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Vivian
Shipley Page 2
Blueprints
It’s all about scale, about
keeping perspective
invented in the 1480’s by
Filippo Brunelleschi,
the Florentine architect.
Unrolling blueprints
my father drew for this
house he built himself,
for the home I now must
sell, I remind myself
of the earthquake in China’s
Sichuan Province,
the cyclone in Myanmar. I
still need to fortify myself
with words of Michael
Kimmelman, chief art critic
for The New York Times, about
how to represent
three dimensions in two: Perspective
works
by having a vanishing
point, or single spot at
which all parallel lines
going from near to far
theoretically converge,
the effect of which creates
an illusion of
depth. Daddy is dead and I
have
had nothing tangible to keep
me connected to him
until I ferret out these
architectural plans. I can
picture his fingers rolling
and unrolling this paper,
but not touching my face or
stroking my cheek.
I do remember my father’s
hands, their grace,
long nails he’d clean and
cut with a pocket knife.
Surely, there were kisses, a
good old fashioned
bear hug at our Bluegrass
Airport good byes.
He never wrote me a letter,
sent one Valentine which
I still have. Insatiable as
I am for mementos of his love,
is it possible that these
technical drawings will help
me understand what kind of
man he was? Unlike me,
Daddy valued silence, never
was one to talk much
and it’s no surprise that in
blueprints for his house,
there are specifications for
pegs to cover the screws
in the hardwood for floors
and stairs that do not creak.
It is not what’s revealed
but structure he concealed,
buried in the interior that
will matter in the long run.
My father was a briar
hopper, a label guys from Ohio
used to taunt teenage
country boys from Kentucky and
Tennessee.Men told jokes
about yelling green side up
to the hillbillies they had
hired to lay sod because
corseted by poverty, my
father and his cousins
would work cheap, work long.
Now, I understand
why Daddy did not appreciate
my sense of humor
when I called out in the
elevator filled with old men
and women strapped into
wheelchairs at Uncle Paul’s
convalescent home, Going
down. Working for men
who did not know what it was
like to be wrong,
my father learned to wash
his face of need or an edge.
Unlike his bosses in Ohio,
will the house’s new owners
value the strength, the
integrity of top quality lumber
that can’t be seen or proved
except by tearing apart
the walls? No lines will web
the front porch’s planter
with bricks that layer down
into a basement that is
built of cement block
threaded in steel rods. A garage
and back porch with columns
of concrete to their bases
will never crack and pull
away from the house walls.
These blueprints, the lesson
plan for what Daddy tried
to teach me, show how
complex simple surfaces can be.
It’s not what is visible but
what is invisible like love,
like faith that creates
depth, a foundation that will last.
Did my father closet these
blueprints so we’d converge
to create an intersection
where I can jumpstart my heart?
© Copyright, 2012,
Vivian Shipley. |