Russell Lee:
Scooping and sweeping dried hops
from drying room to adjacent room
where they will be baled.
Yakima County, Washington.
There is approximately twenty-five percent
dryout of hops (1941)
United States. Farm Security Administration

"You guys figure out the exact measurements between you."

I am an Approximately person. I do not deal in preciselies. I broadly estimate impacts and generally thrive. I do not appear to have the sort of mind that derives details. I see impressionistically. To my mind, Renoir and Monet painted with photographic clarity. Details lose me. I take measurements to immediately forget them. When Pablo, Our Concrete Contractor, asks my opinion, I refer him to Jesse, our Structural Guy, or Joel, Our Carpenter, for I cannot seem to retain a memory of exactly what we decided when we discussed design. How high the supporting wall should be poured does not reside in my head. I might notice when a disagreement emerges, but I will not be the one resolving the question. For that, we need to convene a conversation. I called Jesse and Joel after it seemed Pablo was measuring from the wrong surface. I could neither confirm nor deny a problem. I held suspicions. I'd also insisted that Pablo call Jesse and Joel. I was trying to encourage some conversation. Why is it so hard for people to talk with each other?

It would have been an excellent idea for us to detail the design of our front porch refurbishing before we started demolishing its past. We had snippets and bits, a sketch, and the start of a finished design, not combined. We've referred to those bits whenever we've felt lost. We've almost managed to stay true to our intentions, though The Muse and I often clash when it comes down to details. She's not always available, and I'm not always the best representative of what we earlier definitively decided. I don't remember those details, so I improvise. This ability does not always satisfy the more detail-oriented spouse, who might have some paper to back up her perspective. I just have my acknowledged faulty memory. We have always been a Mutt and Jeff pair.

I believe the Approximately life is superior to any other, though I admit I've never experienced any alternative. I do not suffer from Approximately the way someone suffering from OCD might. I'm not obsessed with impressionism; I just inhabit it, or it inhabits me. Details rarely come up in polite conversation, and when they do, I find an exit. It's no actual deficit to lack the ability to remember specific numbers. I possess a ded' reckoning sense that generally gets me to any address without going to the fuss and bother of remembering the precise address. I might possess an internal magnetic compass with which I can match vaguely remembered felt senses instead of recalling exact addresses. Even The Muse has enjoyed the benefits of this sense when all she had was a precise address without any sense of how to arrive there.

I often only partly manage an Approximately, for Approximately is never very precise. A second-order Approximately, an Approximately of an Approximately, seems little different than any other run-of-the-mill one. I solve for what I cannot recall. I surround the problem to narrow down the possibles from the probably less likelies. The universe might be infinite, but nobody possesses the senses capable of perceiving the infinite’s presence. We also cannot perceive nothing, so we exist between these sorts of bookends, the infinite along one horizon and nothing along another. Between lies finite space, finite but not definite. Definite requires something I lack but for which I endlessly compensate.

I do not recall the dimensions of the boards with which we'll finish the porch deck, but I do remember that they'll be thinner than the boards we tore off the deck. The replacements will be thinner, so all other measurements should shift relative to that. How much should that shift be, precisely? Call Jesse, the measurement king, and check in with Joel; he'll be laying the deck, and chat with Pablo while you're at it, for he's pouring the wall that should support the outward edge of those deck boards. Oh, Joel figures he'll need to lay those board ends on something pressure-treated rather than on top of raw concrete. You guys figure out the exact measurements between you. Thanks!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz