“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:
…give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong…ANYTHING or ANYONE that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” Happy New Year!
Almost a decade ago I began this blog, meant to be a lifestyle blog, and ultimately an expression of what home has meant to me. But it has often been about the process of my life, about personal growth and healing. It turns out that “home” means something different to each of us, and has common threads that connect us…and that we all FEEL home within. We feel beauty and appreciate it differently – but we all feel it – physiologically and psychically. Comfort is a visual sense of beauty as much as it is physical. Our spirit recognizes an uncomfortable environment as dysfunction; something is off. It matters to our well being. Let’s explore this further in the days ahead, especially as the long dark winter sets in here where I live.
A craving for beauty has driven my life forward when nothing else could. Color excites me, greenery makes me feel alive. Music and birdsong open my heart and the floodgates of tears, both of delight and grief. I’ll welcome it all.
This morning I had seven young deer in my yard. The past year-and-a-half have brought physical struggles with Lyme disease for me, which the deer carry. I will learn to protect myself, but I will not run them out. These deer all looked like young adolescents. Deer hunting season ended a week ago and my guess is that the adults of the herd are gone now. I can’t imagine living on a planet where you are hunted.
I’m using this video to help illustrate some of the ideas I want to explore here with you. Namely, what are the elements that create a sanctuary home – and WHY is this an important objective? I think it’s actually an innate motivation for us all. Pay attention to how you feel watching this – how are you affected by the soft colors and the imperfect surfaces? Sarah Stanley is looking for her home to “lifts the spirits and stir the soul.” A comfortable home is never perfect. Welcome to The Fable:
“And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the grey day someone close to you could die. This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next…this is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life. There is no house like the house of belonging.” – David Whyte, The House of Belonging
“I’m good at being uncomfortable so I can’t stop changin’ all the time…but he’s no good at being uncomfortable, SO, he can’t stop stayin’ exactly the same…”
Oh, she’s brilliant:
“Curious, you’re lookin’ down your nose at me…Courteous to try and help, but let me set your mind at ease…”
There is something to be said for being comfortable with being uncomfortable. “I can’t help it, the road just rolls out BEHIND me”…hahahha! Your assistance is to no avail…and, by the way, I don’t want the bail…
Yesterday I snapped at my elderly father…again…about smoking in the house. I have asked what seems like dozens of times for him to smoke outdoors, weather permitting, as I work to get my home ready to market. As any one selling- or buying – a home can attest, the smell of cigarette smoke is a deterrent. Now, it is true that “weather permitting” has precluded the possibility of being outdoors here until the last week or so…even now the night and early morning temperatures are at or below freezing.
It is also true that “weather permitting” means something entirely different to HIM than to me…I hold an expectation that sitting in the warm sun in a sweater or bathrobe is a pleasant thing…our back deck hosts a comfortable table and chairs. The birds are everywhere enjoying feeders, houses, and baths. The landscape changes daily at this time of year.
Our front porch could be on the cover of a magazine…wicker club chairs pillowed to nap in…curtains billowing, lamps and racks of magazines and…dirty ashtrays…
This morning I came downstairs after nine, sun streaming in the back door to illuminate him sitting at the kitchen table en-plumed in a cloud. He saw me and immediately hid the cigarette under the table.
To say that my father is a scoundrel would be a gross understatement. At a younger, more virile age he was a monster, a sociopath of novel proportion. That story is for a different venue – but as a little example, we do have a standing joke in my family that he should reveal where he buried Hoffa before he dies…and it’s sorta funny! How he managed to escape prison, or being murdered is beyond me. He did disappear for several years, I imagine until the statute of limitation ran out on some crime he committed. But now he is a weak old man…
Don’t think me magnanimous or overly kind by taking him in. As there are, truly, two sides to every story, he also provided a wonderfully adventurous childhood rich in the support of art and music, and the best private education drug money could buy…
He is the same Dad who taught me to swim at the age of three, to be kind to animals, to confidently pilot a boat through ten foot waves. He saved my family when our forty-two foot cruiser sank in a sudden storm out in the middle of Lake Huron…He is the same Dad who trooped we five mischievous kids across the country, up and down the St. Lawrence Seaway, over to the Bahamas fishing, and instilled in us an awe of nature. He hired me in high school to paint a mural across the side of his construction office; and sat by my bed and listened intently when I grieved the loss of my best friend. He is the same parent, in partnership with my Mother, who encouraged me to paint and draw and never to be bigoted toward any other human, nor to measure myself below any other human.
He taught me that everything comes in dichotomous evidence…everything is perspective. Everything. Not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate that without him, I would not be who I am…
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation…for the nature of reality, it turns out, is a conversation. David Whyte has been my favorite poet for many years, since a friend gave me his newly published “The House of Belonging.” There are few lives lived in such genius, and we ought to take full advantage of their willingness to join with us…I’m sure he could have gotten a janitorial position with Will had he not been so brave. Every minute of this twenty minute talk is chock full of help for those of us busy shaping ourselves to fit this world.
So may we, in this life, TRUST to those elements we have yet to see or imagine…
A Painterly Home 