Leaving a place, leaving a space

Image from Pixabay

Growing up, as one of 10 children, personal space was at a premium. There were only 3 bedrooms so we--5 girls and 5 boys--typically doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and quintupled up, depending on how many children were in-home at the time. At one point, I shared the largest of the bedrooms with all 4 of my sisters: 2 bunk beds and one single. It didn't look like the above image, but it certainly felt like it.

As the 2nd youngest girl child, though 7th in the lineup, I didn't have much say in which bed was to be mine. For a time I had the bottom bunk and it was heavenly. It meant I had a space--below--to put my stuff. Said stuff was minimal and consisted mostly of a few library books, toys, and shoes. But it was my space and it was a glorious thing to my young self and much treasured.

Image from Pixabay

At some point, and I don't recall why, I got shifted to the upper bunk. There went my private space. Space and privacy are at a premium in a large family. I am sure my siblings felt as aggrieved as I, but one copes. 

Something stuck with me from that experience, though. I developed the ability to make a space my own, no matter what the space configuration, size, or duration and no matter what small amount of furniture I could cobble together from yard sales, Goodwill, or hand-me-overs.[1] An 8x8 foot dorm room in grad school became a haven that I filled with my books, a typewriter, a bike, a guitar, a small (contraband) kitchen setup, and such art as could be tacked to the one open wall without nails. 

 
My first all-my-own apartment was in Washington D.C., in the Turkey Thicket neighborhood of Brookland.[2] It was in a building like the one at the right. It had one bedroom, a skinny bathroom with a rusty tub, a galley kitchen (that was the home of a fair colony of cockroaches), radiators that hissed and clanked, and two wonderful rooms with beat up wooden floors: the small dining and living rooms. There were safety bars on the windows (which didn't stop someone from throwing a kitchen knife through a back porch window one night) and, for a while, a drug dealing duo lived in the flat above. (I recall one evening hearing a knock-down fight up there with lots of yelling. I opened my door to yell at them to keep it down, only to see two of my students fleeing down the stairs, utterly terrified.)

Some 30 years later, some many apartments and two houses later, I retain the make-the-space-good-while-you-have-it mentality. I did this for 2019 where, for most of the year, I worked at a local university. Yesterday was my last day there. I'd been striking the set for a few weeks, bringing home small things I could hand carry: books, pictures, a flock of dinosaur toys. Here are a few pics from my starting weeks to the end.

One of my favorite pieces of "art" was a framed image of Star Trek's Spock, a promotional poster I saved from my D.C. days when I was an assistant manager for the now defunct B. Dalton Bookseller. The poster was for the then, newly published Spock's World, by Diane Duane. [3]

 

The text below the framed Spock is from Duane's book:

“The spear in the Other's heart
is the spear in your own:
you are he.

There is no other wisdom,
and no other hope for us
but that we grow wise.

-attributed to Surak”

The day before my last day--after the wall art had been removed, the dinos taken home, the books donated or returned to my home library, and the curtains taken down--my colleagues threw me a small goodbye party. I'd never had one before; it was so kind of them. 

There are two pieces of the cake left. We'll have them tonight.

___________________________________

Images

[1] Floor Plan. Image from Pixabay 

[2] DC apt building 

[3] Spock's World cover from Abe Books

 

"Creativity is Not a Talent," He Said.

Image source/credit

A few days after @MarsCuriosity landed at Gale Crater, my beloved Spousal Unit and I caught the freshly-made Martian Mega Rover documentary on the National Geographic Channel.  What looked so fine and perfect on Aug 6th, it turns out, almost didn't happen for so many reasons including tearing parachutes, motor gears grinding against themselves, failing crane cables.  As it was, the launch was delayed by 2+ years so the engineers could invent new machinery to solve all the problems.

 Rose on Artist's grave in 2008.

My late sister, whom I refer to in this blog as Artist, was immensely gifted.  She could paint, design and construct the most elaborate costumes, build miniatures, draw with an amazing eye and most delicate sensibility of line, knit without a pattern, do calligraphy, and could have been an architect for her fantastic sense of space and order.  She spent time and money on her craftsmanship and abilities both at college and at art school seminars.  She was also a very playful person; kids loved her ability to invent and entertain.

In short, she had ability but she worked damn hard at bringing it to a level of expertise that made what was always hard work look easy.  That ease was based on years of practice and work.  (Once, she said, when she was painting a portrait, she was asked what she charged for such commissions.  When told, the person retorted, "Why should it cost so much when it is so easy for you to do?"  What that person didn't get is that what looked easy to him/her was the result of hours, weeks, and years of work.)

Miniature painting of a portrait artist with easel  

Tory, Geoffroy: “Book of Hours, Ms. Library of Congress. Rosenwald ms. 10” (1533)

Image source/credit

Artist was talented, but she could have done nothing with that talent.  Instead she looked for ways to creatively express it.  In one sense she was massively successful; she left an apartment and large storage unit stuffed full of everything she'd ever made in her life.  She made and never stopped making.  But in another sense, she did not succeed.  Except for a small group of people, no one ever saw her work.  Like many artists, she wasn't much of a business person.  My point is not that she failed -- she didn't -- but that having talent, or ability, or intelligence isn't enough.  One has to work one's self creatively to raise one's abilities to the level that connects with others; whether that connection is getting one's paintings in a gallery, or succeeding at getting a room full of children to master fractions, or landing a car-sized piece of machinery on another planet.

 Image source/credit

This link leads to a blog post about snowboarding 

that says pretty much what I am saying here!

Note, being talented does not = being creative.  Second, being creative does not only mean being artistic.  And being creative does not always equate with intelligence or success. But, as actor and educator LeVar Burton liked to say on his award winning children's show Reading Rainbow, "you don't have to take my word for it."