Settling In with the Quiet Sounds

Items continue to pile up on my desk and in my mind. I recently went to TJ Maxx to see if I could find a suitable inbox, but there was nothing that would hold my entire studio. Of course, the piles might dissipate if I were to stop buying books, but I cannot see that happening. In fact, my book buying pace has picked up, and while the phrase “retail therapy” ran through my mind the other day, I don’t think I am trying to erase the pain of losing Andi by shopping for the sake of escape. My guess is that I have finally let myself be who I am: a woman with interests as easily captured and released as butterflies in a glass conservatory filled with enticing flowers. Even now, I have items in a JetPens cart, because I, amazingly, I don’t have suitable pens for the exercises in the brush lettering instruction book I picked up on clearance at the Maxx.

The rain outside my windows is keeping up a steady static sound. When the washing machine is engaged in one of its quiet tasks, I am able to hear the calming voice of the weather, but soon enough, the red beast behind me will start in with its airplane-in-for-a-landing caterwauling, and I’ll find it hard to concentrate on much of anything. Oh, yep; there it is.

Both the washer and dryer, alizarin crimson Whirlpools that Dennis and I picked up at a slight discount ten years ago because the color was not just right for the woman who ordered them from our local appliance dealer, are attention whores. It seems as if they are always making noises or lit up in some way. They sit on a pedestal in front of the bright blue, southwest wall of my studio, straight in front of you as you move through the doorway. They are conspicuous, attention-grabbing, striking, obvious. I think that the next time I design a laundry room, it will double as a mudroom (not my studio/office/reading room), and the washer and dryer might get hidden by doors of some sort.

In his book, Start, Jon Acuff pointed out that the obvious is not always true. The notion intrigued me at the time, and I didn’t know what to make of it. My washer and dryer are obviously true (and quite often, a true pain in the posterior), but I have come to see that Acuff was more right and wiser than I ever gave him credit for. Knowing this, I find myself stepping out tentatively, whether I’m in the grocery store, reading a book, or—especially—engaged in conversation, either with a person physically “in front of me” or a potential reader of something I write.