My Life As A House – The Intermission

THE INTERMISSION

7/9/06

Like all good performances, designing The House (and designing a life), sometimes takes a break.  Day-to-day life creeps in, no matter how much you try to avoid it – and proceed in spite of it.  There are dishes to wash, bathrooms to clean, laundry to do, depositions to take, hearings to attend, and so on and so on and so on some more.  This isn’t bad stuff, mind you.  This IS the stuff of life.  It’s just that the transition from one period to the other is sometimes difficult to make.  Sometimes, I wish I had a lifestyle bookmark so I could remember where I last stopped whenever I get back to it.  Even more, sometimes you take a break not because of any other thingedness that is weighing on you, but because at that moment, you’ve simply run out of ideas.  You’ve had some great insight – on a vase you’d love to have or a hobby you’d like to develop – and you put a plan in place to acquire that thing or develop the talent.  But then, all you have to do is work and wait.  No more revelations are immediately forthcoming, a good thing, I’d say, given the limited number of hours in any given day.  Nevertheless, the day-to-day plodding along, whether tending to the mundane or working through a new path or idea, is the secret but un-sexy effectiveness that no one ever speaks about.  So often you see someone’s home or life as a breath-takingly successful fait a compli, but you never get to see the in-between times – the time after the idea was conceived but before it was completed and warmly received.  That’s too bad, really, because I believe it’s those in-between times that separate the women from the girls, so to speak.  I don’t want so much to hear about the successes.  It’s the trying and, oft times, the failures that interest me most.  It’s not the wildly successful design decision, or storyline or closing argument.  It’s the 179 nights that preceded that success.  Sleepless nights, fitful nights.  Nights when you thought you just couldn’t do this one more day.  Nights when you feared your idea was crap and you’d be wasting all your life for nothing.  Nights when you had no idea whether you were throwing good time after bad or good time after good.  What, kind sir, did you do on those nights?  Who was there for you then?  Whose small still voice encouraged you?  Who sent a respite, no matter how brief, in the shape of a thoughtful husband or a sleepy child, either of which can be just sweet enough and just tempting enough to take you away from the seeming enormity of the task and bring you back to the present where the answer to “what happens next?” seems amazing simple – you kiss him, or you give her a glass of warm milk and tuck her back into bed.  It’s as simple as that.  Sort of.

If I could, I would give an award for the Best In-Betweeners.  Some will have ended up with worldwide fame and fortune, either during life or posthumously.  Some will have failed miserably, and still others will fall in neither camp but will have spent their lives firmly entrenched in the ordinary.  It doesn’t matter, really.  The point is, each award winner will have demonstrated excellence in the category of in-betweenedness, described as the ability to keep running (well, sometimes walking) though there’s nothing chasing you, to keep reaching for the jar without knowing whether the cookie is really there or not, to keep walking on a path that is illuminated only bright enough for you to see the very next step, but no farther.  It’s not the ultimate successes that deserve the awards.  That worldly success is devoid of value is a foregone conclusion, in my mind, because that type of success is plagued by the curse of the “Others” – it is granted by Others, therefore it can be taken away by Others, and its existence will always depend on the whim of Others.  Anything so dependent on things outside of oneself is destined to be worthless in the end.  But those In-Between days, those are the best, because it is during those times when it’s just you and God – in the library, in the office, or in the laundry room, tapping on your laptop or organizing exhibits for the deposition or separating the whites from the colors.  Those days are real.  Those days are true.  And the giddy headiness of those days depends on no one and nothing outside of you, so they can’t be robbed, or stolen, or unfairly politicked away.  The unadulterated joy of humility and stewardship is yours to savor.

I’m having one of those days.  Interestingly, though, no matter how easily I can write about it, living it is a whole different ballgame.  I’ve gently dragged myself through the day, trying to complete task after task, knowing this coming week is going to be a crazy one for both me and my husband and kids.  We’ll be running around, in stressful situations, barely seeing each other.  So, I’m trying to put things in place so little else will need to be done during the week other than the task of the moment.  The kicker of the in-betweener is, well, it’s kind of boring.  I’ve managed to get the checkbook balanced, but the bathrooms still need work.  The cars are washed, but vacuumed?  Well, not quite yet.  Plus, my lawyerly work awaits.  Worse yet, designing my life and designing The House will undoubtedly have to wait until things calm down again, and I can find the bookmark to help me figure out where I left off.  I won’t be able to sit down at this laptop again for days.  My thoughts won’t creatively flow, the ideas won’t come, my fingers won’t fly over the keys and type out the story of my life easily and effortlessly.  For the next week or so I’ve got to be the Full-Time Lawyer – with client obligations, partner obligations, deadlines, the works.

How do I bring the calm serenity of my writing into the chaos of my profession?