Reflections on my Gourd
I have a gourd, an unfinished work of presumptive art perched above my computer. It's a bushel gourd about 13 inches in diameter and carved into its deep woody surface are images of ancient moss bearded oaks and long lazy bayous. It took hours...hours and hours over a couple of days to get it done, the designs lifed from internet images of Newcomb pottery. It should be beautiful...gorgeous even, but its not.
My gourd's problem is I tried to approximate the colors of the Newcomb pottery with shoe polish, black, blue, and neutral. It should have worked. The books said shoe polish would give gourds a nice leathery sheen. They even had pictures to prove it. So I beleived them. First I laid on the blue, but I just couldn't get it quite dark enough where I wanted it....and the natural tan of the gourd showing through the blue tended to neutralize..dull its imact which I tried to regain by selective applications of neutral to areas I wanted warmer...but it just desolved and diluted the blue...and so I replied with black and my detail got lost unless you stand ten inches away...and even then it's not "black" just dirty looking tan with some really dark splotchy areas.
I want to fix it, to get rid of the wax and start over with paints...something I have more experience with. But to do that I've got to come up with a way to get the wax off...soak it in ammonia, heat gun and paper towels...I think I could do it, but it will take work...hours and hours perhaps. And so it sits there above my computer waiting for me to get around to it. It has been waiting for months and will probably wait a couple more before that day dawns, barring a miracle or a burst of inspiration.
The sad thing is the gourd is the perfect metaphor for so much of my life...so much begun well, so much anticipated and hoped for, worked earnestly at...and then comes the hitch...the problem, the snag that raises the ante not higher than I am willing to pay as an abstract proposition, just higher than I'm willing to pay right then, or tomorrow, or the next day...but maybe, maybe next week will do, until next week is this week and the best time was yesterday but not today, something has come up. A TV show, work, a game, a book, a guest, a sink full of dishes, that newspaper I just remembered I forgot to buy.
I've done the gourd thing before, many times. A couple of years ago when I lived in Saipan I had the largest unplanted garden that anyone has never seen. So many beautiful flowers, so many great vegetables, such an array of herbs and curiosities to delight any chef or child or child chef, all in little packets neatly stored in box full of all my seeds and dreams. On on the back porch I had lots of pots, potting soil and all the tools I would need. What did me in? Grass ninjas, children, typhoons, and postage stamp yards. My gourds and muscadines were routinely savaged by yard workers with their weed eaters and small children who thought it great sport to pick my one green gourd in its infancy. Typhoon winds shredded my other attempts...oh yes and the snails devoured my mint. Set back, frustrated...I stopped trying until I got back to Mississippi. Over the past two years I must have planted three to five hundred gourds only to see them all die from drought, a neighbor's friendly bush-hogging of my hidden patches deep in the wood, or a neighbor's friending disking a field bare inches from the fenceline I chose as trellis.., oh, and there was this hurricane that did in the five or six plants that survived all that.
And then there is this mileau novel...this series of novels that I have been not quite writing for over 20 years. I've dozens of note books filled with my jottings and sketches. I even had a couple of reasonably good "seed" short stories favorably reviewed by my peers and almost published...not quite impersonally rejected. I've even taught creative writing at the college level...but the ideas bumping around in my skull, some of which I think are very good ideas, never quite make their way to paper in any finished form. But it will...one day....when I don't feel tired or stressed by work or family, when my furniture and books are all arranged and ordered just the way I want, when I've updated my software, when that last unifiying keystone idea hits, one day, some day before pigs fly.
What bothers my conscience though is not an unplanted gardern or an unfinished gourd, or even an unwritten novel, rather it is an unlived life...a life unlived or at least not lived enough where it counts, where it matters forever. When I see my gourd, I see my prayer life, my study of Scripture, my undealt with faults and failures. My sins. What have I lost to those hours spent doing anything that would distract me for a while...not because I do not want to pray, I do, or read the scriptures, I do, or engage in some liturgical art like iconography (I've hundreds of dollors of books and art supplies and one troublesome unfininshed gessoed board), I do, but always it seems I don't want to do it just now, rather I will do it latter...and latter...and latter...until I reach a place where it takes an almost herculean effort to make myself do what I ought when I ought, if just for a little while.
So here I sit, typing for a blog on the internet and there sits my unfinished almost beautiful gourd.
