Category: Home

I've been a bit under the weather since Sunday night.  Just a cold, but a nasty one….

Actually I don't know if I've been contracting one cold after another for the last couple of weeks, or if I've just been dancing with the same cold and not really giving myself time to recuperate.  So this week I am deliberately taking myself out of commission and only doing what I absolutely must, in the hopes that I will kick this thing once and for all. 

I am better than I was however, and that is all to the good.  Yesterday afternoon I finally finished putting photos up on the stairwell wall.  As I was winding down for one of my all too frequent breaks, the phone rang and I simply sat on the stairs to chat.  As I talked I would look up at the wall, at photos of family, known and unknown, and it occurred to me that I was sitting, in that very moment, in a very happy place.

The mantle project turned out to be not so daunting after all.  Perhaps success simply follows from finally having the furniture arranged in a way I like and use.  Perhaps success comes from just letting go, trusting my instincts, and not trying so hard.

I must thank Lisa over at Privilege for her comment on using paintings on her own mantle, as she prompted me to look at the small row of prints, paintings, and photographs that is in the guest room, awaiting placement.  There were two photos there, taken by George, that had not yet found a home.  They have now:

In front of them I placed a brass pharmacist's mortar and pestle and a tiny wind-up car, salvaged from a miscellaneous toy box.  I like the scale of the very tiny car with the oversized mortar and pestle, and the brass, black, and gray pick up the colors of the painting above, its frame, and the mantle itself.

Tricia's comment about balance also made me think, as this is an issue I struggle with to some extent.  I save photos of beautiful symmetrical arrangements even though it seems that I am more often attracted to balanced asymmetry.  I prefer odd numbers, I prefer to play with scale.   I would say I do like balance of a sort, and I don't reject symmetry outright, as evidenced by the symmetrical planter arrangements outside my garage,  but it is not my default mode.  I suppose part of my struggle with the mantle is that the room is already shaped by both the symmetry of the windows flanking the fireplace combined with the very real absence of any architectural detail in the room as it was built.  I altered that sense of symmetry by having the bookcase built along one wall, and although I couldn't articulate until now, I believe this was part of my struggle and also a part of my solution.  My first thought upon putting up the photos and objects on right side of the mantle was that I needed a single tall narrow object on the left to provide balance. It wasn't until after I stood back and looked at the room as a whole that I realized this mirrors the balance of the room (which I regretably cannot capture without a wider angle lens than I currently possess) with a single tall object on the right, and many smaller objects of varying heights on the left of the fireplace.

Of course all these thoughts and words may just be stuff an nonsense.  Perhaps what I really need is to just sit myself down and study some of the basic principles of design.  But I am happy with the final result and even happier to have found a solution using items that were already floating around the house. The simple truth is that I just don't have the patience required for hunting down perfection.

The mantle is bare again and it is a rather sad and lonely thing.

It was so festive over Advent and Christmas.  Exuberant even, and I love the pure excess of it, although in retrospect I might tone it down just a little bit next year.

But now I am back to ordinary time and my still bare mantle. 

It hasn't always been completely bare.  Various items have taken up temporary residence, but none have lasted long.  The painting stays. One would have to be very convincing to get me to move it.  But the rest of it seems to be beyond me.

I have no experience with mantles. There were two fireplaces in the house in Hyde Park, but neither was traditional, and one, a large stone fireplace between the kitchen and family room, had nothing that could even remotely be considered a mantle. The second fireplace was modern, and free standing, and had a shelf on four sides that was perfect for displaying art and small objects, but it was nothing like a mantle.  

I can collect pictures of mantles that inspire me, but translating the ideas to my own house, seems to be beyond my ken. I've tried going out looking for specific types of objects, shopping with a specific idea in mind, but that hasn't really worked for me either.  My insistence that everything has to be loved or have some particular meaning in and of itself before it is purchased has foiled me.  I am sure perfect things exist, but they elude me.  I am stymied.

