Studio - a short story

I look at my studio and it is a living thing. Sometimes it is a warm, nurturing mother, sometimes a coiled snake. In any case these 350 square feet are mine - I do whatever I want here - I can create new things or alter the old, can have a tantrum or adjust my sensitivities to a particularly measured level. My friends are all here on the walls. They await my attention.

I fancy somewhere hidden in these walls is an element of humanly mystery, left amidst the framing an empty beer can with a note of contrition inside written by a carpenter seeking relief from the torment caused by dropping his infant son, damaging the boy’s brain, and then covering up his responsibility. Maybe some day when the building is torn down as a step to urban renewal the note will be read by a migrant worker making seven dollars an hour and this current of self abnegation will seep out into the well of life’s spiritual equilibrium.

And then

Sometimes I walk in to my studio and it is a cool empty blue. It is lonely, melancholic and prone to actions of self defeat and exhaustive self flagellation. On one of these one-foot-in-front-of-the-other days I sit breathing hard into my cup of tea and fogging my glasses in the hopes that the effect will prompt me, in spite of my soft–edged, blurry reality, to take something and make it what it is not - achieve some alchemical majesty.
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Suddenly the top on my tea cup rolls out of my weakly applied grip, circles across the table, and falls to the floor. For a brief moment I feel anger but quickly realize I am halfly purposeful in doing that, a self destructive measure which can then lead to another: putting my heavy tape measure on top of the tea as a substitute for the missing top, which then makes the cup top heavy and likely to spill if the flimsy table is jostled. For the moment I am living on the edge.

But then I turn away from myself to gather all of me to huddle in privacy where in peace I remember green fields of pure colors.

As I am kicking down the turf, dust and dirt participate in a rooster tail of false phone calls having to report fanatical fascists driving their cars around in a mischievous manner. Prancing pinks put forth, without hesitation, pandering to political people. By then, the event of my lost teacup top, with one’s life within, belongs to the panorama of all human experience over the course of history. A draw results.

And I am back in my studio pursuing a life force today. I look outside and watch as the wind blows a hanging plant against the backdrop of a shady concrete wall – that is separation. The sidewalks and pillar posts are quietly loitering – perhaps talking to each other.

Out in the distance of the great grey sexy sky there are bullets crossing a bridge over water that is a massive liquid protest demonstration and has reached a riotous pitch. Cowboy music is slashing the tires with nothing in mind besides the purity of organic line dancing.

The waters heave and roll, ready to vomit except that the bullets racing across are binding. In each bullet is a mind and inside that a theater of children’s games, forcing thoughts to travel faster to achieve an insurmountable lead on the environment.

Obstinately time seems to be ticking along slowly. I can see it rubbing up against the glass sidewalls of my truck.

Suddenly the rhythms are having an effect on skin and bones and the moment goes on and just as suddenly clean breath is returning to the maladjusted heart and there is dancing magnificent and wondrous.