Day 12- Thursday, November 6, 2008- I woke up in Hoboken, helped Ros layout artwork and sage her house with sage from my family’s ranch in Texas, then packed up my car, said goodbye and headed to meet my aunt for lunch.
My aunt Cathy lives on the Jersey shore with her husband Captain Mark. It’s a great rags to riches story for another time… I met up with Cathy for lunch in Red Bank, NJ… home of Jay & Silent Bob. It’s actually a great little art town with a concentration of galleries, home design shops, clothing stores, etc. It’s a regular stop for me whenever I go to see my aunt. I actually worked in Red Bank editing videos while living at the shore one summer. The 4th of July fireworks are great.
Anyway, Cathy is searching for a professional creative outlet. She’s decided staging houses is it. Over waffle fries (I’d never heard of these but they were good) Cathy told me about the certification class she was taking and the entrepreneurship and real estate courses she was in the midst of. I’m sure she’ll be good at whatever she puts her mind to as long as she can figure out the business side of it. She recently made all the decisions on her rebuilt waterfront home and it looks great. It was great to learn about the business of staging… setting up interiors to make the home sell faster… My favorite word from that conversation is one I’m still thinking about today- depersonalizing. For example, removing family photos and decisions that are unique to the previous owner like weird windows.
After window shopping with Cathy I headed to Phoenixville, PA to see my dad and brother…
waffle fries
11/6/08 Late Evening- Finally, time to think, but I’m exhausted. I am fortunate enough to be settled next to a fire in an open faced woodstove.
I’m at my dad’s house. The place is piled with stuff, in more ways than one. My painting experiments line the walls. One year, I became so turned on by Mike and Mike’s studio above Awful Al’s that I came home in December, bought 4 x 8′ sheets of plywood and turned my dad’s living room into a studio. It only lasted a few weeks. My painting was cropped and turned into decoration. I suppose in years of wisdom beyond my age, I will admit that everyone goes through revelations at their own rate. I manifest that my dad will have a revelation one day to live lightly and shed baggage. Pairs of shoes not worn in decades can be passed on to their next life.
I haven’t been here in a year. Since my mom moved to Chicago, it’s been awhile. When my dad turned 50, I was a junior in college. While I was in Syracuse, I organized a surprise birthday party at Jen & Ray’s. I had blue hair then. That means he’s turning 56.
Here’s a revelation of my own… What does it say about me that I use location and hair color to determine length of time? Right now, I’m traveling and I have highlights. I’m trying to grow my hair out actually. I’m ready for something looser and not so precise.
Home today has been home for a long time. This morning home was Hoboken. Yesterday it was the Upper East Side. Last week, it was the Upper West Side. The week before, home was (and still is) Syracuse. Home is where you lay the souls of your feet.
For dinner we went to Rocco’s Pizza as a family (Dad, Devon and I), where we chatted to the owner (who remembers us as little squirts) and reminisced about what it used to look like, what changed, and the stories my dad used to tell based on the history channel. Earlier I drove around Phonixville, which has come a long way from the armpit of Chester County that it used to be. Now there are nice restaurants and micro brewerys on main street along with two bookstores, several coffee shops and an art gallery or two. I read about an art gallery in Phoenixivlle in NICHE Magazine, a national industry publication. The phoenix is rising. The same will happen in Syracuse, eventually.
My head is screaming but there are no words. Only acceptance. Responsibility calls, but feels irrelevant. If the tarot card reading was true, I should have a good idea by now of what will be different. I don’t think it was referring to 6 days. Perhaps it was 6 weeks, or I’m inclined to believe 6 months. Perhaps I’m scared that what is to come will somehow distract me from my real purpose on this journey, whatever that revelation that I sense coming will be. Perhaps there is none and I begin to think this might be all there is. No, it seems far too unlikely. The world is too funny for it to be boring. I grow more still every day, but not where I’m surrounded by unnecessary confusion. I need time to myself when I’m not exhausted.
