living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
In the first grade at Nankin Mills elementary my teacher assigned us pen pals from a school in England. Freckled and red-headed, I remember staring at Penny’s photo for hours thinking she might be a fairy. We would not continue our epistolary exchange without a teachers prodding, but throughout all these years I have imagined Penny, my real imaginary friend…
And so when I became aware of British textile designer Penny Morrison, and realized we are about the same age, well…I conjured up all sorts of imagined trips back and forth, even touring India together. She is warm, generous and funny, and we are the best friends you could possibly imagine! I do so love our visits…
“To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.” – Phyllis Theroux
Fellow anglophile Katie Rosenfeld takes us on a tour of her renovated Tudor in the suburbs of Boston. We don’t have any true Tudor homes in the U.S. of course; technically they are Tudor Revival. Early in my married life in the northern suburbs of Detroit we owned a Tudor built in 1926 (which I maintain was the best decade of home construction in this country.) How often have I rued the day I sold that…it was one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever lived in.
More slowly than Katie, I took to a bit of renovation. It began with ripping out carpet and having the old white oak floors refinished. And then I painted the dark woodwork. I would do that again today. Design rules are made to be broken, but not my first two: unless you’re living in a castle, paint the woodwork. Nothing brightens and updates a space more quickly. My second design rule, as my niece will attest, is this: no overhead lighting! (My niece says I’m like Mommy Dearest about this.) Yes, okay, sometimes it’s necessary. I do have ceiling fixtures (because already existing here) but I provide plenty of lamp lighting as alternative.
At the risk of losing you all here, let me take a moment to illustrate my obsession with the proper use of English. You might as well get used to it. If the lamp is hard wired in to the ceiling or wall it is a FIXTURE. LIGHT is the energy that is PROVIDED. I’m yelling now: IT IS NOT – I REPEAT NOT! A F&$!#**}! LIGHT!!!! Oh my gawd. LIGHT is what comes OUT of a LAMP or FIXTURE. Phew….moving on…breathe, Susan…
And as long as we’re talking obsession, the wallpaper in her dining room makes the room. It is gorgeous. Please use wallpaper in your home whenever and wherever budget allows. Personally most of it has become unaffordable to me at this time – which is why years ago I began to cut stencils out and paint pattern on walls. That is both easy to do and completely affordable to anyone.
The other easiest way to bring your house up to date and looking fresh is to mix the match. Don’t let things get too matchy-matchy. Katie explains this well here with the example of her dining room lamps. This is one of those British design elements that is not obvious, but effective. If you’re wondering why the British can overfill a space with a riot of colors and styles and you want to plop down with a book and never leave, this is the why and how.
Then she does just the opposite in her primary bedroom. Here she chooses exactly the right word: camouflage. Uneven or wonky doors, walls, and windows can be blended to a calm and pleasing end by blanketing every possible surface in the same color or pattern. The bedroom is the best place for this effect as it subconsciously relaxes the nervous system.
There are dozens of other design elements I see here, but that’s enough for now. Just paint the woodwork already and we’ll go from there. Thank you, Katie Rosenfeld.
The longer I live the more I realize that we each have an important story to share. We are far more human collectively. Let me tell you one of many personal healing stories: unable to walk with sciatica, I called the chiropractor whose Birmingham office was across from the salon. He agreed to fit me into his schedule before work at 7 a.m. Little did I know sitting in his waiting room that morning would change my life forever. A magazine lay on the table there: The Sun, a small literary magazine published in North Carolina. I have now subscribed for decades, but that 1988 issue had an interview with Helen Palmer about her new book, The Enneagram.
Another article featured feminist poet Deena Metzger. When she lost her breast to cancer she had the Tree of Life tattooed across her chest. These two women would influence the rest of my life. Meanwhile, so would the brief treatment with Dr. Radke, my first chiropractic visit ever. He asked me to sit on the table and he faced me at eye level: “Tell me about the nightmare you had this morning.” I’d never met the man; how the hell did he know I’d woken from a nightmare only minutes ago?!
