Wednesday, May 17, 2006

May 17 - Heavy as Lead, Light as a Kite

After a good walk in the sun (our summer weather is back) I went out to run errands. First I went to the biggest stained glass supply store in town. I wanted to get a certain type of solder and a certain type of lead for the window I'm making. What I found out is that having been educated in stained glass in Europe, I'm in an strange and unfamiliar land here. I'm like a classically-trained Japanese sushi chef who wants to buy ahi tuna and short-grained sticky rice, but the stores only carry are walleye and brown wild rice.

Of course the details will mean nothing to most people. Suffice to say that neither of the products I wanted were there, so I asked the desk clerk how I could get them and she didn't know so she got their manager. He started to lecture me about how "Europeans do "architectural" glass and Americans don't", whatever that means. And "nobody carries THOSE (meaning my) products" because nobody does it that way. Blah blah blah-dee-dah. He had a really condescending air like "those Europeans are all monkeys trying to solder with a chewed branch". So I got their crappy lead and dropped hope for the solder and now I regret it. Which continent has 1000-year-old windows still standing, eh buddy?

After that I made another stained-glass-related stop in Minneapolis and this cheered me considerably. Last week I dropped a resume at the most "classical" stained glass studio in the Cities, which also seems to be the biggest and highest reputed in the twin cities. They do really European-style cathedral windows and such. For my own window designs this isn't really my style, but it could be fun to do really high-technique classical stuff for a while.

So I get there and the foreman, Larry comes out to talk to me. Turns out that he wants me to work for them as a glass painter - the only catch is that there is no position open at the moment. He takes me into the painting room and introduces me to their two painters who are working at their light tables on a series of apostles heads. Turns out they are the only two glass painters he knows of in the whole Twin Cities. He's visibly excited that he's discovered another one - me - and basically promises me that he will hire me as soon as he can open a position. In a total reversal of the earlier store scenario, very few people in the US can paint glass or even know what classical glass painting is. He is dying for someone with the sort of European-trained skills that I have. So, my unusual training work both ways it turns out. At least it's a pretty good score: a 1-for-1 record on my resume deliveries.

After that I drove home in a good mood. It would be nice to have a regular 9-5 job with other people after all these years of trying to scrape stuff together on my own.

Near home I drove along the road by the St. Croix Beach. When I neared the beach a kite-surf kite rose up right over me into the blue sky, such a surprise. I got out and watched the man skimming over the very windy choppy surface of the river with an enormous plume of white spray behind him in the sun. I watched for awhile as he did huge jumps and spins. He was good, quite good, and went fast. But it did remind me of San Diego, and made me think of the days there. Made me think of Beaute Vulgaire and La Ruda loud on the car radio. Made me think of my bare feet on the sandy front step of our house, made me think of surfboards and sequoias, cold beers and quesadillas, bad braunschweiger sandwiches, oatmeal and many things.

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