October 26, 2010
Tuesday

Before Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.
          — Zen saying

The Vermont Studio Center is the largest writers’ and artists’ residency center in the United States. It can accommodate 24 painters or mixed-media artists, 12 sculptors or other mixed-media artists,  2 printmakers, 2 photographers, and 16 writers at a time. Most residencies are for four weeks, but some are for longer periods, up to twelve weeks. The overall cost is nearly $4000 for a month-long stay. That covers a single room with a shared bath in a conventional house in the town of Johnson (most houses are 19th- or early 20th-century vintage), a studio (the artists’ spaces are allotted according to the needs of individuals who work large or small or with special materials and equipment, and the writers have an 8×12 room furnished appropriately), and all meals.

No one, I’m told, pays that whole $4000. I didn’t. But neither did I get a fully-funded, just-get-yourself-here fellowship. I got what most people who are accepted here get: a portion of the cost covered by a generous grant and a work-exchange assignment that pays $15 an hour for 10 hours a week of work that in the real world pays barely minimum wage.

My work assignment is in dinner set-up, four shifts a week for two and a half hours each shift. Working along with another resident, I come in at 5:15 and start to take down the chairs that have been lifted onto the tables after lunch for the daily floor sweeping. Then we tidy up the coffee center (the dining hall is open all the time for coffee and cold drinks) and make more coffee, put out pitchers of juice and cider, stack plates at the serving line, the salad bar, and the dessert counter, set out the bread board (five loaves freshly-baked every meal) and set up the salad bar. At 6:00 we begin serving — only one person needs to serve, so the other gets extra time to eat. Serving ends at about 6:15, and cleanup begins at 6:45. This does not include actually cleaning off the tables, since residents are supposed to convey their own stuff to the dish room. Everything gets put away, tables and counters are wiped, the coffee center is tidied again, and we are on our way.

I like this assignment. The time of day is right for me, and it gives a little structure to a day that could very easily evaporate into scattered periods of haphazard production. It’s work that engages primarily the body instead of the mind.

Tom Barrett, the Cybermonk, says, “If you are cleaning a countertop, feel the sponge in your hand. Feel the wetness. Feel the texture. Observe how the sponge moves in your hand from the sink to the counter. Sense your movements as you scrub. What do your eyes see? What do you hear as you work? Clean that countertop as if it were the most important thing you could do. Move with fluid motions. Waste no energy. Allow yourself the grace of economy of motion. Be grateful for the countertop, the sponge, the water, the soap. Be grateful for the hand, the arm, the whole body that can move a sponge. Be thankful for the floor you stand on and the roof that protects you. Without letting your mind wander too far, be grateful for all the circumstances that put you where you are at that moment with that sponge and that water and that countertop.”

This is a good practice for being mindful and present to one’s writing as well.

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent