Have you ever thought about the different life you’d be living if you’d made one decision versus another? One path would take you down one life road and but another would perhaps lead you somewthere else. After you made your decision, would you still end up where you are? I think about this all the time and wonder about all the big (and potentially stupid) choices I made when I was young.
There was a poster hanging in the hallway at the art college I was attending for a call for artists/ artisans to come to New York City to apprentice as a mason/ sculptor on one of the cathedrals there in the city. (This was 1985, so perhaps one of my readers might remember which one was undergoing renovation at the time.) Under the headline, “Artisans Wanted!” there was a photo of the Capitoline Wolf against a red background:
The Capitoline Wolf, the symbol of Rome, the Eternal City. Twins Romulus and Remus, were later added to the piece. The 30” tall sculpture has been radiocarbon-dated to AD1050- 1150.
When no one was looking, I quickly removed the poster and absconded with it. Later, I thumb-tacked it to a wall in my room (I was living with my mother and stepdad at the time) and contemplated it for about 2 weeks. I thought: How cool would it be to learn how to sculpt in stone from real Italian masons and stone sculptors? The poster’s aesthetics completely sold me on the possibility that I could join the expert artists who were renovating a large building and learn to work as a stone sculptor and make gargoyles and such. How romantic! I was in!
Finally, I knew what I’d do! I would live in my van while I apprenticed with the stone masons in NYC! With very little in the bank, I figured it would be the cheapest way to go until I earned enough of a paycheck to rent an apartment. So I started packing my things into a suitcase. Living in NYC was never a conscious goal of mine, but the cathedral was there, the opportunity was calling, so I was willing to go and see what would come of it.
My mother’s head pops into view in the doorway and suddenly I’m jolted out of my dreaming of my future sculptor self and back into the present moment. She’s heard me bumping around and became curious about what I was doing, so I pointed at the poster and told her what my plans were. And so began a serious discussion about what can happen to an 18 year old girl living in a van in NYC… I mean, where do you even park your vehicle so it doesn’t end up on concrete blocks? Where does one shower? Logistics are important for safety. It didn’t once cross my mind that that I might be the only girl to show up on such a site or what that might mean. I didn’t consider what could happen. I only wanted to learn to sculpt like Bernini.
Logic and reason prevailed and so I didn’t go. Bummer. It’s interesting to think though what alternate universe I might be living in had I actually gone ahead with it… It makes me wonder about all the other seemingly simple but radical decisions I’ve made which have completely altered my life’s trajectory.
Does this make you wonder about your own?
If you could run away for just one day and do anything you wanted, anything at all, what would it be?
