First Three Weeks

I have no idea where my cameras are. We "moved in" about the first of the month as it was too time consuming to get the children back and forth from the apartment we are renting to the house. Plus they decided they liked the new place better and refused to go home most nights. I started demolition on the main wall January 1st. It runs the length of the house opposite the big window seen below and effectively bisects half of the house. The weekend before last I removed most of the framing from it and installed headers (2x10s) just under the top plates to create two large openings from the living room into the kitchen and dining room. This wall is load bearing (but not by very much) so I had to install a temporary wall of 2x4s to support the weight while I installed the new framing. It is pretty difficult to do this kind of work on the weekend with the kids around: Henry (age 6) and May (age 2) but on good days, when everybody is not too tired, it makes it really pretty cool. When I installed the header leading into the dining room I got Henry to climb up on the ladder to help hold the tape for the measurement, and when we installed the beam, Mary held one end in place and Henry handed me up the framing nailer. We've had our friend Ronnie the plumber out to remove a radiator that was in the kitchen (most of it done in the crawl space with Henry helping) as well as my friend Don the electrician to help rework all the outlets various outlets and switches that I exposed and had laying around on the floor for two weeks. All of this has opened up the space considerably, it's probably the fastest and easiest improvement I think I've ever made to a house, and I'm surprised that none of the previous owners thought to do it. Last Sunday it was somewhere around twenty degrees outside and I napped on the couch in the living room for an hour or so. I don't think the furnace cut on once. I believe this is because of the sunlight coming in from the window is now able to warm the whole of the house and not just that one room. Of course now I have to figure out a way to keep it from cooking us in the summer, but I got a couple of ideas on that. All of this work will segue into the kitchen job, which has been cleaned, stabilized and put on temporary hold. I hope to get something on the subject of the kitchen as well as some pictures up soon. However we've got two rooms to finish up painting before we move the rest of our stuff in from the old apartment that we have to be completely gone from by the first. We need to get that security deposit back to be able to pay for material and tradespeople. Oh yeah, last thing, for some reason I've found myself while doing the majority of this work listening to the soundtrack to the movie Batman Begins. I strongly believe this is due to the fact that I'm the fucking Batman.

We Bought a House

And will be "doing things" to it. I will attempt to regularly post our progress here.

Funeral

--Band of Horses

One of the punkrock kids working the kitchen of Strawberry St. Market had this linked up from his iPod into the stereo last night and for some reason it was the right song at exactly the right time.

Flight

--The Remains of Brian Borcherdt

Defiance II

This is not a city of cars, I refuse to believe it. My town is hemmed in by bright rails to the north, a rail hub in its heart, our river flowing with trains running the length of it. Our city stitched through with tracks, our air washed clean after the cold front, the broad oaks jettison their freight of leaves, veining the sky with bare limbs. The sound of the trains, cold and clear, is the sound of purity. My morning sky, tree hemmed, is a delta viewed on an atlas and there is no better day to be alive.

I heard John Henry bound this city himself in rails, laid a thousand tracks in one day, a hammer in each hand. I found the knuckles in each clenched fist fit together like a gear. The gears in the gut of my saw fit one to the next like teeth stitched to a jaw. It turns, it is relentless. I drove my truck to work for ten years with a deer’s jaw wedged where the dash met the windshield. I dreamt I went to war with the jaw of a mule and killed a thousand men. There is a jaw-bone wedged where the earth meets the sky. It is a lever.

One cold day in the woods, long ago, one of the grown-ups came running frantic around the bend, get off the tracks he said, there is a train coming. There is a train coming, he said, get off the tracks, there is a train coming.

Stanley #78

Defiance I

It is defiance that raises me each morning,
To provide for mine with whatever talent
I can summon to my hands, without insurance, without benefits.
I am one of the American craftsmen, my life
Can end tomorrow and no one could weep.

It is Apollo who comes to dredge the earth,
The rebellious earth breathing fire at his arrival.
It is Apollo who hangs his freight of fire above us
Each day. It is the rebellious nature of my daughter
In her car seat commanding me, “fast and fast and fast.”

The son born to the Japanese hair-stylist was named Apolo, who raised him alone. The boy sprung up, wild and restless, strung his days together getting fucked up. He dreamt the idea of a speed-skater. His woke to his friends falling dead around him. The father stole his son away and abandoned him in a cabin in the great northern woods. The weight of snow taught the boy to shut up and listen to the thing thumping in his chest.

Apolo rose before each morning, and heading out to the frozen lake,
Lashed his skates to him. Imagine for me, please, the sound a man makes
Over broad ice, the friction of his life reduced to two lines of bright steel.
His breathing. Summoning whatever strength he has in his legs to push
Away from gravity, our earth’s death of inertia. The very air trembling
Around him, the indeterminate speed of his life, near frictionless
Over fast ice, vanishing, hundreds of miles away from the rest of us.

Ship Out on the Sea

I'm a ship, I'm a ship, I'm a ship
Out on the sea
None of my love
Floating wild come back to me
So I write you a letter, I'll write you a letter
With this here pen
Don't make me wait, don't make me wait
Cuz I'm your friend

I'm in love with the garden
That is down the street
And the earth is a warm thing under my feet
And the earth is a warm thing under my feet

Oh long streams of light
Lift me, from this dirty town
Cuz I'm losing stain, soak me yeah with rain, rain, rain, rain

I'm a ship, I'm a ship, I'm a ship
Out on the sea
And all these clouds flying by so fast
Well they confuse me
And the long leaves in the tall trees
Pale in the sunshine
And I was twistin' and turnin'
In the cool sheets past bed time

Plant me in the garden
Don't you let me roam
Cuz love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Plant me in the garden
Don't you let me roam
Cuz love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Plant me in the garden
Don't you let me roam
Cuz love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Love is a feeling like a warm dark stone
Love is a feeling like a warm dark stone

-- Be Good Tanyas, Chinatown, 2003