November 7, 2009
"things" that matter
It seems I have not written in a while. I don’t really know why I have “been away”. Perhaps it is the seemingly shortened day that has me out of sync. Everyday I try to do art. It is my Prozac and this blog, this journal, is essential to my effort. The big news here is fall. This season is energizing for me. I most always have too much ambition and too many ideas. The one thing that I have come to terms with, however and has given me more time and more realistic goals is the state of this house. I have lowered the bar tremendously over the years. The order and condition of the house does not dictate whether or not I am happy in it. Slowly, through the years I have put it in its rightful place. It is a place to come to at the end of the day, it is a place where the kitchen is always in a state of being and the lamp in the dining room is always on, it is a place where sometimes you must move books and newspapers aside to sit and it is where the buzz of the washing machine is a constant. It is where there is a nick (a gash really)on the keeping room wall where Elizabeth knocked against a painting and it fell onto the newly painted wall and it matches the burn mark on the hardwood floor where a three year old Matthew took the hot “poker” from the fireplace and dropped it suddenly when I caught him, and the back door is old and needs to, one day, be replaced., but in the meantime it will continue to led us to the outside and shield us from the cold, just as it has done for 25 years. This list of things to do and things to repair is lengthy and eternal, just as it has always been; the difference however, is that, now, it does not matter. What matters is the healthy food I feed my family from my “state of being “ kitchen and the clean sheets that hung in the wind to dry that we sleep peacefully on at night, and the music from Elizabeth’s guitar, and the sound of the closing door when the twins come home safely late at night. What matters is that there is a canvas with wet paint on my easel and something growing in my garden and the image of my husband slipping into a peaceful nap in his chair while watching the afternoon news. I have seen the cycle of life, I have watched my mother live and then die and I have become aware of the “things” that matter and t he physical state of this house does not.
I enjoy the aesthetics, I need the visual candy like the colors on the wall and the textures of its contents and cleanliness is essential, but I am good with the messy little “still lifes” of our lives piled here and there. I suppose you can say my house is a living narrative. A stranger could walk in and without any conversation, could tell you a lot about our family and I like that idea, the idea of creativity ongoing, there in every room. Being creative is a bit of a messy deal, but it is a “good mess”. Anyway, I end this crazy bit of thinking to begin dinner and to turn on my washing machine and to walk out to the garden of my wonderful old house.
till next time,
p.s.
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