faute de mieux, as the French would say.
We threaded our way back through American glass history, carrying our white boxes that tempted me to plant some geraniums in them. Set in place, and with a little sheet of black screen beneath it, my piece looked okay. Well, the persimmon-colored wall behind it is a bit of a shock, but we do pick our battles, don't we?
I didn't even have to fill out insurance paperwork or anything -- they'll email it, they said. I didn't even stop at Millville's Queen City Diner for a lunch I would soon regret. Just got back on the road, heading north.
There was one stop I wanted to make, though, on the way home -- there's a new Goodwill Store in a mall between the highway into Philadelphia, and the turnpike. I hoped, as it's brand new, that they might have some men's pink shirts, for my paper project.
But so far from the usual array of orderly racks of color-coordinated clothing, and shelves of appliances and kitchenware, with luggage and sports equipment in the back, there were six clusters of low wheeled plastic bins, each one holding a jumble of stuff. Stuffed toys, hand bags, some frying pans, a roll of fabric, a tatty old quilt. Everything looked clean, but after I'd touched two things, I decided I had to leave. I felt guilty, not having bought at least one bit of refuse, but what was the point?
And then, by dint of breaking the speed limit as much and as often as possible, I was back home by 4:30 pm.
Part of the way back, I was thinking about my paternal grandfather, who was born in Wisconsin (I think) in the 1890's, just one generation after the American Civil War. I often think about him, when I drive to Philadelphia and back in a day, wondering how such a trek would have been seen when he was a boy -- would it even have been possible? Could he have done it by train? The average distance a person can walk, in a day, is about twenty miles. Making Philadelphia a five-day journey on foot, from South Orange. How long would it have taken, on horse-back? How many stops along the way, to water the animal, and stretch one's own legs a bit?
I thought about a scene in a BBC film, about a little town and the changes it faces with the arrival of the railroad. Some of the town worthies, finally converted to the idea of progress, venture to take a little ride on the new conveyance, and express some trepidation at traveling at a speed of... 25 miles per hour! Might this not have a negative impact on one's health, one character asks?
Now, I feel completely normal, driving at three times that speed. Recently, as I was tooling along at what seemed a perfectly ordinary pace, I looked down at the speedometer, to see that I was doing 80! And, of course, I wasn't the speediest one on that stretch of road.
I also thought, as I often do when I'm driving, about that boy I knew, in Iceland, when I was in the Air Force and he was in the Navy. This never fails to make me cry. I suppose, as has been suggested to me, that this is a stereotypical old-guy issue -- the same sort of thing that makes men my age (if not significantly younger) buy red sports cars. It's also a cliche, I guess, to put a broken limb in a cast, or to mourn the death of a friend. The pain still seems real to me; the loss, even if imaginary, feels acute and authentic. I think about doing a piece of writing, 'The Five Pauls', for myself, to spin out a set of alternate endings to what seemed, to me at least, to be beginning of... something, as we sat staring at each other without making a move or saying a word.
The van has a radio, by the way. I never use it. Why would I?
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
Today, as planned, I loaded my newest piece of useless sculpture into the van (it fit!), and drove down to Millville NJ, and WheatonArts' Museum of American Glass, to deliver same work for an upcoming exhibit. The trip was simplicity itself; I stopped once, to gas up and grab a coffee, at the Walt Whitman Rest Area. (I'd much rather stop at a place commemorating Whitman, than James Fennimore Cooper, or Joyce Kilmer) And then onward, to Rte. 55 and Vineland, the Eggplant Capital of the World. In case you didn't know.
Once I got to Wheaton, the only apparent obstacle was the firetruck that was leaving the grounds, as I was trying to get to the Museum's delivery door. We squeezed past each other, and aside from my usual struggle getting the van's side doors to open, things continued to unfold gracefully. Until...
I'd expected to be installing the work, where it would stay for the run of the show. On a low plinth, about 6" high, I was told. But when I walked into the exhibit hall, all I was shown was the general area where the piece was going to stand. This made me very nervous.
So we began looking at various (unworkable) options -- some pedestals that looked like window sills, some that looked like door stops, but none that looked like low, 6" high plinths. And it became apparent to me that there was probably no budget for building a low, 6" plinth (which, had I known, I could have built myself -- there was plenty of room in the van, once I figured out how to open the side doors...), and we were going to look at every single pedestal-like construction in the building, until we found something that would work.
Which we did, first having to thread our way through the entire permanent exhibit -- past the Victorian-era baby casket, and the reproduction of a nineteenth-century dining room. Sitting on an enormous 6" plinth, as a matter of fact. Up in the cramped little pedestal loft, there were actually a couple of low-ish items that would, if laid down side-by-side, serve as a support for my work. Faute de mieux, as the French would say.
We threaded our way back through American glass history, carrying our white boxes that tempted me to plant some geraniums in them. Set in place, and with a little sheet of black screen beneath it, my piece looked okay. Well, the persimmon-colored wall behind it is a bit of a shock, but we do pick our battles, don't we?
I didn't even have to fill out insurance paperwork or anything -- they'll email it, they said. I didn't even stop at Millville's Queen City Diner for a lunch I would soon regret. Just got back on the road, heading north.
There was one stop I wanted to make, though, on the way home -- there's a new Goodwill Store in a mall between the highway into Philadelphia, and the turnpike. I hoped, as it's brand new, that they might have some men's pink shirts, for my paper project.
But so far from the usual array of orderly racks of color-coordinated clothing, and shelves of appliances and kitchenware, with luggage and sports equipment in the back, there were six clusters of low wheeled plastic bins, each one holding a jumble of stuff. Stuffed toys, hand bags, some frying pans, a roll of fabric, a tatty old quilt. Everything looked clean, but after I'd touched two things, I decided I had to leave. I felt guilty, not having bought at least one bit of refuse, but what was the point?
And then, by dint of breaking the speed limit as much and as often as possible, I was back home by 4:30 pm.
Part of the way back, I was thinking about my paternal grandfather, who was born in Wisconsin (I think) in the 1890's, just one generation after the American Civil War. I often think about him, when I drive to Philadelphia and back in a day, wondering how such a trek would have been seen when he was a boy -- would it even have been possible? Could he have done it by train? The average distance a person can walk, in a day, is about twenty miles. Making Philadelphia a five-day journey on foot, from South Orange. How long would it have taken, on horse-back? How many stops along the way, to water the animal, and stretch one's own legs a bit?
I thought about a scene in a BBC film, about a little town and the changes it faces with the arrival of the railroad. Some of the town worthies, finally converted to the idea of progress, venture to take a little ride on the new conveyance, and express some trepidation at traveling at a speed of... 25 miles per hour! Might this not have a negative impact on one's health, one character asks?
Now, I feel completely normal, driving at three times that speed. Recently, as I was tooling along at what seemed a perfectly ordinary pace, I looked down at the speedometer, to see that I was doing 80! And, of course, I wasn't the speediest one on that stretch of road.
I also thought, as I often do when I'm driving, about that boy I knew, in Iceland, when I was in the Air Force and he was in the Navy. This never fails to make me cry. I suppose, as has been suggested to me, that this is a stereotypical old-guy issue -- the same sort of thing that makes men my age (if not significantly younger) buy red sports cars. It's also a cliche, I guess, to put a broken limb in a cast, or to mourn the death of a friend. The pain still seems real to me; the loss, even if imaginary, feels acute and authentic. I think about doing a piece of writing, 'The Five Pauls', for myself, to spin out a set of alternate endings to what seemed, to me at least, to be beginning of... something, as we sat staring at each other without making a move or saying a word.
The van has a radio, by the way. I never use it. Why would I?
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
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