We're building a house...have I mentioned that here?
Do you want to know my very favorite thing about the new house? For the first time in my entire life, I will have a room of my own. I've never had my own room before.
Virginia Woolf was right...everyone needs a room of her own. A room to fill with one's own things, a place to shut the door and be alone, a space that belongs to no one else in the entire universe.
And...a place to paint strange pictures.
I still love to paint my weird pictures. The one at the top of this post is my latest effort. I don't know why I like making them so much. It's not like I display them or show them to anyone. I post them here sometimes, but this is an anonymous place. Hardly anyone will ever see them here.
But these paintings are one of many, many reasons I'm so excited about having my own space. As it stands now, I have no place of my own to spread things out and leave them where they will not be disturbed or, more importantly, observed.
I made this latest painting on a rare day when the house was empty for a few hours. I got out my paper and paint and glue, spread everything out on the dining room table (which is right inside the front door), and had just gotten started when there was a knock at the door.
I peeked out the window. It was a woman dropping off some paperwork for the new house. I had no choice but to answer the door.
But there was absolutely no way I wanted this woman to see what I was doing. I suppose I'd have felt differently if I'd been in the process of painting a stunning mountain landscape or a still life of flowers and fruit.
But I wasn't.
I wasn't doing anything that could be remotely classified as "art". Instead, I was basically playing randomly with paint. I felt like a guilty little kid who's been caught smearing peanut butter all over the walls of his room.
If I opened the door and asked her inside, my little painting hobby would be exposed in all its admittedly odd and quirky glory.
So I quickly rinsed the paint off my hands, and opened the door just wide enough to slip outside and shut it behind me, so that I could talk to my visitor on the porch.
I'm sure it must have all seemed very suspicious. She probably thinks I run a meth lab in the house.
But I'd sooner be perceived as a meth manufacturer or the Unibomber's successor than expose my vulnerable little paintings to condescending eyes.
Soon, though, I will no longer have this problem. I'll finally have a room where I can just walk out and shut the door behind me, leaving my things out of sight and untampered with.
No one will ever be the wiser about the weird things I do. :-)