My gourd's problem is I tried to approximate the colors of the Newcomb pottery with shoe polish, black, blue, and neutral. It should have worked. The books said shoe polish would give gourds a nice leathery sheen. They even had pictures to prove it. So I beleived them. First I laid on the blue, but I just couldn't get it quite dark enough where I wanted it....and the natural tan of the gourd showing through the blue tended to neutralize..dull its imact which I tried to regain by selective applications of neutral to areas I wanted warmer...but it just desolved and diluted the blue...and so I replied with black and my detail got lost unless you stand ten inches away...and even then it's not "black" just dirty looking tan with some really dark splotchy areas.
I want to fix it, to get rid of the wax and start over with paints...something I have more experience with. But to do that I've got to come up with a way to get the wax off...soak it in ammonia, heat gun and paper towels...I think I could do it, but it will take work...hours and hours perhaps. And so it sits there above my computer waiting for me to get around to it. It has been waiting for months and will probably wait a couple more before that day dawns, barring a miracle or a burst of inspiration.
The sad thing is the gourd is the perfect metaphor for so much of my life...so much begun well, so much anticipated and hoped for, worked earnestly at...and then comes the hitch...the problem, the snag that raises the ante not higher than I am willing to pay as an abstract proposition, just higher than I'm willing to pay right then, or tomorrow, or the next day...but maybe, maybe next week will do, until next week is this week and the best time was yesterday but not today, something has come up. A TV show, work, a game, a book, a guest, a sink full of dishes, that newspaper I just remembered I forgot to buy.
I've done the gourd thing before, many times. A couple of years ago when I lived in Saipan I had the largest unplanted garden that anyone has never seen. So many beautiful flowers, so many great vegetables, such an array of herbs and curiosities to delight any chef or child or child chef, all in little packets neatly stored in box full of all my seeds and dreams. On on the back porch I had lots of pots, potting soil and all the tools I would need. What did me in? Grass ninjas, children, typhoons, and postage stamp yards. My gourds and muscadines were routinely savaged by yard workers with their weed eaters and small children who thought it great sport to pick my one green gourd in its infancy. Typhoon winds shredded my other attempts...oh yes and the snails devoured my mint. Set back, frustrated...I stopped trying until I got back to Mississippi. Over the past two years I must have planted three to five hundred gourds only to see them all die from drought, a neighbor's friendly bush-hogging of my hidden patches deep in the wood, or a neighbor's friending disking a field bare inches from the fenceline I chose as trellis.., oh, and there was this hurricane that did in the five or six plants that survived all that.
And then there is this mileau novel...this series of novels that I have been not quite writing for over 20 years. I've dozens of note books filled with my jottings and sketches. I even had a couple of reasonably good "seed" short stories favorably reviewed by my peers and almost published...not quite impersonally rejected. I've even taught creative writing at the college level...but the ideas bumping around in my skull, some of which I think are very good ideas, never quite make their way to paper in any finished form. But it will...one day....when I don't feel tired or stressed by work or family, when my furniture and books are all arranged and ordered just the way I want, when I've updated my software, when that last unifiying keystone idea hits, one day, some day before pigs fly.
What bothers my conscience though is not an unplanted gardern or an unfinished gourd, or even an unwritten novel, rather it is an unlived life...a life unlived or at least not lived enough where it counts, where it matters forever. When I see my gourd, I see my prayer life, my study of Scripture, my undealt with faults and failures. My sins. What have I lost to those hours spent doing anything that would distract me for a while...not because I do not want to pray, I do, or read the scriptures, I do, or engage in some liturgical art like iconography (I've hundreds of dollors of books and art supplies and one troublesome unfininshed gessoed board), I do, but always it seems I don't want to do it just now, rather I will do it latter...and latter...and latter...until I reach a place where it takes an almost herculean effort to make myself do what I ought when I ought, if just for a little while.
So here I sit, typing for a blog on the internet and there sits my unfinished almost beautiful gourd.
posted by Seraphim | 10:12 PM
5 Comments:
Yes, the design on that vase was similar to what is own my gourd.
Hobbit homes would probably qualify more in the category of "earth bermed" houses rather than "natural construction"...except for those portions made out of wattle and daub. Given their level of "industry" it might be fair to say their homes are something of a fusion.
