Showing posts with label authentic home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authentic home. Show all posts
26.7.12
8.7.12
midsummer dream
barefoot on a summer night [edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros]
hop as light as bird from brier; and this ditty, after me, Sing, and dance it trippingly [oberon | wm. shakespeare]
17.4.12
our closest family
"We have been through everything together.
As if we were all wrapped up in one another's lives,
we have a relationship with others that is timeless
and extraordinarily profound. In this vision
the whole world becomes our closest family."
on the sea of memory
jonathan cott
jonathan cott
the remembrance of past lives from
the tibetan buddhist perspective,
a conversation with sogyal rinpoche
25.2.12
honorable mention
"Anyways, I'm starting a website called the burning house, http://the-burning-house.com/, that showcases photos of the things people would take with them if their house was burning. what you bring is a conflict between the practical, valuable and sentimental. in a way, its an interview condensed into a photo and a list of things. I love your taste and would be thrilled if you contributed a photo. let me know if your interested,
*so, i got this lovely email in may. i thought about it for a long, long time. (too long, but that is pretty par for the course; i have been called 'the girl who thinks too much' more than once.) when i was a kid, i'd lie in bed and prepare (see: royal tenebaums) for the moment when i had to grab my most important scrapbooks (my sister and i were- are?- big on scrapbooks), our cat, and- first and foremost- somehow make sure mom, dad and little sister were all out of the house... well, let me tell you: once you have babies, the scrapbooks and whatnot don't even register. it's all about getting the people out. stuff is just stuff.
anyway, i realized- a few days after i finally sent a photo to foster (not so long ago)- that there was really nothing practical in the picture (the photo at top is the photo in question; the other photo features sadie, who is actually quite practical). i guess that's the thing: the only stuff that matters would never be stuff, it would be people (and other creatures). still, just about everything in the picture means a small world to me: a lot of the stuff i care about in life is there (think morse code). it would take too long to try to explain. but they're all reminders of what's truly important. and the ring- that ring my best friend gave me (thirty years ago- how is that possible)- that ring means more than i ever figured anything could. because what it is is that you decide to stick to the path and move forward in life: you're young, it's not easy, you'll seriously disagree sometimes. but it's love.
and isn't love all? yes, i know i say that a lot. that, and this: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. next time you think about a burning house, remember what we all leave with: only love. the rest is icing (i love icing). the rest is history. the rest is your story.
p.s. thanks, foster; it was an excellent thing to think about, especially for 8+ months. simply by asking a question you gave me more than i believe i can offer in return. my hat's off to you, my gratitude is sincere.
19.10.10
A quick look back (there
there might be more later,
this is it for now): here's how
Sunday/Monday was spent.
Would like to send out sincere
thanks to the brilliantly elegant
Claudia Schwartz of Bell'occhio
for knowing the perfect table
covering (hemp; magnificent)
& sharing it for the event. Another
note of gratitude to very talented
Mercedes McAndrew for coming
by with her marvelous camera
(which will surely supply better
photos than mine) and great eye.
Many thanks to the Foothill
Family Service for hosting
and helping transform lives.
11.10.10
kindergarten instructions
use a green crayon to draw water.
or use blue.
either way, it works.
use silver, if the water is silver.
use the color you need.
don't let anyone talk you out of this.
you know what you see.
8.10.10
we have been through everything together
We have been through everything together.
As if we were all wrapped up in one another's lives,
we have a relationship with others that is timeless
and extraordinarily profound. In this vision
the whole world becomes our closest family.
jonathan cott
the remembrance of past lives from
the tibetan buddhist perspective,
a conversation with sogyal rinpoche
17.6.10
1967
after i stopped thinking about tumbleweeds, i
started trying to figure out how i could pull off
dressing in a way that pretty much looked last
century. at seven, i became certain that the road to
happiness would be growing up and being able to
look like someone who'd just stepped out of an
edwardian carriage (on an edwardian street in,
of course, an edwardian outfit). there's no doubt
it was not quite the usual. what little girl obsesses
about these things? (two years later, we moved
to kansas and it was all about poke bonnets and
pioneer dress.) 'tho i did get a pair of coveted go-go
boots. adored them. they were white. and shiny.
it was, after all, the sixties.
looking back, i'm sure i'd fallen in love with
constitution island and the warner's rooms
full of marvelous dusty and exceedingly tidy
books; and, of course, we were surrounded by
boys -- charming boys -- in uniforms that hadn't
much changed since those warner sister days.
