Monday, May 31, 2010

Tapping the Reserves

As we get deep into the work of the house, the days are long and we're maxing out our energy reserves, getting up early and working until we can't work anymore. The blog becomes another item on the to do list, buried under rows of more urgent tasks. Coming back from L.A. I had hoped to spend a day or two decompressing and reflecting on our trip before diving back into the construction zone, but a call from Evan said that he and Hyo Jung were ready to come up and help finish the electric work, so we were right back in the thick of it. Now, on this Memorial Day, while the rest of the world is out camping, I've decided to go out for breakfast and start on the house a bit later. I'm peering across the street at the lumberyard trying to figure out whether or not they intend to take the day off. Somewhere there's a holiday bucket of drywall mud for me, even if it means going to the Dumb Hippo (that's code for Home Depot). I have a long post I want to write about L.A., and maybe I'll still get to it. But for now, here's a few pictures:

Shana with Cousin Jeff, who was our Pasadena host, on the back porch of the Gamble House

This picture basically sums up Mark and Shana's friendship

Hiding in the bougainvillea at the Schindler House

Mark in his Hollywood apartment giving his best bad guy look

A rare look at the bones of a perfect house surrounded by other perfect houses in a perfect neighborhood.

My dust mask awaits.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Pepperoni and Other Building Materials


The old house. The house that I grew up in - from age 5 to 14 - grade school to Jr. High. Everyone said that when I visited Canyon Country I would be astonished by how much it has been developed, but to me it didn't really seem like it had changed much. Sure there were some new houses, but the place was under development when I was living there and what I saw just seemed like a logical continuation of that process. There is a limit to the development possibilities in our old neighborhood because eventually you run into steep canyon walls that are essentially unbuildable. And over the hill in Crystal Springs, the roads had expanded to reach these natural limits. But in my immediate neighborhood, on my street, there were the same number of houses that were there when I lived there. Most had changed little. Our house, so I heard, had undergone a million dollar renovation. I was expecting to see an unrecognizable monstrosity, but really they had only added a small addition over the concrete patio where we used to hang the laundry. Other than that, the footprint was essentially the same. She had however undergone a major facelift. The pergola had been removed, it was painted white, and there was an apron of brick up to about waist height that ran around the perimeter of the house. Even with all of these changes, I stood for a moment nearly dumbstruck by the sight of the place. It seemed to vibrate with an intense energy of compressed memory. It was a sort of feeling of vertigo, a tingling in the chest. The owner was in the driveway, tending to his trailered speedboat, so we approached and introduced ourselves. He was kind enough to let us into the back yard and we reminisced about the history of the place. I looked up at the back hill and I remembered that I once buried a cat up there, where there was now a white vinyl fence. Apparently he had dug up a box while setting posts, but he assured me that he reburied it once he realized what it was. Seeing the backyard, my heart sank. The wonderland of trees and cacti that I knew as a child had been nearly stripped bare. What motivated them to cut down such glorious trees I can only guess, but he mentioned something about maintenance. I remember having to sweep the pool of pine needles, but this hassle never would have led me to the conclusion to cut them down. And probably the plum tree, and the pear tree, and the apricot tree were removed because of their "litter" as well.


Several years ago, when I first drove by my grandparents' house in Iola, Wisconsin after it was sold, and saw that they had painted it beige, I felt violated, like they had tampered with something sacred and gotten it all wrong. I wanted to go inside and tell the new owners that the house was supposed to be red, that they should put it back the way it was. It was enough that my grandfather had removed the light-up Haroldson Electric sign from out front when I was in grade school. It made no sense to me that it was no longer needed because he had retired. It was simply supposed to be there. I wanted it back. And now some stranger thinks that he can go and paint the house any color he wants, just because he bought the place. This was the house that my grandparents had bought with another relative and then split in half because they could not afford the whole thing. They literally cut it in half and had their side moved to the site. They lived in a renovated chicken coop on the property before they could afford to have the house brought in. And this was the place that I had gone every summer of my childhood from the time I was a toddler and built up a treasure trove of sweet memories. All of those memories are housed. They belong to that place. I can crawl up the carpeted stairs in my mind and I can tell you what is in each drawer of the dresser at the landing between the two upstairs bedrooms. I can see in intimate detail the star patterned holes in the acoustic tile ceiling, the light up painting hanging on the wall, and the plastic flower arrangements in the corner. I can see my grandpa fiddling with the receiver on his satellite TV and I can feel the texture of the rainbow striped carpet in the three season room. And when we bought the bungalow and I stepped into my very own garage, I smelled the odor of the gas lawnmower and grass clippings and instantly I was transported to Grandpa Leo's shop in his garage where we would search through innumerable tiny drawers of parts for things we did not understand and there would always be a Jolly Good Cola in the fridge. For a hundred some thousand dollars, my family relinquished all rights to this place and our memories are buried, one by one, under layers of paint and new carpet. Of course there would have been no sense in keeping it. There would have been no one to live there. But it is painful nonetheless.

