An Allegory for the Art of Painting

Painting is taking much longer than I expected. As I removed the masking tape from the trim last night, aglow with pride and the expectation of a good night's sleep in my own bed in my own room, I discovered that the tape had leaked, allowing runs of (India Ink, semi-gloss) black paint to mar the (Chalk, eggshell) white walls every few inches. So now it seems I will have to do some scraping and touch-up. Urrgggh.
Also, I've been doing some painting work for the school, changing the color of some flat files and display shelves for the supply store (for the princely sum of $10 an hour, roughly 10 times what I make for my work in the Pines; I think I've already earned enough to pay for my first tank of gas). By odd coincidence, the shelves will be the same color as the trim in my bedroom (but satin finish). By lunchtime today, I began to feel as though I was really becoming pretty competent with a paintbrush. Nonetheless, I think this experience seals it - all natural or patinated finishes on my work this summer.

Shhh, listen...

Spring Concentration has come to an end. All the students and instructors have packed up and gone home, the kitchen is closed, and with our short work-week behind us, most of my house-mates have gone away on vacation, leaving me, Joshua, and Shane nearly alone on an empty campus. I had forgotten how quiet it was when I first arrived here (on my first morning walk, I was afraid that I had gone deaf until I realized that I could still hear my feet on the pavement) and now I'm remembering in a big way. Last night we sat, waiting for Tina's spaetzle to finish cooking, with the windows open, savoring the sound of the birds and the occasional passing train. I'm looking forward to a relaxing week. I should be getting my car back tomorrow. I'm planning on doing some major reportage about the spring here on the blog, but first, I'm going to finish painting my room, reacquaint myself with the Nintendo 64 (courtesy of former Core John Shearin), and take a nap. If you're within half a mile, you should be able to hear me snore.

Little Earthquakes...

I never would have suspected that I would experience my first earthquake in North Carolina, nor that said earthquake would be centered in Illinois, but that's just what happened Friday morning. I woke up at around 5:35 with the sensation that the walls were trembling, but it had stopped by the time I was awake enough to be sure I wasn't dreaming. Then it happened again; the house shook lightly for a few seconds around and under me and then was still. It had never occurred to me that this could be a geologically active area, so it wasn't until I read the news in the afternoon that I thought "earthquake." At the time, my theory was centered much closer to home; I figured Joshua, who lives in the room above mine, must be doing a particularly intense regimen of early-morning push-ups.

On the anniversery of Lincoln's assassination...

This morning, inspired by the Gillian Welch song "April 14, Part 1," Beth drew an "On This Date In History" board, listing the beginning of the Dust Bowl exodus from Oklahoma, the sinking of the Titanic, the train wreck that martyred Casey Jones, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She accompanied each item with a chalk drawing, except for the death of the Great Emancipator, which she asked me to illustrate with a portrait plaque of Lincoln that she gave me as a gift a few weeks ago, and one of my Abe Lincoln votive candles, which I will burn at lunch and dinner in his honor. [Professional side note: To date, I have sold 2 Lincoln candles ($18.65 each) and 2 Platos ($12 each) in the Core Gallery.]

It's cold here on the mountain today; it snowed last night and we were all afraid that Amy the Gardener's beautiful flowerbeds might be damaged. Luckily, no, and I got a rare chance to venture down from the hills, thanks to a field trip to see the work of another Amy (Tavern, an Asheville-based jeweller). After the open-house at her studio, she joined my classmates and I for dinner at an Indian restaurant down the street. I had a lamb curry with saffron rice, and tried some of Raina's Baingan Bharta and Amy's Malai Kofta with Peshwari Naan. It was exquisite, and quieted my mind but set my body humming (possibly because of all the spices?). The sensation was akin to being high, and it took me by surprise until I realized that this was the first non-Pines meal I've had in over 6 weeks. On the ride back (Asheville is about an hour away) I reflected on how often I dined out when I lived in Minneapolis (not a good idea financially, but it was my principal indulgence), and how this and other things once daily and mundane, like putting coins in a parking meter or sitting for a while in a car speeding through the dark, have become strange, unfamiliar treats to be savored for their novelty. My teacher's lady-friend Lisa, a native of Cornwall and thus no stranger to wild, enchanting landscapes herself, remarked during the trip down to Asheville on the beauty of the mountains and forests in this area. "It seems the trick must be to not go numb to it all," she said, and I thought about this again as I shivered through my morning walk across the dreamy, misty forests and valleys of intense green which have become, for me, the new daily and mundane.

