We have a temporary kitchen. Built with found materials. That have an expiry date. We knew it wouldn't last more than a couple of years. The counter tops made with Re-Store particle board. The walls primed white. The cupboards ripped from our old kitchen. The great thing is that things don't matter. We're not attached. We can try things with it. Experiment. It's temporary. It's the time before. Before we get our real kitchen.
Last Halloween, I saw the brilliance of the angled pumpkin top. I always wanted a compost bucket underneath our kitchen counter, so the food could just be swept in. Why not? It's a temporary kitchen. So out came the jigsaw, and there I carved a pumpkin top right out of the middle of our island counter. Slid the bucket under, and presto, my compost dream came true. Temporary. A beginning and an end. A place to try things out. Experiment.
I was standing in the kitchen the other day when I remembered.
It's all temporary.
We are temporary.
And it is real.
What if we lived that way? As if our lives were an experiment. To try things out. To get out the tools and cut through. Move things around. Change things. Change them back. Take ourselves less seriously. To bring some lightness to the significance of the permanent life. To get that we all have an expiry date. That we are all to be returned to the soil. And life is about mixing the baking soda and vinegar. Just to see what happens.
I don't even know how to start this bit, cuz I'm not sure how it's going to sound. And I can easily erase it. Kinda strange? Even when we know it's temporary, we hesitate. I bought sketchbook a while back when i was on a learning-how-to-draw kick. I didn't want to fill it up with "just learning" material, so I did those early drawings on some separate pages until I was satisfied with the quality. I would love to see those now. To see how I progressed. To see where I started. To show others who are starting.
ReplyDeleteOther times when starting a project, I find it goes in a direction I hadn't thought of. The design changed and grew dynamically and organically. And most times it was better than what I started with.
So even now, when I know that it can be erased or that it's helpful to remember the path, or that something might present itself once I start, I still hesitate. Maybe it's just takes practice. More "temporary" things to work on or more of the sense that everything is temporary.