"Swept"

I hate housekeeping. There has to be better ways to use my energy than chasing dust bunnies and spiders around the room. I said this to a date once, and he said the sexiest words a man has ever said to a woman: “We’ll get a maid!” He had me in that moment.

Looking around my room, contemplating “swept”, and considering if I should pick up some piles and actually sweep makes me feel the stagnation of energy around me. I hauled out piles of linoleum blocks and tools a couple months ago with the best intentions of actually cutting the linoleum into masterpieces of art. That didn’t happen, but the linoleum is still on my table. It sits on top of the world map, so I guess I’ll never know the exact location of Estonia, Zimbabwe, or Kazakhstan, and the map is on top of cork, and I swear I had a great idea for the cork. I just don’t have the faintest idea what that idea was any more. There’s also a pile of sketches on that table, but in order to figure out what that was all about I’d really have to commit to cleaning off the whole table. Is it really worth the effort? And if I actually put away the linoleum, isn’t that guaranteeing there won’t be any masterful linocuts in my immediate future?

Heave sigh, get a new glass of iced tea, and pack up the linoleum… I had the right idea about where Estonia is, but I was way off on Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe. I also found a sketchbook with a broom in it of all things! Who knows what I was doing for Halloween, or why that was with a bunch of cut snowflakes, but I have successfully found something for “swept” without actually drawing another broom. Now I’m painfully aware of the composting piles of paper on my computer desk. Hmmm… This could take all day, which is undoubtedly why I’ve been avoiding it, and will undoubtedly involve my piles in other rooms, not the least of which are the frames scattered around the dining room.

The frames mess started by trying to rescue a pastel done by my great aunt which Mom had stored in her garage. I couldn’t save it. Please don’t store art in garages! Since I know my broom isn’t sufficiently interesting for an IF post, I’ve included some of my great aunt Ila Rhea (Lee) Little’s work for your enjoyment. I suspect it really is time to attack some piles and get rid of the stagnation around me!

BTW, I think the back of the landscape is interesting too. I’m glad we can buy stretcher bars or even pre-stretched canvas these days! The wood is nailed together, and then the canvas is nailed to the board on the sides. That took a lot of prep work for something most people would never see.

And just as an extra postscript, I’ll tell you about the first time I saw these paintings. Ila Rhea was a very old woman living in a retirement high rise apartment, and Mom and I went to Nashville to visit. When we went to the front desk to ask for her room number, she was calling the desk at the same time requesting a nurse. We rode up the elevator to find Ila Rhea on the floor with a broken hip. The excitement of our visit had caused her to scurry around cleaning up piles of stuff and she fell in the process. (There might be a lesson in this for me, but let’s stick with the story…)

Ila Rhea was the picture of the perfect Southern lady, even though she was laying on the floor in what I must assume was extreme pain. We had to wait a couple hours for the ambulance, and she gave me the grand tour of her art on the walls from the floor of her bedroom. These were her favorite pieces from college in the 20s, in an era when I doubt many women were going to college in the first place. She got married and worked as an art teacher, but her college paintings were her favorites. She had grace and class, even laying on the floor. I wouldn’t wish that kind of experience on anyone, but she became a role model for me that day. I hope I can be so kind and hospitable if I’m ever in that position!