A traveling circus had come to town, but during the night a fire had broken out. All of the animals had escaped and were wandering the city streets and alleys. Unaware of any danger, I walked the alleyway still sleepy and soon realized that a polar bear was stalking me. Faced with a dead end, I was terrified as it caught up to me, reared back it’s giant head and raged in protest at this unfamiliar territory. And I woke, crippled in pain.
Dr. Radke never did adjust me. Instead he guided me through a meditation where I stood my ground with the bear and allowed it close enough to smell me. I wrapped my arms around the bear and buried my face in it’s neck, smelling it back. The majesty of the beast overrode my fear. “Repeat this visualization at bed time, and if you still have pain in the morning I will adjust you.” I would never experience another day of sciatica in my life.
Like Omi here, I am still in this journey of allowing myself to be soft. Listen here as she describes her healing and let the majesty of our humanity override your fear:
“When I came to understand that there are mythic patterns in all our lives, I knew that all of us – often unbeknownst to ourselves – are engaged in a drama of souls we were told was reserved for gods, heroes, and saints.” – Deena Metzger, Miracle at Canyon de Chelly
“You do not have to be good…you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.” Oh yes, how I’ve often thought that two of the hardest words to understand in the English language are just and only.
Meanwhile, here is one brilliant poet honoring and personalizing the work of another brilliant poet, both national treasures to be sure. I’d hate to think how I would have gotten through some of the hardest times of my life without these two. Here is a little church for today:
“…on the page you’re exploring a part of yourself that you wouldn’t really let out, and things start happening on the page which you can never get to in your logical brain.” You are my witness, here, but I still write “morning pages.” Morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling as recommended by Julia Cameron is her series The Artist’s Way. It is no exaggeration that this practice has saved my life. More than once.
There are websites dedicated to this practice. Two I use are Write Honey (free) and 750 Words (nominal fee) but Cameron suggests we write longhand in a notebook if possible. I use them all. I purchase composition books in bulk and a box of inexpensive pens that I like, and I’m set, internet service or not. Small price to pay for sanity. I paint sometimes, less consistently than I care to admit. If I run out of tubes of artists colors I use leftover house paint. If I run out of canvas I use cardboard or walls. Don’t stand still around me too long lest I decorate you.
Over the decades I’ve had to learn to let go of the finished outcome. It truly is the process that does the healing. “And then you have a conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know about your own anxiety,” she reports. So find yourself old magazines to tear apart and glue together differently, bake, sew, knit, SING, dance, rhyme your sentences for a day, follow a bird through the woods, skip rocks on water…laugh.
“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” my Mother said. It’s never wrong coming from your true heart. Trust yourself.
This week I want to continue this theme of communication – and the library. Few of us have a room we can dedicate as a library, but some of us have a den, or perhaps a bookshelf. Let’s all incorporate the sense of a library into our interior spaces as best we can. Again, if it can be done on a minuscule budget, I will find a way. There is a direct correlation between books and language, of course. The more you read the better you know yourself, and the better you will communicate. Who can separate the value of that process out from their mental health? Not me.
A healthy mind builds a trusted imagination – an intuitive imagination. I’ve talked about this in some of my videos teaching the tarot and psychic development through my other blog and YouTube channel, Crow Quill Tarot. I cannot separate any of these elements out of my life; each informs and enriches the other.
Decades ago a therapist challenged me to improve my communication skills. She told me “your ability to communicate directly affects the quality of your life.” I told her she had lived in California too long. And have since spent forty-odd years or so trying to disprove her statement – unsuccessfully, I might add.
Designer Thomas O’Brien has built his dream home AS a library. I’ve written about this video before, having been inspired by the garden, and specifically the willow trees (see blog post of December 3rd, 2018,) but I can’t address the concept of library without referring to it. He seems to have mastered this idea of a completely integrated work and home life.
