Still Digging Out...and Disappearing

We've officially entered the top 10 winters for snowfall. There was another snowpocalypse (sort of) last week, and call me a kipper if it doesn't look like we're in for another one late this week. The snow at the end of the driveway is now heaped head high. So it is a good time for indoor pursuits, like preparing for the new carpeting and reading, and setting up guitars. 

The photo above is the fireplace after repainting the brick. Painted brick would not be our first choice, the the hated previous owners (HPOs) left us little choice. On close inspection, which I spent most of my day closely inspecting it, the bricks were in pretty bad shape. Well, now they've got a new coat of paint on them.

See the "before" picture below. 

Last weekend, in much the same way that it was too rough for the old cook to feed the sailors on the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald, it was too busy to make a blog entry painting the hallway upstairs. 

K. and I have spent the last week or so both of us reading How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch. It's an amazingly thoughtful book, considering warships and camouflage and technology and art, all with the underlying theme of...Goodreads nails the description:

It is time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, autonomy, and voice.

Another key passage comes in the introduction (and, yes, you caught me, I'm only half way through the book, but K. assures me that the 2nd half is as good as the first):

I can tell you what invisibility is not. It is not loneliness, solitude, secrecy, or silence...my hope is to compile a field guide to invisibility, one to reacquaint us with the possibilities of the unseen world, to reimagine and reengineer our place in it with greater engagement and creative participation. And to find those ways in which remaining out of view can be a resourceful exercise. Inconspicuousness begins as self-protection but soon extends to self-reliance and deeper appreciation of who we are and where we belong in things.

 Putting it on the world wide web in a 'blog isn't exactly being inconspicuous, but I will say that this desire to be unseen, to drop out n plain view, is one of the founding principles of Steepmeadow. The loathsome distractions of "social media" and the 24/7 news cycle cesspit/circus, or "miasma" as one of the Neal Stephenson characters put it in his novel Fall, or Dodge in Hell...Paying attention to that rubbish is no way to live. Those idiots are not going to live in my head until they start paying rent. There are too many interesting things to put in there instead.

One example: I was able to set up two of my guitars this weekend. That was massively satisfying. One of them is my white Charvel, Saruman, with the DiMarzio Evolution pickup in the bridge. I've been daunted in the past by this job because the truss rod adjustment is at the base of the neck, which (dumb design) means you have to remove the neck to make adjustments. I only had to take it apart 2x to get it right. It wasn't so hard after all. I also freed the tremolo bridge on my Stratocaster. My guitar teacher had convinced me that it was a good idea to lock it down in order to keep tuning stability. It's probably true, but I figure it doesn't take too much to tune it up if it falls out of tune. Nailed it. Guitar plays like new. 

All good things to do indoors. It is difficult to believe that we're going to plant cauliflower next weekend in the greenhouse. It seems like the snow will never melt. And yet, every year it seems to happen.