I came to Canyon Country bracing myself for this sense of loss. But when I first set eyes on the place and felt that rush of energy, I knew that somehow its essence remained. And I drove through Canyon Country on instinct, searching out places that gave me that sense of warm nostalgia. I found it in the hill in front of my house that I used to skateboard down, and I found it in the old green utility box on the side of the road that served as our bus stop. It has often been noted that nothing can trigger memory like a smell or a taste, and I knew that the nostalgia jackpot was waiting for me in the crispy pepperoni on top of a Round Table pizza, a taste that I have been craving for twenty years. We pulled into the strip mall and there it was, where it had always been. I walked in and instinctively ordered a root beer. I took one bite of pizza and I knew, and was comforted that some things never change. Looking around the room, I saw that they had remodeled a bit, but the arcade was still there, and the same coat of arms, although it had been moved, was still hanging on the wall. It struck me that the world is a palimpsest, alternately being covered and revealed in layers, reconfigured, rearranged, but never really fundamentally changed. Space remains where it is, and seems to contain all that was ever there.


Before we returned to LA, we stopped at Vazquez Rocks, where my parents had taken us on a yearly excursion for Easter sunrise service. It is also the place where many films have been shot, usually portrayed as an alien landscape. Climbing on the rocks Shana turned to me and remarked, "Being here, I think I understand you a little better," because it is after all, a part of me.



Monday, May 17, 2010

Bungalows Galore


Up to Mulholland Drive to gawk at the Beverly Hills mansions but to no avail. We drove into the clouds and saw nothing but gray. But down on the flats we saw many exquisite bungalows throughout the city. Here are a few of the gems.





"Love has conceived a house,
and out of its labor
brought forth its likeness
-the emblem of desire, continuing
though the flesh falls away."

-Wendell Berry

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Arriving in L.A.

"...the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of the 'first stairway,' we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house's entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch has remained in our hands." Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space

And it has been twenty years since I've been to Los Angeles. Shana and I are here to give an artist talk and scope out venues to develop a future project. But for me this is also a journey into the past. Today we will drive to Canyon Country, where I spent eight of my most formative years. I hear that our house has undergone a million dollar renovation, and that the suburb is much more densely populated. I go there in search of memories, but I know that the landscape will be very much altered. I hope to find some things that have not changed. The transition had already begun when I lived there. We had a hill in our back yard that we would climb up to the top and watch the landscape being inscribed with twisting mountain roads lined with innumerable houses. Everywhere the hills were being reconfigured by bulldozers, and these became our playgrounds. We would ride down the plateaus with our BMX bikes, steal lumber from job sites to build skateboard ramps and explore the drainage tunnels that went below the new roads. I know that what I will find is a very different place. But the train bridge where I dodged a train after egging cars in the middle of the night with Eric Close, buzzed on my first sips of alcohol, will still be there. The hill where we made makeshift snowboards out of skateboard decks and bike tires for bindings the one time it snowed will still be there. And maybe, maybe some of my neighbors will still be there. Maybe I will vaguely recognize a face or two, transformed, like mine, by twenty years of a different life.


Upon arriving in LA, the first thing that draws my attention is the foliage. Even though I grew up here, the palm trees and cactuses seem so foreign and exotic. It feels like another country. Then come the place names; Marina Del Rey, La Brea, Malibu. They are so musical and romantic. I remember reading these names on the freeway signs as a child and dreaming of these places. Some I visited and some I did not, but they all exuded a feeling of great leisure. And as I walk through the streets of Los Angeles, I feel that old slow step coming back, and my speech begins to become a little bit more drawn out. In Wisconsin, we are always in a hurry, because we know that even in the middle of summer, the bitter cold is right around the corner. Here summer lasts forever, and there's nowhere to go, because you are already there.


