Level: Classification Artists' Tools (20th century)

"There once was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house …"

Level amounts to an abstract concept in The Villa Vatta Schmaltz. Built in 1907, the old place has been settling unevenly into place ever since. When remodeling, we must remember that we're restoring relative to what the eye recognizes as Level. That value might differ considerably from what my old Cherrywood Level might propose. An unbalanced roofline was the chief reason we began refurbishing the front porch. When approaching from down the facing street, the house seemed stuck in a permanent shrug, losing at least six inches across the twenty-foot roof line. We'd thought then that the bricks we believed supported the roof were failing, but those bricks were never more than ornamental. They never supported anything. That roofline had been trying to support itself and ultimately began to fail. That it managed to support itself for who-knows-how-long stands as a testament to our good fortune. We might have had to clean up a catastrophic failure instead of merely making the roof line Level again.

As with most projects, this one began under false premises. Those bricks were not failing. When one discovers their undertaking's true premise, their effort's often already well underway. Some midcourse corrections become necessary as the original purpose turns worthless and superficial solutions become more convoluted. Entropy invades.  As with everything, details become much more important once one starts dealing with real shit rather than imagined. Our original naive notion that we might Level up the porch roof line gets complicated with all that must exist first to achieve that end. The result will need to be conditioned to what passes for Level on that end of the house, for the eye will pass the final judgment, and no eye relies upon a cherrywood Level to determine what's square.

All carpentry amounts to sleight-of-hand performance. Its result must convince even the most distracted eye that it’s accomplished its sole mission. It must appear correct while utterly failing every measure of absolute correctness. To insist upon any absolute damns the result, for no element ever exists in adequate isolation to allow this fantasy to succeed. One must cede certain dimensions and certain conventions in the interest of harmoniously fitting in. The background always rules. Every improvement occurs within a context, and that context is always king. Improving usually more amounts to radically fitting in than it ever does to redefining. The reformer carpenters generally fail. They might successfully make their joins, but their results don't ever quite measure up when using the pre-existing yardstick, the relative one honed over time, the only one worth using.

The Muse and I feel free to command whatever we imagine but remain experienced enough to know that our choices were always more limited. The brick we banished from the front of the place violated this first principle of everything in life. We were never free to simply attempt to accomplish anything; our choices were always gratefully limited to the spirit of the place we inhabit. One must not mount a midcentury modern front on an early-century face. The result seemed disgraceful, but only because it was. It stood as a testament to someone's arrogance, someone's insistence that they knew better when they apparently failed to understand that essential first principle. Freedom to choose has always been a limited right, perhaps more filled with obligation than anything else. Like our vaunted freedom of speech, we dare not mistake it for a license for loose talk. It matters both what we say and how we say it, and harmony demands a particular sensitivity lest one undermine the very concept of liberty with their ignorant naiveté.

We inherited a profound responsibility once we chose to Level our front porch roofline. We could estimate the magnitude of the work, but we would be destined from before the outset to run over budget. Real work cannot be realistically estimated because real work never ends up being very realistic. A series of fortunate accidents converge to create an essentially unbelievable saga, one that had anyone shared it beforehand, they would have been chased out as a liar. The result might yet delight those with shorter memories and deeper sensibilities. We didn't necessarily begin this refurbish with the idea of satisfying ourselves, for this sort of effort can never help but prove deeply dissatisfying on many levels. We did it for the roofline, for our beloved Villa Vatta Schmaltz, to help bring its backbone back into closer alignment. There once was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house, and through considerable effort, both became somewhat straighter, if not precisely Level.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz