Work Meditation

Friends have offered to help me set up,

and you know my first reaction is “Yes thanks!” But actually, I think it’s important to do this myself. Reassemble my studio as a meditation. What is important, and what can I do without. If I have bodies working for me with stuff to “organize” and put somewhere, I’ll project manage not listen to the inner voice about what I need, and what I can let go of. And then where my head feels it should be put.

Since I have given myself this week to reassemble my place in this new space, I may just have to do this alone. Or however long it really takes. On my own.

In my space.

New Room Setup

When one corner is set up…just that first reassemble of basic pieces without all the detritus of using it laying about, it’s so lovely and clean.

So spacious and inviting. It makes me want to give everything else away that cluttered it up. A good impulse I think, making me offload to the next degree. Simplify. Aerate.

So where did I put that phone charger? Damn, in that desktop drawer unit I don’t want to put on the desktop. And where do I put my pens if I don’t want a cluttered basket or jar of them on my desk? Ever the dance.

A Game Plan is Your Point of Departure

You know,

The first move into the new shaped space never fits the way 

you first planned it to work.

 Never.

Showing My Baby Part II

It’s cool! It’s working. 

I’ve created the “place” and ways to have privacy and also happily rub shoulders when they want. TJ keeps standing in front of the chimney and new upper cabinet, saying, “ This is just what it should look like. I keep forgetting it hasn’t always been here.” 

As we show the place to potential housemates,they smile as they walk through the house. Some have actually expressed that they can feel how I’m aware of their needs. (And our own, too actually, but they don’t know see that as much.) Places are “sweet,"  and special to them- like the little laundry room. And the upper deck that they can sit in even when it rains. “Oooh, can I do a veggie garden in pots up here?!” she asks. “Yes, it’s wonderfully sunny and veggies will love it up here.” I reply. 

They’re putting themselves into it.

The laundry room has an ironing board and folding area, and we hung a clothes rack right over the heating vent for "air drying." 

Prospect & Privacy

It’s intriguing to think I can use the qualities of light to offer refuge to others here as well as ourselves.

How much will different light, especially natural light, make for separate space? 

I like the notion that I can use it to create  a sense of separateness to anyone we  invite in be it a weekend, or a few months, or maybe a more permanent sharing.

Phototropic

I’m like a houseplant turning toward the light. 

Light alerts me, and brings me around. After 18 years in the Pacific Northwest, where darkness falls before 4 during the winter, it’s no wonder. I hunger for brightness in my eyes every three days throughout the year or so down here. It’s sunlight I crave, not the heat.

At night however it becomes a problem. I don’t know if it’s my very pale eyes, but since I’ve been eleven, I’ve had to shut out light in order to sleep. Never mind the chapter about the Nazgul Blackriders sniffing out Frodo I’d just read. It had to be scary dark for me to fall asleep.

So it just so happens that we have Skytubes in our family-room turned bedroom. The lenses that cover these 16" circles on our ceiling make the light sparkle. When it was a family room, it was wonderful! But now as our “lair,” uhm, no. 

So we’ve covered them with upturned large flower pots on the roof which happens to be flat. Now that we’ve moved the bed down to one end, and we’re giving TJ the other side of the bookshelf/divider for his studio, we uncovered the one immediately over his studio area behind our high headboard. 

My intention was to make dark fabric covers to Velcro on or off from the inside (We won’t have easy roof access when we rent out the master suite upstairs.), but I haven’t gotten to it yet. So we’ve been sleeping and letting the morning light intrude.

I’m surprised. 

When I don’t have to rise to an alarm clock, the growing light seeps gently around the 6-foot high bookshelf/headboard while I sleep. Like Vermeer paintings, it feels soft and humble. It has been lovely to wake up to, and it doesn’t intrude before I’m ready. That one Skytube can be quite bright when I get out of bed and tussle with the puppy to say good morning. 

Light gives us such a strong sense of place,…and also a “separation from.” Think of a pool of light over a table in an otherwise darkened room.My friends and I used to frequent the Cork & Board, a wine and cheese place near my University back when. We had to let our eyes adjust to the low light for the first few seconds after we stepped through the entry door, but could already hear quite a bit of chatter, laughter and wine glasses tinkling at the tables. The large wooden tables were big enough for game boards and food, and closely spaced. But once my friends and I were seated under the hanging lamp that spilled light over our own table, the joyous noise of people around us fell away, and felt ..away.

Or have you’ve ever stood inside thick adobe, rammed earth or strawbale walled homes? The light coming through the deep windows framed by the thick walls has a removed quality. Rather than streaming into a hot spot on the floor like most modern homes, it hits the deep broad sill  and frame and bounces softly, spraying indirect light into the room. The pathos plant in me likes the feeling.

What I believe I’m experiencing now in the mornings is also like that. Light beyond or behind adds to one’s sense of refuge, making it feel a protected place to sleep. Nice.

Sweet Side Rooms

TJ and I never planned on living together. Neither of us wanted this much house actually. As young widows, we both promised our kids we’d have separate places. Ahh, the silly promises we make. 

When we both moved to the Bay Area from Washington State, we couldn’t afford two houses.  After sitting down with our kids to explain the "revised arrangement," we naively bought the most square footage we could afford together. We figured everyone would have separation that way. Ha! Ya know, that’s a total fallacy. Privacy is determined by the layout and flow through rooms, not their size. This Victorian with its huge great room has over 4,500sf, and all the common rooms – like the living or dining room - feel like hallways to somewhere else. Victorian house circulation just flows that way. There are so many doorways in and out of each room that there’s no sense you can really sit with others to have a quiet conversation. People pass through the room’s activities on their way to another space. 

This place has made me realize that the best rooms are the intimate side rooms off of larger spaces: the small side office off the main living areas, sitting rooms and the little 8x8 extra rooms off the bedroom. They have sweet, sweet feelings. I’ve put a wonderful craft and sewing room into one. 

Years ago, when my daughter needed more space in her room, we moved her bed into the smaller sitting area, 7 x 12 ft. Besides making that sleeping area feel more private and intimate (She liked the feeling so much we also added hanging drapes around the bed a la Elizabethan times.) That opened the main room up for whatever else she wanted to do. 

More importantly perhaps, it allowed her space to keep morphing, and it became more hers when the bed wasn’t the main story the room told.