Paint

I have given into my compulsions, one of which is to paint.

Approximately, seven weeks ago I moved into an old grocery store in a small town in Mississippi. I had lived down the street from the space for almost a year, and every chance I got I went creeping down to the old store, peering through its windows and imagining how I could recreate it. To have the opportunity to do so would be a dream come true, a fantasy that I had been having since as long as I could remember. One day, a couple month's short of having been in my present studio apartment a year, I got up the nerve to ask the landlord if I could rent the larger space. He was all too happy to get more rent.

I won't go over all that I had to do to prep the space for decorating. I'll just say that it had been two years since the grocery store space had been rented, but it seemed, from the look of things, more like thirty years. Mildew was everywhere and earthworms were coming in with each rain, which was a lot considering it was spring. I was not however deterred by any of what had to be done; all of it was a labor of love. In fact, I have become quite comfortable with cleaning dirt from corners, removing cobwebs, bleaching everything down. The results make weary muscles worth it.

Speaking of dirt and comfort, I found myself a week ago circling back in my Chevy Blazer to a pile of junk I spotted along the road, or, well, beside someone's house, as I was headed down a backroad to the next largest town. I did a pass by, then parked across the street from it to assess the pile's contents. Finally, I drove over, got out and knocked on the door. "May I dig in your junk pile?" A half-naked man looked at me curiously then stated, "There's nothing in there worth anything!" I let him have his say, then came back, "So, you don't mind if I look through it?" Shaking his head and closing the door on me, he nevertheless told me to go ahead. I did.

Mantle found along the road in someone's trash. Beneath it, a kudzu basket.

I took away from that junk pile three or four items, most of them heavy--a broken chair, a broken dining table, odd pieces of wood, and, ahem, a full mantle with a lovely burn spot. I had scored big. I drove back down the road, forgetting all about going to town. The Blazer's lift gate was left open to hold the mantle, which wouldn't fit in the back because of its width but which was securely lodged between two of the table legs. I put on the flashers and hoped I could drive the fifteen miles home without running into a trooper. Whenever someone got behind me, I pulled over, and within twenty minutes I was safe and secure at the front of the grocery store-turned-home unloading my goods.

I told a fellow junker about my bounty and showed her a picture of the mantle. Right away, she suggested I paint it--black or purple. I had had the same thought. I may paint it yet, but for now I am enjoying it as is, burn spot and all, for as much as I have a compulsion to paint things, I also am drawn to wood. It is truly one of the most delightful things. Perhaps it lives long after its source is gone. I'm looking over at the mantle now, appreciating how it warms my living area, set as it is against a cool denim blue wall. Like other objects I've collected and saved, the mantle is teaching me about the beauty of imperfection. I am learning about visual balance and life balance. Paint does freshen things. Almost every wall in this place I've repainted in the weeks I've been here, but for me there is no kilter without objects whose patina suggests the lives they've lived.

Sunday Afternoon

No deep thoughts today. I'm just sitting at my table by the kitchen window. A cat just walked through my yard. Before I moved in, the trashcan would always be open, and that cat got used to going hunting in it. I've been keeping it closed.

It's cold here in North Mississippi, cold and windy, but the warm up is coming Wednesday. I cannot wait! I'm sure the vegetable plants I put in the ground last weekend also will be happy to have some sun.

I'm barely staying warm in this space but for a great sleeping bag and lots of throws. The living area has only a small gas type heater but no blower. Worse is that the big beautiful factory-like windows are an energy suck. I literally see gaps as well between the outdoors and the window air conditioner placed in one of window frames. OMG! Who thought that a good idea?! My guess is someone who is in denial about how cold it gets in this part of the state.

This morning at Sunday School (I've started back going after ten years away), the old men were reflecting on how they struggled to stay warm in the houses of their childhood. According to them, they in fact took turns standing in front of the fireplace. A bowl of water left out indoors would freeze overnight.

