It is eight o’clock in the morning, and I have been up for two and a half hours. Pretty typical these days, and I find that I love the wee small hours. I am loving my sweet little life right now…quiet and serene…just me and my dogs and my imaginings. Upon waking I slip on jeans, boots (yes, we have ice and snow here now), a coat and head straight out the door with the dogs. The wind blows and the crystals sting me in the face as I head into the dark, flashlight in hand.
Last night I showed pictures of my new home-to-be to a friend. When she saw the beautiful park across the street with willow trees hanging over the river, I explained that this is where we will walk every day. She said, “Perhaps that’s the name of your new house, A Walk in the Park!”
Being a creature of contrast, I was immediately reminded that the house I am selling and leaving has never had a name. All of my life I have named my homes…until this one. I have lived here almost ten years. Then I remembered that I TRIED to name it for about the first year here, but nothing ever fit. Anything I thought of seemed contrived – because it was. This was never my home. This was the house my husband wanted, and where we housed any number of transitioning friends and relatives over the years, including foster children, and my Dad – but I have never been happy here. And yet there were many good times, of course; important always to remember that THESE are the good old days.
This was Curmudgeon Cottage…or maybe Castle. It was the old man’s hangout, recliners and big screen TV’s everywhere, cigar smoke, grease on the stove, yelling so you could be heard house. Yuk. My next home will be A Walk in the Park…I wish you the same blessing.
My home just sold. After twenty-some years living in a small mid-western town, I am moving back to a larger city. Never having locked my doors here, I search for a key to give the new owners at closing. The home I will move into has an alarm system. My sister tells me that’s a good thing, as a single woman moving to a strange place. I have two dogs who would feign protection, but truth is, their affections can be bought with cheap lunch meat. Commandos we are not.
Last night’s news told of the growing number of women buying firearms (now, THAT’S scary!) and taking classes with them. I won’t be among them. It isn’t that I begrudge them any sense of security this might provide, it’s just that I can’t believe in it. I suspect that, like violence, fear begets fear. You see, I am invested in overcoming the familial habit of being afraid to participate fully in life…My adorable mother lived most of her life afraid of just about everything, from spiders in the basement to the greedy salesman out to take advantage. At the young age of sixty-nine, the cancer of her fears overtook her.
“In my defenselessness my safety lies” has long been one of my favorite lessons from A Course In Miracles. It isn’t speaking of physical strength, but rather of a conscious approach to life. I have learned through personal failure that I scare myself far worse than anyone else ever could, and I have come to treasure my vulnerability.
For a period of time, I may live with the new security system as I get to know my neighborhood. I doubt I’ll keep it. My gut will direct me to right action. Grief was the tuition exacted for having learned to be comfortable in my own skin, to learn to trust my intuition. I am not about to relinquish my hard earned security to the world.
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
Since divorcing two years ago now, I have dated one gentleman who liked to correct me about my “magical thinking.” It prompted me to evaluate what that meant, and whether or not it was a bad habit to be eradicated – like smoking, or speaking poor English. I have now decided: I am a magical thinker.
It occurs to me that magical thinking allows for anything to be possible. It affirms that reality is not limited by the perception of the five senses, but broadly utilizes the imagination to define it’s environment. Magical thinking is intuitive. I am intuitive.
Most of my life people have commented that I was living a charmed life; I never thought about it consciously, and I didn’t know what they meant. They recognized that something quite undefinable was happening: that I would think of something, and it would come to be. I can’t explain that. But I have also met many (mostly men!) who thought of me as unreasonable – because you can’t talk me out of my fantastical magical thinking. It is my personal experience of reality.
Friends would call asking for things they needed or wanted, and puzzled, I would wonder why they were asking ME for these things…”Well”, they would say, “you manifest anything you think of. So manifest me two wing back chairs this weekend, would you, please?” And I would shake my head as if they were looney, and go off to brunch at a co-workers house. Pulling in the driveway, my co-worker and his partner would be dragging two lovely wing back chairs out to the curb in hopes someone would pick them up…and instead load them into the back of my car. An hour or so later I was pulling into the friend’s drive who had called that morning, with her chair delivery. This kind of thing happens regularly. Magical, I guess. Or is it?
I can’t help but wonder if, in fact, this isn’t just NATURAL thinking. It never occurred to me that things didn’t work this way all the time for everyone…until much later in life. If I try to REASON this, it goes away. So, I no longer try to reason. Maybe reason works for some people, maybe some of us are wired differently. Beats me! I’m willing to deliver the chairs…I am an unreasonable, intuitive, magical thinker.
