Red Tape

Watching Paint Dry.

Finally, I had finished painting the spare room. A pale Topaz covering the tobacco stained teenage boy underpants off white beneath. Here I am sitting; body aching in the satisfied manner of rest after a job well done, breathing in deep from the horrid vapors of paint, bringing on a dizziness that's in part annoying and a side effect style high. The dizziness of a small child, spinning like an Ottoman whirling dervish, the exhilaration of seeing the great world spin.

Yet, it soon becomes too much for me, but I console myself as I move to the Kitchen to clean up, that one of paint's great assets is that it doesn't require your presence to dry. Just as the world spins without you. Seeds break their casings and gorge out life as growing plants. The seas and moon ebb and flow, without any need from you. Dances, jokes and songs play out whether you will them to or not. Love, hate, money, power happen to people everywhere without your permission. It is the universe which bears the need to make all of reality function; we are but a tiny part of the voice whispering in choir, of the adventures and stories around us. Paint dries.

That relief; akin to awakening in the morning, the joy of having one more day and the resignation of the burden of having one more day, to work, to follow routine. That uncomfortable mix of pleasure and discomfort, like sleeping in an unmade bed.

So, I rise to wash rollers and paintbrushes, my dry flaking hands massaging and squeezing the mucky, soiled utensils, staining the steel sink in the process. That is the frustration of painting a home, the constant task of making something look bright and clean, whilst trying to avoid making a mess.

I return to the spare room to enjoy some patches drying faster than others. It reflects that great lottery of life, the apparent randomness of everything.

Immediately, I realize it's a mistake, as my inner critic starts to wonder if the finished hue of blue is the right hue of blue. I return to the great middle class debate of which is superior, midday cobalt or sunny sky azure, having given way to light Topaz, and yes the tin said light topaz if that can be believed, at least it was in the dying rays, as the day almost imperceptibly began giving away it's light through the window. How can such visual creatures have so few words for color and with such inaccurate descriptions? What an imprecise tool language is!

The kids and Bea would return soon. The paint pong stench in the house would be a big hullabaloo, as only the young are not so cynical to take the ordinary and every day for granted. They would give the day its due. Tell its tale, to be retold in echo anew in Chinese whisper gossip along the lines of friends and family. Memory may only be revisited in story.

For a moment, it saddens me to think that the room will dry, that these minutes will give way to something more interesting and distracting. Like a cat with a string, the future will take away our focus from the real, from the now. Making us forget that seeds grow, The seas and moon ebb and flow, dances, jokes, and songs play out, love, hate, money, power happen to people, the winds blow.

Paint dries.