“Adding the strength and power of the natural world to what we play with…” Barry Dixon describes. Where does inspiration come from? Here, it comes from the woods, the flora of the region, the solar system, his own cutting garden, men who work all night in their libraries and women who have influenced horticulture and design. Notice how these elements complement each other beautifully. The children’s books live on the lower shelves within their reach. Every attention to detail has been thoughtfully considered. Listen to Barry speak so eloquently and precisely. We will continue to discuss how language impacts our lives profoundly, how essential it is to develop a vocabulary that can support your personal expression, and we will also look at how changing your relationship to language improves the quality of your life. I could listen to him speak all day.
Here is exemplary evidence of why developing your imagination and intuition is important. This is a great example of why good design matters, and more specifically design with intention: because WE LIVE HERE.
Several posts ago now I promised you help with decluttering. I’m reneging…I cannot get interested in this topic here. Buuuuhhh-lah. So here is a weekend bonus: Caroline Winkler has got us covered. There are a few tips here, and I will also offer this thought: don’t think about organization. In my experience this takes care of itself when you declutter. Now I happen to love clutter. CONTAINED clutter. This is how you visually calm your interior: you contain the clutter in, you know, containers. Trays are my friend; never too many trays…and baskets, and when all else fails, decorative boxes. Hooks everywhere. Wrangle all the tiny little detritus of life into some semblance of order by categorizing it, like with like.
Here is Caroline Winkler to let you know what you’re doing wrong…hahhaaaaaaaa….and yes, I love my Magic Eraser. It’s probably full of chemicals and not environmentally friendly – but it’s MENTALLY friendly. You will have to pry the Magic Eraser out of my cold, dead hands.
the chairs she named after her Grandmother’s sisters. We wish they could talk, too, Monique. In this exuberant home we see fearless use of color. Again, a theme I call “follow your heart” decorating. Buy what you love – unapologetically. Your home IS your altar, the proclamation of your tenacity and of true faith – in life. Was it Picasso who said “artists live out loud?” Live like you mean it.
I was as glad for a new year as anyone. But I experienced a weird phenomenon: there was a deep sadness, too. I felt like I was leaving someone behind. My younger brother died unexpectedly in his sleep eight months ago. Somehow acknowledging the passing of the year felt as though I was abandoning him. I had to say goodbye all over again. Yet I had not thought of that or felt that way on the new year following either of my parents deaths; had not felt like I was leaving them…what was that? I dreamt of Ward on New Years eve, we said goodbye with love and affection, and some type of awareness that this was it for us. I don’t feel his spirit around me anymore.
I have come to appreciate the gift of grief, not to recoil from it. I appreciate my anger. Surely any healing requires acceptance of the full range of our emotion. Gratitude waits on the other side of allowing for it all. I’m so grateful he was my brother.
What has this got to do with decoration? If you haven’t gleaned a theme in this blog yet, it is the fact that I do not know how to separate interior design from interior experience…it’s all the same for me, as within, so without…I FEEL colors. I feel everything. I absolutely GIVE UP trying not to. Because at nearly 70 years of age, I utterly and completely give up trying to be anything other than who I am.
AND – here’s the thing: I just want to grow up. I want to mature spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I want to heal this year, finally, from a lifetime in survival mode. From multi-generational abuse and mental illness, and from living defensively. I’m finally willing to be vulnerable. And the fact is, probably much like you, I have been on a lifelong search for truth, for the cure for this human condition, for “enlightenment” (deliver me.) I want nothing to do with that quest any longer. It holds no value. We both know it’s an INTERIOR issue.
Instead I will seek joy. In every little nook and cranny. I will sing at the top of my lungs off key! I will paint anything that stands still long enough – any color I feel. I might even name my furniture. I want to be warm and cozy and fat and sassy (so far, so good…) I will not abide beige.
My sweet brother never had a chance at any quality of life or happiness. But that’s a story for another time and place. Meanwhile I will not back down from living my life as an artist, in full living color.
Okay you – yes, you. Here’s a bandwagon I can jump on! Wendy Knox is on a campaign to re-brand aging. She’s turning muck into magic. Let’s support her any way we can. For starters, let’s subscribe to her YouTube channel and like her videos and let her know we are listening:
A Painterly Home 