(why shouldn't i have dressed to match?) at
west point, the air felt magic. being there, on
that sweet hudson river, seemed good fortune.
charming underpinnings, photo:
16.6.10
1964
when we lived in oklahoma
(fort sill) we used to make
tumbleweed snowmen. or
was it in southern california?
i think it was oklahoma, and
that in so. cal. -- when i was
older and wiser, in kindergarten
now and not just in preschool! --
i simply could not understand why
there weren't enough tumbleweeds
to put together a proper snowman.
the next year we up &
moved to new york, and snowmen
became an entirely different species.
photo: yamamoto masao
20.5.10
Substitution
About a week ago, I wrote -- offhandedly, actually -- something in response to a question. The question was asked by someone whom I respect, someone with an excellent work ethic and an eye that will take him far.
My response surprised me.
I don't usually admit it to myself anymore.
It was something that, years ago, I was quite certain of. But I lost the gist...somewhere, in the mill that life becomes, I lost the simple meaning of what I wanted. To pursue design as a sort of career (something, for me, that would fit well in the small crevices of personal time that were part of the geography of being a mother of four) seemed a more-than-acceptable substitute.
But a substitute is always that. A substitute.
"What kind of work do you do?"
The answer to his question is the one that I can't get out of my mind.
(P. S. I have loved design, and always will. Like Pippi, I am a thing-finder.)
19.5.10
lucky in life
there are days when you
come home to yourself &
nothing is more glorious
or simple. thank God for
those we love and those
we care for. how lucky is
life, just the living of it?
klee@sfmoma
20.3.10
farewell, centurion
Long before fixies were cool and known by every hipster in the universe our boys were working on them (stems and tri-tools, tubes, spokes and the occasional saddle spread across the cement pad of our northern California patio) in the backyard.
That patio, actually, was a sort of smorgasbord of bikes. It was crowded, for many years, with bikes and boys and happy laughter. It was a good time.
Last night, one of the finest and oldest and most treasured of their bikes was stolen. It had been loaned to a friend for the evening, and seemed to disappear by strange happenstance. Both boys (he who loaned and he who borrowed) are sad.
I woke up this morning with a terrific headache. We'd stayed up 'til 2 a.m., had gone back to the scene of the crime, driven 'round the safe neighborhood it was being ridden in looking for the bike that had been left unattended for a few short minutes and (summarily) vanished.
My morning headache (as it mounted it's offensive and started to take over my feeling-shredded stomach) was not just about last night. Trying to dig a little deeper (the aspirin wasn't working), I realized that it was about loss and attachment. It was about (and this from a person who was born with the undesirable ability to cry easily) trying not to break into a gulping, wrenched-face sob the way a four-year old might if you'd stolen their last piece of Easter candy. So I'm sitting at the end of the bed thinking: I'm a grown woman. It was an old bike. The most important thing to do is to teach (as we always try to, I hope) our son that these things happen, they are sort of sign posts (the road of life is twisty).
But it was a beautiful, beautiful bike. And I let go a wretched sob knowing that there was going to be no other way to relieve the mini-migraine that was marching in. (It's taken me quite a while to realize that sometimes you don't need to keep all the pain in one place, that you can't; it will spread, whatever you do. Let it go or it wraps you up, a Havishamian web.)
That silly bike.
Why was it beautiful? Because it was loved.
And cared for by several people who loved each other.
And stationed, sitting right beneath our kitchen window, on the above-mentioned patio (so much of a fixture that I forgot it was there, usually).
