Restore

Definition, Restore: a) what we've spent the last two months of our lives doing to our poor house in the End b) Habitat for Humanity's home improvement center c) the sound of the earth below the concrete, pleading to be set free (today's "Ideal Bite").

The backyard saga continues. If you haven't heard (lucky!), Jose decided over the course of the past year, for reasons unknown and possibly unknowable, to carve a gigantic hole in the backyard. Never the shack's best feature, it quickly became an eyesore, a monstrosity, Jose's personal Moby Dick, pursued with a passion that bordered on delirium and his ultimate downfall (the house being Ahab's ship in this silly over-extended metaphor, let drift to the brink of destruction by a year's worth of willful neglect by three hard living men...I hear Hollywood calling).

My dad advised him, wisely, to tell me he was building a basketball court. This deception didn't last long -- he was actually planning to pave my overgrown paradise into a parking lot. A parking lot! (see www.cfpt.org for why I found this particularly ironic) Luckily, the dream went unrealized, the concrete unpoured. We decided gravel would be an earth-friendlier choice now that we have a red clay mudpile to fill in, and started building a retaining wall to keep the rest of the yard from spilling over. And by "we" I mean Slim and his bearded brother.

Someday, we will prevail. At least, that's what the neighbors are telling each other.

In the Interim:

The RJ Shack before :and after:

My favorite spot to set the evening sun:

The gaping hole is tamed but not conquered:

inspiration and action

"Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action." -- Walter Anderson

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. ~Frank Tibolt

So. Action.

Between midterms and planning the rest of my life (now there's a concept -- see Plan B, This American Life) I've been busy lately. But yesterday was spent in the garden, where I'm happier than most anywhere else. It's an anxious, can't wait to finish but I hope it never ends, kind of happy. I'm a never-satisfied, what can I say? All I know is that a beer and a trowel go a long way. A chainsaw-bearing man doesn't hurt either, although combining it with the beer is questionable.

Other people's remodeling trials and tribulations being fascinating, just fascinating, here are some before/after photos from our current obsession.

Dining Room Before (above) and After (below)

Living Room after paint job:

The Monday Morning Special wall collapse:

The culprit:

Making progress:

Next stop: the backyard
(Thank you, Jose, for your parking lot inspiration.
Sadly, the artist dreams alone, and that particular vision will never be realized.)

life and death

9 Chickweed Lane

Lately I've been thinking about how murder came to be considered entertainment. We have a ruddy fascination with death, but not just death of any kind -- death by natural causes is your classic chick flick recipe (Beaches, etc).

Does that make the violence as entertainment culture exclusively male? I confess to a certain guilty pleasure that involves watching things getting blown up on the big screen, especially if it's a woman pressing the button (like Michelle Rodriguez in S.W.A.T.)

But human-induced death seems to be where our culture spends most of its entertainment dollars. It is thought that killing makes us godlike, I suppose. To me, a supremely fallible human being, goddessness is the last thing I'd want to aspire to. It's hard enough trying to live a fully human life. Apparently it is for politicians and the religious too -- our so-called "culture of life" seems to thrive amidst a yang that is our entertainment culture of death.

We've lost much of what past cultures learned about what makes us human, in contrast with that mysterious force in the universe we often personify as God or the gods. Greek mythology is rife with the dangers of trying to out-god the the gods. I guess it just goes to show how long this has been going on -- the endless decline of the human race. Like old JT said, "it's just a lovely ride." Unfortunately, although I admire that sentiment, I can't seem to live by it. I need to look at how things are and see how they could be. The idealist in me, I guess. Luckily I can use that same outlook on myself, otherwise things would be bleak indeed!