Zzzzzzzzz...

Early this morning, I discovered a brand new impediment to a good night's sleep. No, I'm not talking about the turkey that gobbles in the woods just outside the house (which I didn't believe was real when Marianne told me about it last week, but must concede that I have since heard for myself), nor the freight trains that sound their horns and fill the valley with resonant echoes as they race past, though they have been known to give a steampunk flavor to my dreams. I'm referring, rather, to the sound of snoring. My own.
For several years, I've known that I can't sleep for long on my back; in that position I quickly snore myself awake. But now it's begun happening when I'm sleeping on my side as well. What to do? Will I lose the safety of belly-sleep, too? Will I have to wear one of those funny adhesive strips across my nose? Heavens to Betsy! Growing older is difficult.

Robot Repair

Searching through the large cabinet of videotapes left behind by former Core Students in my living room the other night, I found "Saturday Night Live: The Best of Phil Hartman." I watched, and was reminded afresh of the genius of the man and the tragedy of his untimely passing. Not only was his Donahue amazing and his Bill Clinton absolutely spot on (I couldn't find it online, unfortunately, but here's another masterpiece), but the video contained my new favorite piece of televised comedy: Robot Repair. Check it out.

Unsettled

In our first official meeting as a group, Core director Mark Boyd described spring at Penland as "an unsettled time." After a few weeks here, I've begun to appreciate the truth of his observation. The weather changes so quickly here, and, if I may be so pretentious, with it my heart.
Yesterday was gray and cold; I could see my breath but not the stars on my walk to work. One of the work-studies in the kitchen asked me to watch the windows and call her out to see the sunrise. I didn't bother; the sun was invisible behind the clouds. She was disappointed when I told her this. "I get up so early," she said, "but I never see the sun rise." I promised to watch the horizon for her on Thursday morning if the sky was more favorable.
This morning I woke to mist in the trees outside my window, and left the house to find that what I thought was frost on the windows of my housemates' cars was, in fact, drizzle. A foggy, chilly type of damp that I will always associate with the east coast of Scotland dominated the morning, until a fierce wind and rain storm overtook us just before lunch, hiding the mountains in deep blue murk as it approached. Rain soaked the afternoon; I was glad I had brought my umbrella (also I have received a lot of complements on it today, because it matches my new neckerchief). When I left dinner, the sky had cleared, bright evening sun illuminated the campus with a nearly colorless light, and a warm breeze blew up across the knoll. (Dinner was clam chowder. I'm beginning to think the kitchen can sense my mood.) Now as I write, dark clouds are rolling in again and the light is going out of the sky.
When I was preparing to leave Minneapolis and come here, I noticed a change in my emotional background noise. The dull and vague dread that had come to characterize the last year began to be replaced by a sort of terror that I remember from childhood and, more recently, from art school. It's a terror associated with motion, like the sensation in the stomach when you go over the top of the big hill on a roller coaster and feel the center of gravity pass the tipping point. Fear of that sensation kept me off of roller coasters for years, until I suddenly discovered that I loved them, and from then it was the bigger the better, and so as I packed and trained my replacements and had goodbye lunches I kept reminding myself of the possibility that what I was feeling was not danger but renewed motion, unfamiliar after some time of losing a battle with my own inertia.
It can be intensely quiet here at Penland, and I have quieted down inside as well, but in the background I can still hear the terror at times, though it has changed form (I suppose for now I'm not on a roller coaster anymore, but something more like "It's a Small World,
After All.") and sounds not so much like metal moving through on rails (though I do hear trains moving through the valley all the time) as like waves. It's a strange metaphor, but I've been visualizing the feeling something like this:
I'm standing on a beach. It's dark, and everything reads in black-and-white; all I can see is the white of the sand and the white of the breakers and foam atop the black waves. I hear the surf, and it's a familiar and comforting sound, because I remember the sea, but I can't shake the impression that the ocean is shallow and only goes out about 20 feet, only as far as I can see it moving. Beyond that is the real ocean, which I can't see or hear, and do not know. I imagine it as an emptiness, deep and black, and it makes my heart go cold.
This is not always in my mind. It goes away when I am melting wax, sanding plaster, winding colored thread around the handle of a spoon, or drinking a selection from the Twining's "Teas of India" collection (that box of tea has treated me right today!). Just constructing the metaphor above has made the feeling lose some of its power, which is nice but also a little sad, because it is frightening but deep, and I don't like to be scared, but I do like depth.
If asked, I would say that I am very happy here. But what I am most often asked is if everything is "all settled in." I don't have a good answer for that.