Now I realize it was eye candy. (Clearly, the thief realized that, too; it was, reportedly, the only bike taken from a big ol' pile of unattended bikes.)
Which, surprisingly, brings me back to authentic home.
After spending a decade plus working in How Things Look, it's crept into my consciousness that How Things Look means very little compared to How Things Are.
How Things Look is ephemeral, transitory, and (often) misleading.
How Things Are is much, much more what I care about now. (I suppose what I always cared about, but I got confused. Don't we, sometimes?)
And I realized that being attached to that bike (or, in reality, being attached to the way my children loved that bike) means that it's station -- under the kitchen window -- meant Here is Love.
Because it was out in the open, and we didn't fuss and bleat and force the beloved bike to hide in the (over-stuffed) garage so that our suburban household looked catalogue-ready (it doesn't; it hasn't in a long time, perhaps it never did).
And, thankfully, as I sat on the down comforter sobbing like a four-year old, in a quick five minutes I reached something akin to a state of comfort. It was gone, we'll figure out what to do next (file a police report? Note, on craigslist, that it's stolen? Whatever). And we'll recognize this sign post for what it is.
The Havishamian web unravels. (This is how life gets better.)
Celebrate what we've got when we've got it, and know what's good about life when it's sitting right there at the kitchen window.
Farewell, Centurion. We'll miss you. We loved you.
(There is nothing better than being loved.)
(will replace it with an image of the bike in
question as soon as we locate a good photo)
25.1.10
authentic home
Just thinking, more and more, during the new year, that a home -- a successful home -- is far from being the sum of it's accoutrements.The stage is good, the settings important: but, really, isn't love all?A home is commitment. A daily joy, a daily slog. It's the warmth of opening a door to be somewhere you want to be. It's the indefinable scent of love: you know when you are home. It is sweet.But not easy, home is not. Home must be built, and it is in this I am finding (this is the more and more part) that it is built not on furniture and fixtures but upon care and strong abiding.Chairs, I have found, are the easy part. The hard part is making room in the home, always, for love and care to sit.As busy as our lives can be, this is an often combustible mix. To have a perfect (looking) home [glance around] and to have a home where love can sit, relax, become soothed/become energized, have strength to go forth into the world...well.Home is so much more than a good snapshot of a perfect space.And this is part of the new direction. To find home, to find where we want to be: it is seeming, to me, that chairs (tiles, floors, fabrics, fixtures) have very (very) little to do with it.For years, I struggled (a former army brat) to give my children roots. That they would be from somewhere; this seemed so important! (The military is a noble place to be from, but we were there no longer.)As a treasured friend wrote the other day (and this I think I always knew but would not admit so readily, fearing that we must all be someone from somewhere): our roots are in our hearts.It is this that draws me in more and more now.Our roots are in our hearts.How do we make our home around that?To me, the question is one of pure delight and utmost fascination. This is authentic home. It is what matters to me most. To be a somebody from somewhere means less and less. Nothing, soon, I hope.To know where your true home is. That means everything, doesn't it?How to create a real home? One must begin by being honest (in a steadfast and ready way) to their heart. From here all things are done. The rest, as I've learned from another dear friend, manifests itself. Patience. Strength. Elbow grease. Breath. Love. And more patience.(Let it be noted that I will always be charmed by the art of an excellent chair.)Onward.
15.1.10
9.10.09
17.8.09
on the compensation of autumn
Given the fact that I've never actually lived in the city, I cannot figure out what makes me miss New York so much. Perhaps it is something I caught on the Hudson, a cool breeze that crept in through a window slightly ajar one happy winter in West Point. Perhaps it's more deeply rooted, genetic strands woven into a sharp young man who saved, near the turn of another century, his school lunch money for a far more delicious meal from the hot dog vendor (and kept a few important pennies in the doing). Anyhow. The longing is there.
Looking at these pictures, I realize it can be oddly gray. But that just makes the missing it, somehow, more intense. The city is beautiful even in grayness.
Winter there may not be easy.
But doesn't Autumn compensate?
2.8.09
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