NOVEMBER 8, 2011

My transition back to my old life has been disorienting. In one way I think the journey is over and in other ways it is present everyday.

This week I built a bike shed for Margots house. Her young tenant came out to see it when it was done. She looked at it carefully and then got inside and asked if she could live in it. My answer of course was ,”absolutely!”

Margot mugging for the camera at her new bike shed

Being back in the shop is difficult.  I am trying to clean up and get organized, but I keep picking up projects I want to finish ,and yet I have to earn some money. On A-D-D thursaday, I  walked from one project to other accomplishing nothing. It is hard to do my creative work in a space that I am make my living. Of course I have always done it , but before my trip the art was not the  focus. Since I have been home it is all I can think about. Somewhere in the middle of this frenetic all day event I looked down at the floor. There was a perfect flower laying there. It had been created from the shavings that were coming off my carpenters pencil. It caused me to stop for a meditative moment. While looking at the flower I thought about what Dan Hoffman taught me inadvertently at my residency- sometimes the debris is the art.  It made me smile.

Pencil shaving flower

Jenn stopped by this week and we went for a walk along the river. There is a boat there that totally captures my imagination. Before I left I would see it being built little by little. I never saw the builder just the evidence of his/her labor. Now it is done. It is basically a trailer on a boat base. I really want to meet the creator. I imagine him /her to be someone I could sit down with and have a long chat about living in that little space. I want to know how they  negotiate  rowing their groceries out to the mooring on a cold November night.

cute home-made boat on the river

My trip is all around me in so many ways. I realize I brought it home. The journey hasn’t ended.