Sara Daleiden, our host and an old friend from Milwaukee, has put us up in fabulous penthouse designed by Viennese architect Rudolf Schindler. Schindler came to California on a job building furniture for some of Frank Lloyd Wright's California commissions, but soon established his own practice. He built the first examples of international style architecture in California, planting the seeds for the playful explorations of modernism that are so characteristic of the Los Angeles architectural landscape.



After settling in, we had a bit of free time so we drove down to Venice Beach, where I went many times as a child. Here's a quick photo tour:

Greeted by the Buddha

We ran across a classic beach house designed by the Greene Brothers. Later in the trip we will visit the Gamble House. (Correction; this house was built in the style of Greene and Greene, but by a different architect)


Some calisthenics at muscle beach


Reminders of home.


Saturday, May 15, 2010

Dad and the Art of Wall Repair

Preparation;


Detritis;



Calisthenics;


and Color;



Thanks to Dad for coming down on my birthday to help with the painting and for babysitting the cat while we are away.

Monday, May 10, 2010

The Book of the Five Circuits


In a surprise development, Shana's brother Evan, who I had practically begged to come up and help me with the electrical work, decided he could spare a weekend and drove up from Iowa with his mother and fiance to lend a hand. We spent Mother's Day in a web of tangled wires and electrical circuits, tearing holes in walls and puzzling over the logic of several generations of electrical updates. I gained a new respect for the electrical trade as I saw first hand the amount of shear brain power it takes to decipher a system whose guts are hidden inside the walls.


At the tail end of our second fourteen hour day, I was relegated to the task of running up and down the stairs to flip circuits on and off, which was all right by me, because this was the one job that I was still mentally capable of performing by then. Somehow, even though we never touched the upstairs tenants' electrical system, their refrigerator had lost power and their freezer defrosted. Luckily, it was a frostless freezer so this did not result in a puddle of water on the floor. There were, however, some popsicles that were considered a total loss; a minor disaster compared to the one that was lying dormant in the adjacent outlet. Mysterious, inconsistent readings from the outlet that powered the fridge prompted Evan to investigate further. There was an outlet that the tenants had plugged up with plastic covers because they said that the one time they tried to use it, it sent sparks flying. On the other side of the same wall was an outlet/switch combo that the tenants claimed would shut the power off to the entire house. I was skeptical of this when we first bought the house, so I tried it and nothing happened. But some electrical work had been done since then. Apparently it had been many years since the incident. When we opened it up to investigate, one of the outlets looked like it had been struck by lightning. They each had separate supply lines and were on separate circuits, yet somebody had taken a short piece of Romex wire and connected the two. In theory this would mean that the outlet was receiving 240 volts of power and this would explain the fried outlet and the switch that shorted the power to the whole unit. I certainly would not want to be the poor soul who tries to plug a toaster into that outlet.

Between trips down to the breaker box, I chatted with Sarah and Michael, the upstairs tenants. Sarah handed me a book written by a Japanese Samurai called the 'Book of the Five Rings'. Apparently this book is popular amongst businessmen who are looking for more inspiration than their 'Successories" posters can provide. She said that she thought of me when she read the chapter entitled "Likening the Science of Martial Arts to Carpentry." So I read this while I waited in the stairwell for my next instruction from above.

From the text:

"When sorting out timber for building a house, that which is straight, free from knots, and of good appearance can be used for front pillars. That which has some knots but is straight and strong can be used for rear pillars. That which is somewhat weak yet has no knots and looks good is variously used for door sills, lintels, doors, and screens. That which is knotted and crooked but nevertheless strong is used thoughtfully in consideration of the strength of the various members of the house. Then the house will last a long time."

and:

"Efficiency and smooth progress, prudence in all matters, recognizing true courage, recognizing different levels of morale, instilling confidence, and realizing what can and cannot be reasonably expected - such are the matters on the mind of the master carpenter. The principle of martial arts is like this."

Reading this, I was feeling lofty about my trade, and I mused about the role of the electrician. Electricity was not yet discovered in 1645, so the Book of Five Rings contains no entry likening the samurai to the electrician. But if there was, it would certainly extol the virtues of patience, reason, and endurance.






Sisyphus Exonerated



Finished, finally!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Carbide Sisyphus



Scrape.. scrape... scrape... scrape... Take it in stages. A few feet at a time. Make it down to the door then I'll go home. Should have brought kneepads. Almost half way done. I'll do more tomorrow. A little bit at a time.