During one of the recent torrential downpours, we discovered a leak in the dining room ceiling. Like all things built by men, houses eventually spring leaks. We've narrowed it down to specific area on the roof -- which, if the rain breaks long enough, I'll crawl up there and see what needs to be done.
I generally like my more domesticated mode, though the life I've lived up to this point has left me woefully ill-prepared in the "How-Tos" of house repair. Words are my wheelhouse and most everything else is something else I've learned. I'm part of a generation that either unwisely chose or was given no choice but to develop an expertise... the result that Ralph Waldo Emerson warned against in The American Scholar. I was schooled, but my education has taken a path outside of formal education. I am always on the look out for teachers, for elders. And this is a good thing, because while I can put words together in an effective way, I'll have to learn how to make structural home repairs.
Lately I've been preoccupied with my (still-ongoing) war against Versailles, with the political cycle, and with finding paying work. Lately my life feels like the psychological equivalent to being drawn and quartered -- being pulled in all directions tied to forces I can neither control nor really see. Poetry pulls. Work pulls. Family pulls. My need to improve my little corner of the world pulls. Other people pull. I should be used to this by now. I'm a Pisces, after all, and forever swimming simultaneously in two directions... but my skin has worn thin of late. I look in the mirror and see more a fool than a knight errant. But I've learned that these mirages are temporary. I stay in the moment and move forward because there is nothing else to do and I'm too stubborn to let the bastards win by stopping.
So, I get to learn how to fix a leaky roof. I get to learn how to shore up a badly built foundation (that would be the kitchen.) I get to learn how to do all kinds of things that I was not really prepared for by any of the education I've had. I see that as part of the journey, and I am lucky that on this journey I am not alone.
I generally like my more domesticated mode, though the life I've lived up to this point has left me woefully ill-prepared in the "How-Tos" of house repair. Words are my wheelhouse and most everything else is something else I've learned. I'm part of a generation that either unwisely chose or was given no choice but to develop an expertise... the result that Ralph Waldo Emerson warned against in The American Scholar. I was schooled, but my education has taken a path outside of formal education. I am always on the look out for teachers, for elders. And this is a good thing, because while I can put words together in an effective way, I'll have to learn how to make structural home repairs.
Lately I've been preoccupied with my (still-ongoing) war against Versailles, with the political cycle, and with finding paying work. Lately my life feels like the psychological equivalent to being drawn and quartered -- being pulled in all directions tied to forces I can neither control nor really see. Poetry pulls. Work pulls. Family pulls. My need to improve my little corner of the world pulls. Other people pull. I should be used to this by now. I'm a Pisces, after all, and forever swimming simultaneously in two directions... but my skin has worn thin of late. I look in the mirror and see more a fool than a knight errant. But I've learned that these mirages are temporary. I stay in the moment and move forward because there is nothing else to do and I'm too stubborn to let the bastards win by stopping.
So, I get to learn how to fix a leaky roof. I get to learn how to shore up a badly built foundation (that would be the kitchen.) I get to learn how to do all kinds of things that I was not really prepared for by any of the education I've had. I see that as part of the journey, and I am lucky that on this journey I am not alone.