Trip to Penland, Part 1

My stepfather, John, arrived after lunch on Friday the 22nd. Naturally, I was nowhere near as far along with packing as I had anticipated. Heading to his truck to go to the bank to close my account and to Minnetonka to pick up the towing dolly that we would use to pull my car behind us, we made an unfortunate discovery: John had left his keys in the ignition and locked the doors. A quick call to Mom in Bloomington, Indiana confirmed that the spare set was just where he'd left it, hanging next to the telephone in the kitchen. Fearing the approach of the end of the business day, I went alone to the bank, which took just enough time for AAA to arrive and jimmy the lock.
Closing my accounts was the most pleasant customer-service interaction I've ever had with Wells Fargo: they smiled, they flirted, they took my personal identification documents at face value, they gladly accepted my word that there were no outstanding charges or transactions, they handed over my cash with politeness and ease. It was delightful, and I must say that if I had even once been treated so kindly by Wells Fargo when I was actually banking with them, I might consider opening another account with them some day. This has to be considered some kind of customer-service in reverse; I found myself wanting to stop doing business with them again, because the experience was so enjoyable.
Back at the apartment, the truck was open and so we headed out to the western suburbs to pick up our U-Haul device. I elected to let John do most (in fact, literally all) of the driving once we had the tow dolly hooked up, since he's into that sort of thing, having spent most of his adult life hauling around scientific equipment behind a Suburban. Thanks, John!
The rest of Friday night was spent packing. And Saturday morning. Ugggh. The less said about that, the better. I had stuff I didn't even know I had. I had stuff I didn't want. I had stuff I thought I had gotten rid of a decade ago. I had stuff I assumed was Ashley's, and let me assure you, if you naively assume that we're still living in the days when you can just foist an unwanted blender or rice-o-mat off on a soon-to-be-former roommate and she'll be happy about it, we are not.
We left Minneapolis around lunchtime on Saturday, John's truck filled to the gills with stuff earmarked for long-term storage in Indiana, my car, similarly stuffed with belongings bound for Penland, in tow. We had driven as far south as Savage when two guys in a pickup truck pulled up alongside and motioned that the tires on my car were smoking. So we pulled off, confirmed that there did in fact seem to be some nasty frottage and burning going on around the rear driver-side wheel, shifted some weight around to take it off that corner of the car, filled the tires (naturally, I had not done this before embarking on a cross-country trip), got gas (at $2.93/gallon; I suspect I shall never pay so little for gas again as long as I live [the lowest price I've seen in Spruce Pine is $3.19]), crossed our fingers and started off again. Subsequent stops for meals, bathrooms, snacks and gasoline appeared to confirm the theory that we had solved the problem - there was little, if any, smell of burning rubber and no sign of smoke.
I can't remember the name of the Interstate oasis/town in Illinois where we stayed for the night, only that it was one stop west of I39 on I80, a 5-mile digression that brought us a greatly expanded field of motel options, and that it looked oddly familiar (it is extremely unlikely that I had ever been there before). I think I can safely say that this is the only motel room I have ever stayed in where I did not turn on the television. I did steal all of the soap and shampoo, though, figuring I might need them in the future.

I have not forgotten you...

...dear friends, but these have been 3 very busy, very full weeks, leaving me almost no time until now to reflect on the many and massive recent changes to my lifestyle and report them to you. I miss you all, and from this point on, now that things have begun to settle down into a more comfortable and predictable pattern, I will do my best to regularly share my experiences here at Penland, as well as some of my thoughts and feelings about them. I suppose it makes sense to begin with a recap of my trip from Minneapolis to North Carolina, and of my early days here at the school. This will likely require several installments, so don't touch that dial, batfans... the kookiest is yet to come!