Inversed Logic

Unfortunately, there is a lot of turmoil in my life, numerous large questions to be answered. Contemplating the sale of our house, one very basic unknown is what and where our shelter will be in the coming months. Such a looming disorientation makes it hard to focus on this day, this morning.

After concentrated effort on a particular job all last week, I begin this one with options before me, numerous sites to visit and loose ends to retrieve. Regaining the details of these other projects is difficult and inefficient. Finding the motivation to choose one and dive in is elusive when all are equally pressing. And,
like the puzzle that needs a piece moved to the open space before sliding another into the new space, purchases need to be made, certain tools retrieved and redistributed, and the urge to stop for another cup of coffee to better ponder it all is too tempting to resist.

On this Monday, I am finally to a site and ready to open the can of paint. It sits before me, awaiting the screw driver to pop the lid. I pause again to realize I forgot the little step ladder needed to reach my cutline along the ceiling. That is solved by standing on a sheetrock bucket.

Still I pause.

At last the lid is off, the soft color poured into the roller pan, the bucket and pan brought upstairs. Yes, I think, it is all a matter of one step in front of the other. I need only cut and roll this few hundred square feet of wall and I can cross this job off my list, move up the street to the next and the next.

Thus do I get my check and pay my bills. Thus do I use the time wisely and accomplish tasks, so that by the time my house sells, we have found another. The disorientation is resolved by constructive movement forward, productive goals met one after the other.

Yet, still I pause, something still not right with this solution that has guided me over the past 30 years. Methodically, meditatively, I have pounded nail after nail into home after home, moving forward from Oregon to Pennsylvania to Vermont, from one marriage to the next, started a company, worked for another, started another, yet all the while, the financial turmoil and emotional stress continue to plague my soul.



I was raised to be a remodeler (. the Artisan Builders Workshop: Foundation), but fresh out of college with a novel in hand and ideas swarming in my head, I intended to use my hammer just to pave the way towards a career as a Writer. I accepted that the independence and freedom that would enable me to meet my dreams of writing required a flexible effort to flush out the bills. So I began my steps one in front of the other, one nail meditatively driven home followed by another, replacing hammer with a gun, until suddenly so much time has gone by, so many more nails driven than words to fill a blank page. I have completely lost sight of the dreams that once motivated me to awaken with excitement.




This morning, the paint lid is off, the can open and ready, the wall awaiting the roller strokes. I reach instead for my other tools: this pen, this empty page which letter after letter, word after word is slowly covered, until I have my latest blog entry, the one which has eluded me for a week, perhaps even for 30 years.

Now I can start painting.

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