The famous architect/philosopher Christopher Alexander makes an excellent case that there is no human connection with architecture that isn't flawed in some way. Look at any geometrically "perfect building", every window the same size, set in perfect position relative to the other windows, every dimension just right... there is no human connection - it actually depresses us considerably. But look at a building whose windows aren't perfect squares, and aren't set in exact geometric proportion with the doors and other windows, and we are fascinated! This is a place where we can live, where there's a creak in the floor that squeeks just at the right place when we walk to the kitchen. We need a place where the door doesn't close without a little more pull than should be necessary. Where the first step downstairs is a little steeper than the rest. Where George Bailey's stair landing finial is loose.
If the remedy to a life not lived is a place where the finial never comes loose, where the doors all close without effort, where the floors never creak, then this is a place where I won't have any good memories.
A creaky note from grov.
Recant
Having read some of Elder Joseph, the Athonite spiritual father, my opinion on perfection has been adjusted.
It would seem that there is no alternative to a pursuit of perfection, no place for acceptance of anything less.
I would like to withdraw my previous post and defer to the Elder.
grov
Elder Joseph is someone I've only read a little about but I'm glad to see he is pursuasive in his spiritual counsel.
Speaking of architectual perfection perhaps precision shouldn't be conflated with perfection. The more imperfect building reveals something of our humanity more, perhaps, helps us recognize ourselves, our presence in the world in some way that the precisely ordered building does not. In this way imperfection points us to perfection but not as embodied in an artifact of human enterprise, but in the person..a person, the Person.
My uncle once said that a house knows when it is lived it. Even if it is in poor repair, so long as someone lives there, it will try and hold together. But when left alone it doesn't take long at all for a house to go to ruin.
The perfect house, or building of any other sort all stand in relation to the people who use them and the purpose for which they were built. Their perfection or falling short rests in how well they suit the person(s) and their need. Buildings that despite their finess of scale or design or workmanship that alienate and dimimish man are perceived as rather more sterile than perfect.
It all reminds me of the aesthetic of wabi tea, to suggest perfection through imperfection. Of course the perfection of the person if far different than the crafting of a ceramic bowl or building a house. That is something both organic and mystical...well maybe not of a bowl, if we recall our Potter.
just a few thoughts off the cuff
Wabi tea means rustic tea, tea taken in the simplicity of a hermit's mountainside hut, and as a practice it stands in distinction to more gradiose and ostentatious schools of tea. The tools of wabi tea are simple and of generaly humble materials. The bowls in particular are chosen for their beautiful imperfection, well made peasant pottery, not exactly symetrical, the colors of the wash a little askew, a little rough of finish in places. Things like that. There is no way (that they know of) for anything to be truely perfect in this world, but they attempt make a gift of the perfect through the imperfect, letting the imperfert point to the unseen perfect.
The whole structure of the celebration of wabi tea, from what I can see, is an exercise in nepis, mindfulness at the level of our neighbor. The whole object of the celebrant of the tea to make a whole gift of himself in hospitality through the tea to his guest. So every action, every movement of the tea is studied so as to most fully and beautifully convey that self offering as it were. There is indeed something "eucharistic" and liturgical in nature of its practice. Further the tea is served according to its tradition, which means that this gift of ones self to the other is self-negating, not a vainity for one's cleverness or creativeness.
The guest for his part gives fully of himself as well, attempting to be the perfect guest, by being grateful for what is set before, being thoughtful and considerate of the details and subtlties of his host's presentation, of the impliments he has chosen, their legacy (some of which are functionally "relics" because of thier long and honored history), the flowers that have been arranged just for him, the inspirational scroll that has been chosen just for him, and all the effort that goes into the ceremony just for him. Thus there is a meeting, a communion if you will between host and guest over a bowl of simple tea.
When the guest leaves the ceremony still is not over, for there is a proper way to clean up afterwards as well and then the host in the now empty and cleansed hut reflects for a while on what has just transpired.
The great founding master of wabi tea once went with a few of his disciples/students to be served tea by a merchant who much admired the sensei, but who was clumbsy at everything. One the way home the master's students asked him what he thought of the tea, and the master said, it was the very best. His students were incredulous, remarking at how badly he had done everything. Yes, said the master, but his whole heart was in the gift of that tea and thus it was the very best.
That is what I mean by perfection through imperfection as it relates to wabi tea.
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