Roads to Joy

I could, I suppose, have used any number of project images to illustrate the delight of a project that’s been resolved, completed, finished, and the different sort of joy there is in a project that’s ongoing. But building images seem to have the most resonant capacity for metaphor.

Our awkward gate, referred to in an earlier entry on this blog, has been extended, wire-brushed and repainted, and re-hung in a more felicitous position. Access along the straight lane is so much easier, either in or out. The resolution of this project, long-evisaged since St Patrick’s Day of 2023 when. we moved in, is finally at hand. All that remains is to cement in a metal tube into the ground to receive the drop bolt and fasten the gate securely shut. And then, visiting grand-dogs will be kept safely sequestered in the garden, without any chance of escape onto the main road down which great timber lorries do thunder into the approach to our village. Peace of mind.

Another sort of joy, however, is experiencing at first hand the ongoing project that we have believed in since we first considered it. But this project was considerably more extensive, involving as in the image above, a veritable forest of acrow supports to hold the second floor joists and the new RSJs implanted in position, before the internal supporting wall could be removed. Today the second pillar is being bricked into place, and after that cement has gone off, and the pillar is robust and sound, the temporary supports will come out and the space will be open as we had hoped. There really is a kind of frisson of excitement as the building work continues.

So it goes with other, somewhat less tangible projects, of course. They have a beginning, an emerging concept maybe, and then the dedicated work involved in moving them along, until, ah ha! The resolution and the attendant bliss. In the writing sphere, I’ve been delighted, over this past week, to have received appreciative comments on my social history of a local philanthropic service organisation, the Allendale Lions Club, as presented in a hard copy, softcover format. That was a long project, which in the end had to be truncated to fit the available material, but which still satisfies with its scope. 

And there are other, ongoing writing projects to keep me occupied, which are no less exciting. I’m learning that the fruition of these projects can bring a certain joy regardless of the size of their eventual audience. Nobody but us two residents, here in our little home, and perhaps our visitors, will have experienced our own joy with the completion of the building works. And very few folks will know about, or care, how a group of villagers got together to try to make life better where they lived, during the golden years of 2003-2014. Except for those of us who were there. We care, and that’s enough of a satisfaction.

I’m sure that these sorts of restricted ambitions for any given project make for a valuable lesson. But that doesn’t stop me from yearning for something more, because I think creativity yearns for an audience. I can try to appreciate the ascetic sensibility of an earnest artist like New York City photographer Saul Leiter, or even the driven sense of a poet like Emily Dickinson, operating in a kind of social and communicative vacuum. No doubt there are many such figures whose art, held to such an exalted ideal, has only posthumously become heralded. 

Maybe I feel altogether more modest a creative, much less personally convinced in my own conscientious endeavour as the exalted sensibility of pure art for art’s sake. What I do know, even at my advanced age, is that I respond fulsomely to a kind audience, whether that audience is one, a handful, a dozen, a score, a gross, or more. Maybe it’s nicer to enjoy a larger audience (I may never know!), but even one person’s appreciation can brighten my creative day.

So it’s always, always a joy to share in projects as they develop, and as they come to fruition.