I knocked a hole through my ceiling the other night. Several holes, actually. The other night, I beat the hell out of my ceiling with an old black & orange hammer from Sears.I beat holes in my ceiling – over there in the corner by the window – & then I climbed up into my attic & I poured water down the holes.
It was the best I could come up with at short notice.
I had to see him.
Once I created the water damage, then I called my landlord & I screamed
about how the water had run down
& destroyed 5 of my very best paintings
& stained the wall
& given my cat (Bike) pneumonia.
So then the landlord, he sent the guys.
He sent the guy who finds the phantom leaks.
He sent the guy who puts up new drywall
& he sent the guy who paints.
& most of all, he sent the guy who spackles.
A little guy – Mexican – English-less – wearing a flannel shirt over an old //vote Dukakis ‘88\\ T.
I doubt this little guy has a 3rd grade education
or papers letting him work this side of the border.
But he’s the guy who spackles, so I knock holes in my ceiling & then I crouch in the corner in my mask with my arms around my knees & I watch him.
In the ridges of his spackling there is magic, you see. This spackle guy, he is an artist & a prophet & he doesn’t even know it. He thinks he’s just covering up seams in the drywall, but he’s Nostradamus & he’s Michelangelo squeezed into one body.
& when he leaves, I lie on my back under the fresh spackling
& I see it.
I see how you are going to die
& who killed Kennedy
& what the Year 5321 will look like.
I see a picture of Forever.
Who needs tea leaves?
Who needs clouds?
Who needs the Sistine Chapel?
I relax my mind
& I’m reading the spackle
& it’s almost time for some new water damage.
I like this.
ReplyDeleteMy mother worried about my imagination - my dad just chalked it up to 'too much TV'. I did the same thing - reading the spackle - when I was young.
Recapturing youth.
It's worth it.
I'd like to unhook my brainwaves from the, um... the kind of programmed connections I've made over the years. You know, I see A and automatically think of B.
ReplyDeleteMaking those fast mental connections is supposed to be a sign of intelligence, but in the long run, it's a trap.
That's amazing. Thinking of myself as an artist at times or at least a technician, I have confronted humility when looking at plaster work. It was my X's father's textured stucco plastered living room wall in Laguna Beach CA. If I could have got that master artisan back to watch the process by emulating what you've written I would have. But moreover what you've written draws forth an expression of the type of appreciation that I wouldn't have thought could be arrived at through words.
ReplyDeleteYou are one inventive and cunningly industrious woman to work out a way to be there get to read the plaster. Very wonderfully written, thank you!!!
I can only DREAM that my writing could someday have a similar effect on people as these strange ridges in spackle: You know, I would just jot a few words down, and whoever read them would have shapes and images and stuff go off inside their heads.
ReplyDeleteThat would be perfect...
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ReplyDeleteThis is my third try. Google keeps messing with me. What I wanted to tell you is, you have an amazing talent. You should put together a compilation.
ReplyDelete"I can only DREAM that my writing could someday have a similar effect on people as these strange ridges in spackle: You know, I would just jot a few words down, and whoever read them would have shapes and images and stuff go off inside their heads."
ReplyDeleteWell you did have me time traveling back to the 1980s and transported across half the country standing in the living room of a vacant house in Laguna Beach staring at a wall. That's kind of magical.
The second and third to last paragraphs, which I didn't address, have a science fiction thing about them. And I do love science fiction.
ReplyDeleteIt does explain and give more reason why she goes to such trouble. Those paragraphs though, kind of leave a cliff hanger there for me.
Without them I see a Silent Snow Secret Snow (Conrad Aiken). With them I see an Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury) without the ties to the additional short stories. Figuratively speaking.
Well the ties are there but not the short stories, I mean.
ReplyDelete"You should put together a compilation."
ReplyDeleteThanks! Someday, I might. It's more fun to write than it is to follow up by doing anything practical with the final product.
Someday, I'm going to find a more practical partner to DO something with my stuff.
"Well you did have me time traveling back to the 1980s and transported across half the country standing in the living room of a vacant house in Laguna Beach staring at a wall. That's kind of magical."
ReplyDeleteCool! There ARE ways to write Rorschach ink blot kinds of writing, I think, but those are probably more interesting to read than to write. After all, the spackle and the clouds were (probably) not INTENDED as mediums for messages.
There are Burroughsian cut-ups and things like that, which kind of mean whatever meaning the reader finds in them.
"Someday, I'm going to find a more practical partner to DO something with my stuff"
ReplyDeleteI like the sound of that and can't wait for the day.
Well, it is what it is.
ReplyDeleteSuch suchness.
ReplyDelete