hot coffee girl

I have been going back over some of my "stuff" hoping to find clues about what brought me here as Friday approaches. There were certainly darker time in my life, to be sure. I left a marriage and, essentially, a life, in hopes that I could try to become who I really am supposed to be. What follows is an older piece that I wrote before I moved here to Tremont in July.

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I spent the better part of my morning taking a knife to the wall.

An odd thing to do, I know, but allow me to explain.

I was skulking around my office, which happens to be connected to my apartment, looking for something to do that didn't involve the project that I was supposed to be finishing for an all-too-looming deadline.

I wandered into my photography studio, and was immediately convinced that I just HAD to take all of the pictures down off the wall to dust them. As any good procrastinator knows, cleaning is always an excellent way to put off what you are really supposed to be doing. Unless, of course, you are supposed to be cleaning…that would make the procrastination less effective, I suppose.

Nevertheless, there I was in the studio, frantically ripping frames off of the wall to dust them. In my haste, I caught one of the nails in the frame it was hanging on, and tore away a small chip of paint on the wall. This wasn’t of terrible distress to me as the wall was already in a manner of disarray. I live in a very old apartment, I must tell you. And while there is a certain charm to the steam radiator and piping that runs the length of all 2000+ square feet of the place I now call home and work…it doesn’t come without it’s own set of challenges aesthetically. There is paint peeling everywhere, uneven walls and seams, and a tiny, ill-conceived bathroom that I won’t even attempt to describe at this point in my story. To sum it up, the place has a LOT of character.

So the paint chip wasn’t an issue. Until I caught a glimpse of what was underneath. I think I had assumed that the crappy brown latex paint was put directly over the drywall when some brilliant realtor decided to break up the space into more defined areas. Yet, that was not the case.

Instead, the show of a muted pink that caught my eye told me that there was more below. I picked at it a bit with my fingernail to reveal that there were, indeed, more layers between the paint and the wall. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a small pairing knife (at this point I hadn’t intended to do anything that couldn’t be covered back up by the frame), and returned to the mark. I carefully slid the knife under the paint and peeled a small portion of it away, revealing a mauve and cream design that looked like it could be a flower of some sort.

This is the point where I went too far. I forgot about the frame that I had to hang back up, and slid my knife further. I tore away a chunk of the paint that was more substantial than the one inch chip I had started with. Underneath the paint was wallpaper that was probably lovely at one time. It was a Victorian kind of design: an oval with a tree inside flanked by ornate scrolls and flowers. Although the age of the wall, the manner in which the decorator covered over it, and my crude method of tearing through the layers rendered the paper useless in terms of saving for a more pleasing alternative to the brown paint, I kept going. I lost myself for nearly an hour in my new quest. As I slid the knife between the paint and the paper, I would sometimes pull away pieces as larges as three or four inches, sometimes only little chips as before.

Because that kind of work is somewhat mindless, I started to think about what brought me to this apartment in the first place. About four months earlier, I had discovered that I didn’t like where my life was going. I was married to a man who didn’t really know me, I lived in a non-descript, uninteresting apartment in a city I hated, and I had the vague notion that I was becoming complacent and despondent in my every day life. I hated the feeling that my life was becoming pabulum…and I found the will to pick up and leave. I wanted something more for myself-for my life-than watching TV every night after work and eating at chain restaurants every weekend.

So I came here. To this space, in the town I grew up. To start over, maybe. Or to start again. Or to nurture that niggling little spark that told me to be something bigger and better than what I was allowing myself to become. And to tear at the parts of me that I had tucked away for too long to find out why and how I got to this point. I was tearing at the wall with the knife on the outside, sand tearing at my own walls on the inside.

And then something unexpected happened.

The wall changed.

As I cut away the pieces, there was less of that wallpaper I originally found and more of just the wall itself. Now, if I were more versed in carpentry or interior design, I might be able to identify what exactly happened to that point…maybe the painter decided to use a different method halfway through the project that fused the paper to the paint better. Maybe age and sunlight from the 13 foot long window had hit that spot just right to cause it to meld together somehow. Maybe the painter had ripped away the original paper on the majority of the wall, but got tired or lazy towards the end, and just painted over the small strip of paper that flushed against the door frame for me to uncover mostly by accident some years later. Whatever it was, I knew it had changed, and somehow my story would too. I stood there for what seemed like a very long time and just looked at the layers that were exposed now.

I wondered who had put up the wallpaper to begin with. I know precious little about the tenants that preceded me in this space. I do suspect that it was used as an office for a time, judging by the hideous drop ceiling panels that scream ‘70’s corporate. I know the building itself was constructed in 1889 because there is a section of the original wall exposed in the living room that has the carpenter’s writing on it. I also know that this small town has seen a number of changes over the years, and that somehow it has stayed remarkably in tact as a cute, charming little place to raise children and visit with your neighbors. But I wondered who put that pink Victorian wallpaper up on those walls to begin with….what they thought when it was done. If they sat in that room and looked out the window at people passing by while they drank brandy after dinner. Maybe they talked and fought and loved and cried in that room, surrounded by muted pinks and cream flowers.

And then, tired of standing, I sat down at the base of the wall and rested for a moment.

And I found something else.

In the chips and pieces that were lying there on the carpet next to me, I found something that didn’t fit with what I had been pulling away. Hidden between the paint and the paper was another layer of paper that was entirely different. It was a more modern, swirly kind of pattern that had been put up over the first covering. I turned the piece over in my hands, overwhelmed at the find. Although insignificant at first blush, I realized how much work I had to do of my own. I know that there are so many layers I need to tear away to get to the bare walls of my own psyche. Sometimes I will tear so hard that I will expose myself all the way down to the studs, other times I will be more ginger in my efforts, taking care to separate each layer to see how they went together. In any case, I sat there on my floor, tears streaming down my face, realizing that the wall, my morning, my life had changed somehow.

I remembered the project that needed to be finished. I looked at the dirt that had gotten wedged under my nails, and wiped the tears from my face with my dirty hands. I got up and started to clean up the mess I had made. I put the pieces in a box that was to go out with the trash. I swept the floor of the smaller flakes that I could get up more easily with the vacuum cleaner. I was putting things back in order.

But I took care to save a few of the pieces that showed the sections of what were underneath and on top. I will put those chips in a frame – the only frame – that I will hang back up on that wall. To remember.

And about the wall itself? I am going to leave it as it is right now for a time. Chipped, exposed, messy, and incomplete. I realize that before I move out of here, I should probably tear all of the layers off and put something more traditionally appealing up there for the next person that lives here.

I now suspect that when that happens, I will have torn apart my own layers and be ready to wear my own new covering and face the world in a different light. I am not sure what paint I will choose, but I am sure it will be beautiful.

Although in the meantime, I think the layers are quite something to look at, too.