Issue 1 (6/4/02)

Writing and Renovations, Finley Bullard Evans

I haven’t written a poem in seven months. Not one. The count is getting higher and higher every day and I just keep letting it. I have read over my work: The poems from my thesis, some of which I still like; some from last year, most of which I still like. But still, no writing at all. No working out on paper of ideas, no scraps of delightfully- wrought imagery or lines. And I call myself a writer—not yet adept or jaded enough to handle the reactions from others when I call myself poet, so—yes, I’m a writer. Then one can picture me however he or she wants, as long as I’m not dead in a bathtub. More likely it’s just the picture of me alone in my room, or in a nice, old oak-paneled office. But certainly alive, and with a great novel, just like Michael Douglas at the end of Wonder Boys.

I have no excuse. I have no alibi. Except one. We’re renovating this seventy-year-old house.

Still, to any graduate workshop in America’s finest and most renowned academic institutions, I would be a dropout, a failure. I wouldn’t even be able to hold my head up in front of my critically meerkat-like peers. If I came into the workshop with no poems, but having much to say about theirs after having read them carefully and meticulously, I would soon feel the wrath. They would bark their cries of writerly scorn, shaking with resentment, parroting the phrases every graduate student of writing has always heard: “A writer writes! Practicing writing is just like practicing an instrument! Writing takes diligence! Patience! Self-discipline! Commitment! Professionalism! Willingness to adapt to any situation!”

Right now, I would nod my head in total agreement, sigh, and let go a small, defeated “yes.” Then, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, with forties-era wallpaper paste and dust on my forehead and face, and pieces of plaster and years of different layers of wallpaper dandruffing my shoulders, I would add very plainly, gesturing with my Stanley scraper in hand:

But you know, so does getting a floor estimate.

Especially from a contractor who five minutes ago told me that his last client tried to “Jew him down” to a more reasonable price. This offended me far less than it worried me—where would I hide my membership card to the Jewish Community Center (as well as my complimentary pen) so he wouldn’t give me an estimate higher than the previous contractor? After all, standing before me in the middle of my desperately non-updated, hardwood living room floor is a man named Dale, who has a belt which says “HARLEY FOREVER” in chipping brass, a ball cap which reads “AMERICA… REMEMBER” with an eagle, and an embroidered, gold tear in its brown eye, and
finally, an alarming tattoo on his forearm which reads “YOUR MAMA DON’T
KNOW S**T ABOUT S**T!”

Actually, I really liked him. I had to have respect for someone who was completely and unabashedly politically incorrect. These days people like Dale are an asset, a jewel in the toad’s head of moral presupposition and hypocrisy. After all, aren’t we all contractors of something?

But I digress.

As I return from a long day of pricing things like 18 gauge stainless steel undermount sinks, solid surface countertops, showerheads which imitate various kind of rains, and ceramic tile, always in shock at how much one person can ask for any such item, I keep coming back to one thing: I love this house. I can’t wait until the trash is taken away from the driveway so it can look peaceful again. I hate to see its paint chipping and its mortar which needs tipping. I want all the burglar bars off it, so it can breathe again. I want it to be all the house it can be.

This is when it occurs to me that renovating an old house is very much like restarting a career in writing, particularly after an extended hiatus like mine. The process is exactly the same. It isn’t that it needs inspiration and genius. It just needs, well, updating: Fresh ideas, attention and care. Suddenly, I’m working on both--these poems and the house--simultaneously. You see, as with my writing, I have an understanding with the house. I will work on it until I can live in it, and then I will leave it alone for a while and see how visitors react to it. Living with the process is the same—the continuous chaotic state of renovation is inevitable with writing or old houses.

Since we have a limited income, we’re doing this in stages. The electricians have to go first, then the plumbers starting with the guest bathroom upstairs; then the tile layers, then the floor refinishers. Every project has a room and a layer to itself, and its own stages of production. As my mentor Bruce Smith said to me once in an efficient email, “Italian: Tenga il Resto. English: Keep the change.” So I do.

I return home to our apartment after meetings for all kinds of estimates with the distinct feeling that I’ve done good work here. I have managed to keep the contractors at bay while simultaneously convincing them that my ideas for the house have merit, and are not totally absurd. I’m beginning to enjoy the performative aspects of being a completely ignorant general contractor. I pretend to know everything they are talking about when they discuss shoe mold on the walls and using butcher’s paste wax on the stairs instead of refinishing them, and also finding the stack in the bathroom for the plumber by knocking down walls “…here and here, see?”

So I say, “Yes, definitely. I was thinking the same thing. That would work out great, I think!” (Suddenly I feel myself going back to answering an empty critique on a poem I’d written in poetry workshop: “Yes you’re absolutely right. This poem would work much better if the voice were more, uh, confident…less…world-weary. Definitely.”)

Then I tell my husband exactly what the contractors said later on that evening and he says “well, okay, what does that mean?” and I answer, “I dunno; you’ll have to ask them.”

Continuous change also makes for discovery and delight in finding very small things along the way and rejoicing in them while I can, as in writing. I took special pleasure in revealing, tile by disgusting linoleum tile, the fiery red ceramic tile underneath. With my crowbar, I pried up hundreds of squares of this forty year old glue and brittle grey linoleum tile, and there underneath was the original floor for the kitchen. In our dining room there were four different layers of wallpaper, one for each few decades. The one closest to the plaster was brown, with white tulip tree blossoms and brown branches.
I couldn’t save it, but I was glad to see it anyway. I thought of the advice one of my professors in grad school gave me about writing down the very first line of a poem: To write down “not the first thing you think of; but the eighth thing. Start with the eighth thing.” Getting to the bottom of things is always rewarding—whether it’s an oak floor, a plaster wall, or a really great line.

But the best part of the house is the pea-green basement—which contains the safe.

This monolithic, black safe, which is almost seven feet tall and about six feet wide, has a very faint outline of white lettering, “SOUTHERN RAILWAY” across the top, and has doors which probably weigh five hundred pounds each. Each door is hand-painted inside with flowers and pastoral scenes, and beyond these doors, there is another set of thinner, iron doors which open to reveal a wardrobe-looking interior, lined with oak shelves and also hand-painted. In the seventies, the safe was broken into, the previous owner explained to us. His father shot his shotgun down into the basement and scared the thieves away, leaving their blowtorches and police scanners behind. They managed to make a gaping hole, however, which is now covered up by a modest square of green felt duct-taped to it, like Eve’s leaf. It’s the best rag-and-bone shop I have ever seen.

So, for these reasons I forgive myself. In this time of discovery and rediscovery, I forgive myself for not sitting down in the middle of yellowing linoleum tile adhesive to write an inspired stanza. I forgive myself for not feeling quite guilty enough to stop scraping walls and give myself time to come up with a nice sestina. I forgive myself for shoveling handfuls of microwave kettle corn into my mouth while watching HGTV when I get home. Writing poetry, at this very moment, seems irreverently predictable, redundant, and therefore, very un-general-contractor-like. After all, I have to remain a professional, no matter what.

Finley Bullard Evans was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN but also considers herself a Birmingham, AL native. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama. Her poetry most recently appears in Mid-American Review, Clackamas Review, Born, and an anthology, Sad Little Breathings & Other Acts of Ventriloquism. She has poems forthcoming in Bellingham Review and Portland Review. She and her husband Neal live in Birmingham with their two dogs, Bee and Fife. The electricians start tomorrow.

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