They told me that they wanted the sheets thinner, the pulp finer, the edges more consistent. We stood, all three of us, looking over the sheets that I had made the week prior shaking our heads. None of us believed that I could do what I told them I had come here to do.
I called myself a paper maker, but this cardboard in front of us was not the work of an artist. It was the work of a sloppy, speedy amateur. And we all knew it. What a drag, standing there with no excuses.
Today, for whatever reason, it all clicked into place. The fibers were finer. There were no clumps. The edges on the sheets were crisp and I took the time to rub the extra pulp from the sides. In a few sheets I figured out the way to couch the sheets unto the felts (which were nice and clean because I’d washed them) and I felt very satisfied because all of the sheets were the same, yet each had it’s own quirk, it’s own window into my impatience. Paper Makers Tears they call them.
I took my time but eventually the trashcan that was full of pulp when I started was empty and I had a stack of sixty sheets of paper and I was sure that they were the best paper I’d ever made.
When I got them out of the press, while I picked their fragile bodies up to place them lovingly but efficiently in the stack drier, I could see and I could feel that I had learned something very important today. The sheets were so thin that they were warping rather severely in this last stage of the process but I didn’t care. I’ll make them thicker next time. Beat the pulp less long so that the fibers are longer. (The fibers were so short today that there is a chance that I have made the fanciest batch of handmade paper towels ever)
Learning.
I must discipline the muscle and the mind until perfection is in the memory of my finger tips. Same as banjo picking and drawing and writing and bike riding. Same as everything. You can learn how to do anything, you just have to watch what you’re doing and understand what you’re trying to do and learn to adjust your habits until they are the right habits and then you force your body to learn those habits like instinct. Then you’ve mastered some shit.
The Drews tell me that paper making has a short learning curve with a cap. In other words, it is something that you learn quickly but which has a finite limit to what there is to know.
That is only in the matter of technique of course. In the matter of sentiment, there is as much room in a sheet of paper for infinite values as any other medium of art.
It depends upon the fiber that you use.
If you want to make perfect paper, you have to find the perfect fibers.
I came home and cleaned the beautiful studio apartment where I’m staying with the well defended flower and for a few minutes while I washed the dishes with the sun pouring into the sink on my hands and my face, barefoot with pulp in my bike chain bracelet, my banjo sunning itself lazily in the living room after our afternoon delight i could swear that i was a happy man.
Fuck all that city noise and all those city people. Who needs them. I want a quiet place where I can live lazily and comfortable, where I can make things and play my banjo in the sun and walk to the all night coffee shop down the road with a joint in my hand, reviewing some facet of my life story for the thousandth time.
I’ll be taking the dirty dog into the city again to meet with dozens of veteran dissenters, swimming hazily in cigarette smoke while my brain chokes on the horrible gravity of war as seen in the trembling fingers of those destroyed few who fought it and lost something inside of themselves, now illuminated in philosophical babble we drift together and our independent ptsd’s snap and snarl at the ptsds of others.
We almost always make music during these affairs. My banjo and I have needed some time to cut loose with a few others. Our solo career is drawing towards the boring side.
WDF came home for a while and I was all weird and distant. We danced around each other in the clean kitchen for a while and neither of us knew why I couldn’t look her in the eyes. It’s just because I’m sick we both say to ourselves.
She doesn’t fuck around, that girl. She tells it how she sees it, which is almost never in my favor, she’s so good at seeing what I’m doing wrong. It works. It feels like it works. I don’t know. I’ve had dreams and fantasies before but I know how they all worked out in the end.
Maybe they just weren’t the right stories, or they were right for the time. There are so many different ways of looking at things it all just becomes a matter of spin really.
No word from the VA. When, dearest phone, will you ring with that one call that I need so desperately. I still have nothing, no money, no job, no plan but for that one ridiculous plan that I always have. Just me and my banjo and a love story and a bunch of handmade paper.
The sickest part is that I don’t give a damn. It’s been two years since I’ve had a penny to my name that I didn’t have to bum from a friend. I made it through Europe for six months and I left with 100 dollars in my pocket. I’m going to make it through just fine.
I always do.
Otis Mixon out.
The Paper Trail 