"Ink"

I love the drag of ink on paper.  I especially like ballpoint pens on newsprint.  I used to "correct" people's faces in the newspaper so I could indulge in the rich feel of that inky experience.  Sometimes I put makeup on people or changed their hairstyles.  Sometimes I turned them into monsters.

I remember this so vividly, the smell of the paper, the ink, the light coming through the living room window, the feel of the splintery pine floor... Memory is a strange thing, and I've been spending a lot of my time in it this week, painting a map of my childhood.

I'm amazed how many memories are vivid in my mind.  I can tell you the name of the horse that lived on the corner 40+ years ago.  Buck, which is also the name of my nephews' great uncle, and whom I met once about 30 years ago.  All of my senses remember details too small to be important for long-term memory, but they're there*.

For you young'uns who know the Glen, this is the map of my childhood, not the present.  I included houses that were built while I lived there, even though part of me wants to wipe out about 10 of them.  In my youngest years, our house was the only one on our side of the street, and the Turk's property was an overgrown lot with a row of bee hives.  I used the county property map and satellite photos, so it's as accurate as I can make it.

For those of you who don't know the Glen, plain rectangles of 2 and 3 acre lots might make you think that the land was open.  It wasn't.  The Glen is richly treed.  Everything on the other side of the river was miles of untouched forest, and our side of the river was closed off from the world by a giant hill and cliffs.

It was a clannish neighborhood of regular and crazy people, recluses, criminals, and artists -- and something I know to the bottom of my soul is that I belonged.  There were people who loved me or hated me, or who were totally apathetic to my existence, but they were my people, and I was as much a part of that landscape as the giant oak tree.

I have thought about my writing and art, and realize all of it is autobiographical -- and that's what it's supposed to be.  The subject of my life's work is my life.  Maybe in some way this is true for everyone who creates?  But for me, it's literal.  In sharing my story, I tell the lives of other people who can't or won't tell their stories themselves.  Our experiences entertain or resonate for other people.

I started this floor to decorate my home, but also to give myself time to meditate and find my way forward.  I didn't know where the path would lead, and was open to the discovery.  I'm looking forward to polyurethaning the canvas this weekend, painting over the speckles I made on the wall and baseboards, moving the furniture back, cleaning house, and living the most authentic life I can live.

I went back through my posts to see just how long this floor has taken me.  I started this in June!  Okay, I've successfully held down a full-time job and lived a regular life, but I've put a huge amount of time into this.  I used up big tubes of green, white, brown, and yellow paint and wore out brushes.

As for "ink", I used a ball point pen in early phases and I can't tell you strongly enough it's a terrible idea.  I used a lot of paint covering that up again.  I resisted the urge to use the ballpoint in later phases for that reason, but there is some ink on it.  I can also say that using a silver gel pen over acrylic means a quick death to the gel pen.

(Korki and John, "they're there" is for you!)

"Temptation"

I've told you before about my odd childhood neighborhood.  It's hidden by cliffs, river, and woods, and summer people gardened in warm weather.  In winter their houses were closed up and a lot of forbidden things were left laying around to tempt a child.  It was like nuclear winter after all the organic beings are vaporized.

In the ways of The Glen, "The Dentist" had half a house.  Lutsch, the bastard next door, disputed the property line even though he already had a lot of land, but the powers that be redrew the property line right through the middle of The Dentist's house.  He quit coming to the Glen and I missed him.  When he still had a whole house he used to come down with his kids and we did fun projects in his workshop in the backyard.

The Dentist left a camper on his property.  It was there so long that the tropical rainforest grew all around it, but the mattresses inside were still good.  I made a nest for myself with all the pillows and opened all the windows so I could read in peace, my little dog curled up beside me.  Nature forgot I was there and I observed my universe in a naturalist's leaf green bubble with birds and grasshoppers chirping incessantly while d'Artagnan swashbuckled his way to England to save the queen's honor.

Living in so much isolation, I didn't get the usual restraints most children get.  Nobody but me knew if I broke into a summer home, and breaking and entering wasn't covered in Sunday school.  I knew I wasn't supposed to steal, but nobody said I couldn't spy on my neighbors' personal lives and property or make myself comfortable in their homes or camper.  It was up to me to decide what was right or wrong.  It wasn't always a smooth path to my moral set of ethics and I gave in to my temptations regularly.

I suppose I should probably also say that I had some terrible examples of moral behavior.  Poaching out of season was a given, as was trespassing.  Adults cheated on their spouses and the older boys operated a major drug ring.  The Glen was interesting in a multitude of ways.

I felt in my heart that Lutsch was a greedy bastard to wreck someone else's house because he didn't want to look at it.  That was clear enough.  If I coveted something in someone's summer house I had to decide for myself if the owner would miss it, or is it just wrong to take someone else's stuff?  I developed empathy by thinking it through.  How would I feel if someone took my things?

Each new ethic I laid into personal law created a platform for nuances in future laws, but in the end I decided the cardinal law was that my rights ended where someone else's began.  I haven't seen any reason to alter that basic tenet.  I wish everybody else followed it, including governments.

When I felt guilt as a child, it was because I broke my own rules.  My guilt could be devastating.  I didn't feel guilty when someone else told me I was supposed to feel guilty because their rules weren't mine.  Over time I grew into my ethics without the pain of struggling to figure out what they are.  They just are.  Now my temptations are simpler, but harder to break.  If this action only hurts me, well then...