Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Anatomy of the Wall



To ask somebody to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with breaks only for meals and sleep, brings to mind words like cruel and inhumane. I would never ask anyone to do this for me, and yet here I am working this schedule voluntarily. I suppose the difference is that I am working for myself, rather than toiling away for someone else's profit with no direct, tangible rewards other than the abstract notion of a paycheck. I will live with the results of my labor and eventually, the hope is that it will all be worth it. But there is no escaping the inevitable physical and psychological effects of working such a schedule. Eventually it catches up to you. I was at a family reunion this weekend, one of the first Sundays this summer that I have not spent working on the house. My aunt Lynn was recalling her experience of building a house and she described an image she had of the house going up while she crumbled to the ground. More than I'm happy to admit, I can relate.

When I set out to make this blog, I decided that I didn't want to treat it as a diary. I didn't want it to be a blog that put my heart on my sleeve for everyone and their mother (and mine) to hear about. I had read a few blogs that seemed like calls for attention, cries for help, and this is exactly what I wanted to try to avoid. I guess I envisioned this sort of romanticized notion of renovation as an intellectual exercise and I would use the blog to report all of the insights and inspiration I had gained through the process. You may have noticed that I have not posted in quite some time. This is because I hit a wall. There were too many posts, to many things that I wanted to write about and not enough time. Meanwhile the romance of the project was fading and being overshadowed by the immensity of the workload. And this wall is reinforced with events that don't fit my romantic notion of what the renovation should be; events like when I was pruning the neighbor's maple tree that was crowding out our cedars. It was shaping up to be a great blog post as I was climbing on top of the garage roof and it just happened to be the day of the air show and the Blue Angels were flying overhead. But when I cut the wrong branch and it came crashing down, taking out all of the limbs on one side of the cedar, it took the wind out of my sails. I loved that cedar. It had such a nice shape. It was one of the reasons why I wanted this house. Now it's lopsided and awkward and the pruner is retired to the garage. Meanwhile, streams of water continuously seep into the basement all along one side of the house. It's proving to be a much worse problem than the seller had made it out to be. All the while the move in date creeps closer and closer and I'm not sure that I can outrun it.


Once a week or so I try to take a little break. Going to Iola for the family reunion felt like my first true taste of summer... what people are supposed to do in summer; hang out, drink a few beers, enjoy the weather. Two weeks ago Shana and I went for a morning hike. This morning we went swimming and I stopped at the house and picked the black raspberries growing behind the garage. I keep waiting for these little breaks to fill me up and reenergize me, so that I can go back to work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. But mostly, I'm just tired and anxious. What I really need is a week off, but I know I can't have it... not yet. Shana and I have scheduled a trip up to Madaline Island on Lake Superior for the week after we are supposed to move in. It will be a well deserved vacation, but depending on our progress, we may or may not be able to go. It's good incentive to keep pushing forward, but theres a limit to how much we can accomplish in a given period of time. We'll see.


Maybe what I am going through is something akin to the renovation itself. Something that necessarily begins with destruction, with violence, but clears the way for something improved, something stronger - a phoenix. But this phoenix has an attraction to the fire, and I wonder how many times it can be reborn. Sometimes I think that what we are doing here is absurd. All of our decisions about the house are these attempts to make a place that is comfortable, relaxing, a place of leisure. When the renovation is done, I tell myself, then I can relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor. But the reality is that when the renovation is done, I will dive headlong into the next big project. I can sit in my Morris chair, on my oriental rug, in front of my fireplace in the restored bungalow that I've always wanted, but will I really be able to appreciate it or will I be too deep in the anxiety of the next deadline? Dear reader, my heart is on my sleeve now, and I'm sorry you have to hear all of this, but the the fact is that the blog has stagnated because I have been dishonest... I've been holding back, and a true look at this project must acknowledge the fact that pain and suffering are two of its componets, and they are perhaps the price that must be paid for the fulfillment that will come with its completion.