I am hoping now that the room is more settled, now that I have furniture arranged in a way I like, the mantle project will become easier, my attentions more focused.  Perhaps not.  Nonetheless, let the mantle project begin.

Hello Readers.  Do you feel I have been neglecting you?  It is true, I have, and deliberately so.  It is not that I have nothing to say, because I have plenty to say.  It is not that I have lost interest; I have not.  Nor is it that I am too busy, because I could in fact make time for this blog. 

Instead I am unpacking.  I am cleaning closets.  I am releasing my New York self. I am ready to move forward, but first I must clear out the clutter and chains of past dreams, past stuff, that weighs me down.  My public life cannot stop, nor would I want it to, but my private time needs to focus on this physical and mental clearing out of the stuff that hampers rather than encourages growth and happiness. 

I will return.  But for now I am where I need to be.

Remember a few weeks ago, when I posted pictures of my newly-filled planters? Do you remember how thrilled I was at just having been able to make this small outside effort, as if by marking some territory, much like posting a flag, I was claiming that I was back in the world?  I remember.

It seems sometimes that I am still there, simply marking my territory.  It is true that much of the world, and our acknowledgement of our place in the world, hinges on maintaining a complex web of appearances. After we have no way of knowing someone's inner life, or the shape of other's private lives, nor should we.  In much the same way, no one really cares that I am managing to clean out my closets, and that decisions I could not make months ago, decisions about truly insignificant things, like what to keep and what to discard, are easier now.    Nor can I really share the immense sense of satisfaction that comes with clearing off a shelf, or a drawer, or the accomplishment that I feel when I discover that I don't need to hold on to things for someday, that they would benefit others more, and I simply let go.

But sometimes, lurking on the surface, there are hints of the depths within.  Some of my neighbors have beautifully laid out and maintained front yards, artfully decorated front porches. I don't think I have a gift for decor, although sometimes things go together well.  I'm not good at design for design's sake. Everything has to mean something to me or I see no point to it.  As  a result, far too often things are left undone.

This spring however my front porch offers a little more insight into the resident within than had previously been the case, at least for those who are inclined to notice. In the process of downsizing to her own smaller house, my mother shipped me these planters. I hadn't remembered them specifically, and once I might have claimed they were not to my taste, but now I adore their Texas stars, their graceful beauty, the fact that they were made by my paternal grandfather. These planters are part of my history and a reminder of how I became the person I am today.

Every morning, when I take the pots out of the planters and rotate them to insure that all the plants get adequate sun and water, I think of my grandfather.  I called him Papoo.  I think of the beautiful things he would make, of his big heart, of the way he would take time to  tell stories, and examine rocks, and bugs and plants with wee grandchildren, and tell us about the world.  I am grateful to have this reminder of him, this beloved grandfather, my step-grandfather actually, who was not so beloved by his step-sons, of whom my father was one.  But my father's animosity couldn't stop me from loving Pappoo all the more fiercely, and now the planters he made grace my entry, battered and dinged though they may be just as we all become battered dinged by a life well lived.

But the planters themselves are important only to me. It is the flowers, and the attention needed to maintain them, that signals invitation and well-being to friends and neighbors and even to oneself. I suppose that making an effort, not to be fancy, not to be something one is not, is also a way of reminding ourselves that we too are capable and organized and not overwhelmed.  Perhaps keeping up appearances is something like smiling.  Research seems to show that smiling, and having those smiles returned, actually seems to make people happier.  Paying attention to the front we present to the world shows not only the world, but inner self, that we are paying attention.

And yet, we are always a bit rough around the edges, although some of us prefer to put forth a more manicured front. Obviously I did not bother, here, to sweep the walk.  My front porch is no better groomed than the rest of my life. The photo was taken between thunderstorms, before my evening walk, and I saw no point in straightening what would only become wind-blown once again within an hour's time, if the forcast was too be trusted.   It was.  I was drenched.  The rain began when I was still 250 yards from my house, on the last leg of my loop. I can't run yet, but luckily I don't melt either.  And I found a welcoming place to stop and take off my sneakers and pad gently through the house.