When Will You Make an End?
In the 1965 epic film, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II has commissioned Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) to paint the Sistine Chapel. As we all know, the Sistine Chapel ceiling is the best of the High Renaissance artworks and was finally completed in 1512 after four years of effort by the ornery Michelangelo. In the movie, Pope Julius starts asking Michelangelo regularly, and eventually on a daily basis, “When will you make an end?” To this, Michelangelo, who had no respect or patience for his papal patron, says each time he is asked, “When I am finished.” That’s when the frustrated pope stomps off, back to his Vatican chambers and his ecumenical council, wondering how an insolent artist can speak to a pope with such impunity. Making an end is a very big deal with any project, whether its a Sistine Chapel ceiling with the hand of God sparking life into the fingertips of Adam, or a Hobbit House built by a lowly retiree who can’t wait for his granddaughters to come and visit.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling has nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, four corner scenes about the plight of the Israelites as they fled Egypt in search of the Promised Land, a dozen prophets, even more Sibyels and a raft of cherubs and miscellaneous hangers-on including the somewhat infamous Ignudis, with their junk hanging out. It is where the papal conclave gathers each time for the last five hundred years the Vatican has needed to select a new leader. In other words, its an important work of art and Christian vortex that draws millions of visitors, pilgrims and general worshipers each year. Letting Michelangelo take the time he needed to create such a masterpiece that has endured the test of time may have been the most important thing that Pope Julius II did during his tenure at the helm of the Holy See. In my creation of my Hobbit House, I am some combination of Michelangelo and Pope Julius II.
Did you know that the rather quickly crafted image of God reaching out in his act of creation for Adam’s finger is tantalizingly close and yet not quite there? This is said to have been Michelangelo’s reaffirmation of the imperfection of man. He was so imperfect that he had to paint beans and franks on all of his Ignudis, just like a graffiti artist who can’t resist the phallic urge to slip in a cock and balls here and there. I like that about Michelangelo, he practiced what he preached. The imperfection of man is an important and humbling philosophy. What I mean is that I too embrace imperfection. I am not so bold as to reproduce a visage of God Almighty painted in the exact form of Michelangelo reaching up as he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling (who did he think he was fooling that we would not recognize this egotism for what it was five hundred years in the future?) But while I stopped short of putting my image or even my signature anywhere on the Hobbit House, I did include plenty of imperfections.
I even justified the imperfections with my “That’s how a Hobbit would do it” excuse every time I fell short with my workmanship or patience. You see, I am a Michelangelo trapped in a Pope Julius II mind. I want desperately to be a perfectionist, just like I want desperately to be a creative artist. I can now say that I paint and sculpt and no longer restrict myself to the written word as my only form of creativity. I am better at writing, perhaps only because I practice it every day and have done so for many years. I am perhaps less imperfect, but I promise you that in addition to the typographical errors that you all find here and there due to lack of sufficient care given to proofreading, I am also guilty of stealing ideas and sometimes even words from anything from movies I have seen to Wikipedias I have read. I occasionally give reference or credit but am often either oblivious or perhaps occasionally larcenous enough to just barrel forward.
That is my problem, I must make progress every minute of every hour of every day of every year. I am driven to accomplish at all costs, especially if that cost is of a mere achievement of perfection. Once I realized that man is imperfect and that it is, indeed, not a perfect world, I gave myself license to run amok with my imperfections. It’s a funny juxtaposition, to be driven to achieve, but able to be simultaneously comfortable being imperfect. I have often enjoyed saying about myself that I am a jack of all trades and master of none. I would refine that with a touch too much ego to say that I am a quasi-master of many trades and a complete master of few if any. See what I did there? I took a perfectly humble statement about man’s imperfection and turned it into an exercise of overthinking and over-reaching.
Let me explain what elements my Hobbit House now encompasses. I have an 7×10 structure that is built on 8.5’ railroad ties. Those ties are 9” wide and 7” high with pretty good exactness (railroads must have been sticklers about their ties). How do you get to 10’? 8.5’ + 9”+9” (at each end at the corners) = 10’ for the exterior dimension. 8.5’ – 9”-9”=7’ for the interior dimension. So, that all worked for me. I used 2”x6” to create bulkier walls on which I have 3/8” sheathing on the inside and the same on the outside. I then have Tyvek vapor barrier, wire lathe and two coats of base coat stucco. The lid on this contraption is set on 4”x12”x12’ beams very badly cut to arc with a 24’ radius arm which declines very irregularly from a 4” side height to a flush side height at the back. the combination of arc and slope was to have water run off to the back. Now that its built, I realize I could have avoided the slope since the arc does the water runoff job just fine and weep holes in the expended 2’ eaves on either side are the logical water runoff spots (damn, what was I thinking). Those beams have 1”x8” planks front to back and that makes an effective, but imperfect roof that is about to be covered in dirt and succulents. It is surrounded by a copper railing that is perfect in parts and then imperfect where I had to finish it myself, thus making it, overall, imperfect but shiny.
The artwork of the Hobbit House consists of front flared-bottom cedar timbers, a cedar plank on the inside wall, drilled random wooden plaques, a copper lians head over the door, three ghoulish-faced gremlins, a stone-carved replica of Oceanus with his mouth of truth agape, a wall painting of a Roman Manzanita tree growing a hybrid of 3-D lemons and limes, two painted succulent pots, and a window wall with hanging yellow and purple vines made of plastic. In other words, it abounds in imperfection. When will I make an end to this craziness? Not until I am finished.