Now just a few months shy of coming full circle in my year at home, I whittle away at the enormous task of putting my house right after the Smoking Sociopaths moved out and the potential sales have all but evaporated…
Thank You Nancy Allen for sending me the Apartment Therapy article about ridding the house of cigarette smell…daunting, but I have incorporated most of these helpful methods, and it is abating…next week our weather is due to be, once again, unseasonably cool. I will use the suggestion of running the furnace with it’s new filter and all of the windows open. I have had all the carpets replaced or cleaned, the duct work cleaned, have thoroughly scrubbed down all of the ceilings and walls with vinegar, and have now repainted…since the above mentioned moved out just three weeks ago. It has been a lot like work.
Let me just mention that as the profit from the house sale will be my payment for this labor, I am sure to be losing substantially…lucky for me, I LOVE THIS WORK!!! Well…I love the painting and I love the sheer joy of arranging and putting together interior environments…I feel like I am gluing together one big delightful collage to live within…with purpose – the purpose of supporting and encouraging the creative life of a budding artist- in this case, me…(Insert big smile here.)
And as Mies van der Rohe said, “God is in the details…” Tell ’em, Mrs. Blandings…
I “borrowed” this video from one of my very favorite blogs, Content In A Cottage…all’s fair in love and art…
Well…it has been just over a month since last I wrote. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever write again…not for lack of material, but for a hurricane of change and transformation. More health issues; huge, huge life changes…it took two weeks to get my father and brother moved and settled into their new place, and the last two weeks putting my house – up for sale – back into any semblance of sanity suitable for showing…
It has been physically challenging and emotionally exhausting, but necessary. Yesterday I drove out to visit my Dad and drop off a few things yet left behind. The few times I have visited since their move have left me shaking and grief-stricken, making the 57 mile drive home difficult. So, as I approached the highway turnoff near his house, I said a prayer for myself, asking for a ray of hope, a sign, that somehow this was all going to work out alright.
When I left there two hours later, I pulled out onto the highway, and I was behind an SUV with a specialty plate that read: RAYHOPE.
It has been almost a month since last I posted here. Phew! What a whirlwind my waking life; my sleeping life, when it happens, a cacophony of otherworldly realms…
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says that going sane feels like going insane at first…she’s been right about so many things…I’m counting on her to be right about this!
This past weekend I stayed with my friend Marion, whose husband, Dick, passed away just a month ago. (See post of April 21st.) We had a great time, really. It was the Heritage Hill Home Tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Marion knew it would delight me, so she went out and purchased tickets right after we talked that morning. I explained that I had so much work to do here getting the house ready to market, but that my brother was threatening me again. She insisted I get in my car immediately and drive down to see her. (I did nickname her Miss Bossy Pants some time ago… she was actually my boss at that time…but that’s a different story!)
I had just pulled out of my neighborhood onto the main road when two Sandhill cranes flew low right over the hood of my car…and I was off on an adventure, knowing that it was exactly the right thing at the right time!
Ted Andrews, in his Dictionary of Birds, says that when Sandhill cranes appear in your life (and they seem to be following me lately) there is something to be watchful of and attentive to…they are noble guardians reminding us that it is time to change and move the guard! There is hidden protection around us, or we may need to be protective of someone weaker than we are. I only put up with my brother at this time because my dying father wants him around…but I am very aware that my father’s well being is at stake, and that he must be moved from my home into a safe environment.
The crane’s dual purpose is to remind us to celebrate life; that when we are SAFE it is time to DANCE! They serve as reminders to celebrate that which is OURS…and to join in the dance of life.
Lest you intellectualize that animals, and especially birds, are not spiritual messengers, let me remind you that these were not turkeys…
So, off I go on the tour of grand old homes with my fabulous friend…and we planted flowers and ate lots of fresh veggies and watched a baseball movie (Trouble With the Curve – it was terrific) and old Carol Burnett reruns on DVD and laughed until we had to cross our legs! Talk about healing…
And this morning I woke myself crying. I had dreamed that I came home only to find strange people in my house…it wasn’t my house after all…so I loitered outside trying to decide what to do, where to go…and a woman came out of the door and insisted that I leave or she would call the police…and I began crying, and woke up sobbing in Marion’s guest bed…
And then I remembered this as a recurring theme in my dream life since childhood…in grade school I would dream that I came home from school only to discover a strange woman in place of my Mother…and back out the door to check the address…yes…over to the neighbor kids…all strangers.
Where was I? I had followed the familiar route…where were my family, my friends? If this is not my street, my home, where am I? Where do I go? No one here knows me, no one can help…I am a stranger…all alone…
And then I got it, the gift…this is not my home. It never has been, it never will be…I AM my home. That Kingdom lives within. And the gift is also renewed curiosity in what HOME means. It will serve as impetus for a new exploration…
Last week a friend sang this song to me, and I have embodied it…well, the good parts…I’m not interested in painting the daytime black, but…suffice it to say, “I’ve got everything I need, I’m an artist…I don’t look back…
A Painterly Home 