When sharing with a friend who grew up in rural Alabama my ideas about bathing without a "real" bath or shower, he told me that he had been born in a house without running water. I suspect many people my age had that same experience. Many of the brick houses my friends grew up in in the South were built in the late Sixties through the Seventies. Perhaps those friends are humbled by those truths, or maybe they aren't. I'm not sure. What I do know is that even though I grew up in a house with a full bath, it was always the conveniences that I was trying to leave behind. Life it seemed to me then as now was not meant to be lived without direct contact with the earth. I do not mind fetching water or scratching the earth in order to eat. But maybe if I had no choice.

Whatever the case, I am enjoying working for my bath and for my life in this way.

This morning, I watched a YouTube video in which a woman, a transplant from Argentina, transformed a shipping container into a home for herself and her young daughter. This was not a fancy schmancy modern, architect-designed palace. She did all of the designing and building herself. The home was ramshackle and practical and real and lovely. But admitting that her daughter sometimes complained about not having this or that luxury, she posed, "Who says you have to have pink toys, and a pink room with pink furniture to be a happy kid," and added that where she came from her self-made abode would be considered very nice. My sentiments exactly. Who said you have to have granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a kitchen island, or a "garden" tub and Kohler fixtures to experience bliss?

In the last month, I have spent a bit of money, more than I'm comfortable with actually, furnishing and equipping my space though I've received a few free items, cheap compressed paper shelves I've painted, packing crates directly from the trash bin, and a lawyer's bookshelf left at the curb. It had an inch of dirt on each shelf and was home not to books but to spiders, but it looks great now and holds almost a hundred of my books. I can see it now from where I sit, and it's a little visual clutter I guess but also comforting. This place is coming together slowly, and that is part of the joy.

The Stuff I Bought

Maybe a few years ago, I admitted to myself that I'm addicted to junking. I crave junk! I can hardly pass by a broken chair next to someone's city-distributed plastic trash container without slowing my car to assess the cast-off's potential. So yesterday...

My friend whose name I've changed to protect her innocence--Typ--and headed out to an estate sale in Memphis. I was excited, hoping to get some of the art and art supplies of the person who'd left them behind, maybe by choice or maybe by her family members' choice, as she went either to stay with them or to a nursing home. There was in fact plenty such items left in her home, mostly watercolors--at near-gallery prices. One part of me thought--it is only right. She created these of her soul, talent, and hands. Another part of me selfishly and practically thought--Get real! This is a tag sale!!! Always in such situations I am reminded that the things we treasure when alive and well can quickly lose value on the auction block.

1994 Datebook belonging to artist. My open journal sits beneath it.

I did not buy one of her paintings, but I did buy for $2 a datebook from 1994, which she had used to organize herself. In May, her first entry was for a senior aerobics class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Over the next two months, she made note of birthdays, her perm appointment, and a "Celebrate Art" event scheduled for June 10 at 3:00 in the afternoon. She played bridge, attended many art shows and luncheons. She was obviously an important part of the art community. She loved gardening too. Perhaps she thought of it as art; she made mention of her tomatoes, reminded herself in August to "fertilize rhododendrons." There are no notes after August. Perhaps, after the initial motivation for buying the datebook had passed, she grew tired, as artists often do, of being hyper-organized, which is to say organized at all. But at the back of the datebook, she did write down several birthdays from January through March and her and her husband's wedding anniversary--July 18. They made sixty-two years in 2004!

Pat asked the organizer of the sale if the artist was deceased and was told no, but her husband. I didn't go through many of his things. For about twenty minutes I did carry around an unworn Michigan t-shirt, which a lady saw me with and pointed out a cotton golf cap that also sported the school's name. He obviously was a Michigan grad as am I--a connection, then, to both him and, as a fellow artist, to his wife. In June, she wrote, "Art Show Luncheon--Cranbrook Rd, Birmingham." How familiar the street name and city rang. Home for me, or close enough. I wondered then what brought them to an upscale subdivision in Germantown, Tennessee on the outskirts of Memphis.

Looking at her life nudged me to examine my own; we share a path though she is old enough to be my grandmother. I am inspired that she both still lives and that, in the Germantown house, she kept an art studio, on the second floor, and continued it would appear to paint into old age. Some of her watercolor paper had yellowed, some was fresh. I purchased nearly half her brushes, quality. When I got home, I wiped them down with alcohol. I feel her enough I thought. She was an established artist. As I paint, some part of her may live here too.