We got some new dishes on the weekend. I had resisted this, in a low-key, subtle way, for as long as possible, but for C a visit to Ottawa is often like a visit to Chernobyl, only with IKEA contagion instead of radiation sickness. Sure enough, a full-on pandemic of antagonized reorganizing ensued, meaning things in front of things, things on top of things, an almost Soviet enforcement of category that does not respect the practical limitations of drawer size, cupboard size or any laws of physics, and that treats anything that does not look like something else (matchy-matchy!) as something heretical, and any odds and ends are immediately judged guilty regardless of their usefulness, and so marked for destruction (read: the garbage). And of course anything from my former lives that has somehow survived to this point (and believe me, there isn’t much) will now be purged, finally, at last, thank God.
I could not watch it while it was all happening last night, but I knew what was waiting for me this morning. The first cupboard I opened saw the coffee filters come tumbling out. Of course it was the only thing in there that sees daily use, which must have singled it out for being mashed precariously on top of ten other things towards the back. And what was in front, because it was the same size and height as three other things? Kool-Aid. I think we had that once.
The tupperware I needed for Oona’s lunch also required some careful extraction. While it certainly looked nice to have all the tupperware in one cupboard, all perfectly lined up like some May Day parade, this sort of thing doesn’t translate very well into those working necessities we most often call life. In other words, the things you need… need to be around. You don’t want to dig for them.
Artists understand this better than most. For example, in my studio I have several plastic bins of collage materials. They are in clear plastic, and each is carefully and clearly labelled, in big lettering, and I try to store them in such a way that I can see them. And even then I sometimes forget they are there.
If I ever let C in there for five minutes, she would have it immediately and ruthlessly 'solved': all material crammed into one bin. Probably a black one. Tucked under a table. Under five other things. Done! And it would never get used again.
Which is why I have a studio.
Still, as long as you understand what kind of desperate instincts are at play, none of this is anything to fight about. Usually, if you just wait it out, then conditions will slowly but surely return to a state of practicality. Sure, it’s mildly aggravating to come home to find the milk buried behind all the beer in the fridge, just because someone is imposing some kind of weird everything-of-the-same-height-must-go-on-this-shelf rule, but it’s easier to just quietly unwind and un-crazy things and move forward.
Besides, it was Thanksgiving weekend. Time to be thankful! And I have to say that I'm starting to be thankful that I was born when I was. Yes, the seventies had all the charm of being pulled into a windowless van, and the eighties were bright and plastic and vandalistic and bullying all at once, while the nineties might be completely empty of any meaning whatsoever, but by any reasonable estimate the world is going be a very unpleasant place to live over the next few decades. Thanks but no thanks.
On that note, have a good week, everyone.
djb
Draw things, paint things, write things, make things.
p.s. Did you know that 2001: A Space Odyssey has some 88 minutes of no dialogue? A million years ago I saw a scratchy analogue version in the Winnipeg art gallery. It was freezing in there.
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