straight and narrow
I helped my friend Craig remodel his bathroom over the weekend. I went with him to Home Depot Friday morning and then didn't leave his property until this afternoon at 1. The time just blended into one long day; I can't believe that the entire weekend has already passed.
It feels good to work with my hands, to create something new or better. It also makes me notice how well we've all been socialized to have certain expectations--the height of light switches, the horizontal orientation of toilet paper dispensers, the width of grout lines between tiles. We even fabricate tiles that meet our expectations about what our expectations about tiles should be. We expect straight lines, textured walls, eight-foot ceilings. Water pressure for our showers, drain pipes for our poop, wires to carry electricity to our outlets where we can plug in our devices to make us pretty. I was glad not to be camping on this rainy Memorial Day weekend, but spending the time looking at all the trappings of modern-day life makes me both appreciate how good we've got it and also want to run around in bare feet in the mud.
-----
On the way back, I took the alternate route, State Road 77, which breaks off from 487 and then catches back up to it about 20 miles later. A good chunk of it is open range, which means no fences running along both sides of the road, and it's surprising how much of a difference it makes, not to feel hemmed in by barbed wires stretching out in front, meeting off in the distance at a point of convergence, the straight and narrow way. There, out in the open, on a rare day when water filled the banks of the run-off ditches and dry creek beds and when new life was greening up the sagebrush and the new plains running out, unconfined, for miles on all sides, I felt like king of all of the world.
It feels good to work with my hands, to create something new or better. It also makes me notice how well we've all been socialized to have certain expectations--the height of light switches, the horizontal orientation of toilet paper dispensers, the width of grout lines between tiles. We even fabricate tiles that meet our expectations about what our expectations about tiles should be. We expect straight lines, textured walls, eight-foot ceilings. Water pressure for our showers, drain pipes for our poop, wires to carry electricity to our outlets where we can plug in our devices to make us pretty. I was glad not to be camping on this rainy Memorial Day weekend, but spending the time looking at all the trappings of modern-day life makes me both appreciate how good we've got it and also want to run around in bare feet in the mud.
-----
On the way back, I took the alternate route, State Road 77, which breaks off from 487 and then catches back up to it about 20 miles later. A good chunk of it is open range, which means no fences running along both sides of the road, and it's surprising how much of a difference it makes, not to feel hemmed in by barbed wires stretching out in front, meeting off in the distance at a point of convergence, the straight and narrow way. There, out in the open, on a rare day when water filled the banks of the run-off ditches and dry creek beds and when new life was greening up the sagebrush and the new plains running out, unconfined, for miles on all sides, I felt like king of all of the world.
Comments