Life

Words falter, emotions recoil, like dried flowers memories gather in the eye of the heart, and they’d stay there and nurture you and heal you, until its petals start to fall off and drift off and go their own ways under the winds of sorrow… as hours and days take us farther away from her, just to bring us together again and again… 

It is still too recent too painful too suddenly to share words and let my feelings be stamped forever on these pages.  The heart is too aggrieved too, and weak and there are nights when frigid northern winds cried out loud and howl on window sills; on my brain, and the heart can’t mend itself nor sing nor rest.  It is too unexpectedly too swiftly—death always is, so I won’t talk about her, or him or me no more than what I already have. 

The day after we got back the garden surprised our souls under a white spell.  An ashen, icy world welcomed my pained heart home, and it tucked it away under the frozen landscape, under leafless trees, and snowy corners and upon every part of the lonely garden on the old house where memories of her lay buried too.  My soul swooned slowly as I walked ankle dip in snow… snow falling faintly through my universe and faintly falling, like the descent of our last end, upon all the living and dead.

I am so sorry if I sound too melancholy; too dispiriting.  There will be better days I know.  But for now, this is all I can give.

I thank you all with all my heart for the heartfelt comments you left me here.  You have no idea how your words and sentiments have helped me during these last few days.  I can't thank you enough.  I hope you all had a happy, blessed Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the upcoming new year, new beginnings, new hopes, and renewed happiness to all...

  

Mom

My dear, beautiful mami passed away today suddenly, at 3:00 p.m.  
My soul has left me, and I cannot find it.  

Snow at the little white cottage

We’ve been under a most persistent temperature inversion around here, and our precious dear glorious sun hasn’t come out in an entire week.  A deep gray veil covers our little world, and wherever you go gloom follows, and it is super cold and dispiriting and the ‘hibernating’ hormones are shifting, and you feel drowsy-sleepy most of the day as cold air remains trapped down at the valley floor and daytime darkness tells your brain to sleep.  I am a sun child and are terribly missing the bright golden sun of the south.

The strangest of all things is, that although we haven’t had our first snow of the season yet, down in the southern hemisphere where the little white cottage rests it had been snowing… I cannot express well enough how very blissfully exultant I was last Friday when we got these photographs… just don’t have words enough!

…and as usual, as it always is, soon the sun will come out again and no matter how cold how gloomy or frosty it may be, it will appear melting gloom and sadness away, kissing your soul with mirth and blessings, as it places warm kisses on the snow-white womb of the land…  because, that's how it is in the South...

Our dear realtor, the beautiful Mary Alice was so graceful and mindful to have gone by the little white cottage just to take these pics for us.  What a treasure they are to me!  Oh how my soul went running back—over the mountains, over distance and logic and silently walked around the little white cottage, taking in the freshness and purity of snow, the silence brought by it, the gentle flapping of wings as birds crossed skies that were too bright, too damped above iced-covered roses, and the murmur of thrashers searching for food in the quieted woods… oh the woods, dark and silent and mystifying my soul as it always had, and down towards the house the pond covered in snow; light reflecting the tall windows on the water; a trembling vision of past days, and a humble, bucolic past that will always live within my soul…

Our family room

On Friday, the first day of December we installed the 13-ft. window rod in our family room.  It took forever to arrive, and forever for the Fisherman to finally find a time from his extra busy schedule to install it.  But all is done now, and I cannot be any happier than I already are with how everything is looking around here.  

I knew I wanted to allow the eye to flow naturally through this room when I entered it, and I knew that, to achieve this purpose, the panels needed to be similar to those I had in our new sitting area...

The only problem was, I hadn’t bought enough of them, and the solution for the moment was to take down those panels I had in the dining room and use them here instead…

It was hard to do this, because I was really happy with how the dining room looked, but I’m so glad I did this… we barely use the dining room these days, and instead live here in this open space, which comprises our family room, kitchen, and small sitting area.

I love that all the panels from the family room to those windows closest to the kitchen are now the same… this gives the eye a place to settle, relaxing one’s gaze rather than causing it to jump around the room. This also helps direct the flow of the room…

I'd have to agree that a vignette can play a surprisingly important role in a room, but I don’t want to pile things on every single surface of my home and create vignettes that can only make things looking too cluttered...

Adding a mirror to a room is a great way to open up a space that may feel small or dark. Mirrored surfaces reflect light, and that reflection creates the illusion of more depth. This means a brighter space that feels larger! 

...I so love how this space looks now.... simple, yet sophisticated, and certainly better than what it looked before.  

It is an amazing feeling to see white, bare walls and just the essential few things on furniture and such. A while back before we moved here, I’d bought a huge piece of art for that vast wall over the mantle, but it will not be put up; at least not for now anyway.  We simply love that whiteness and vastness of emptied white walls.

I originally had wanted an all neutral palette for our home this time.  Only whites, grays, and blacks, and my dream was to replace our old sofas for white, but we decided to keep what we already had, and I'm glad we did.  I really like the contrast here.  So, the camel sofas stay.

They look great paired down with the white and black patterned pillows and metallic accessories.

And what can I say about those old window blinds I decided to take down? I had always disliked those blinds.  All blinds as a matter of fact.  They hindered all that sunshine and light that now streams in so gloriously free and wonderfully beautiful.  I'll never use blinds again in this house!

I think the key to create a successful flow in an open room is to look at the big picture, and regard the connected spaces together, not as separate entities. 

I'm truly happy with how this room has turned out. Painting the walls white had certainly made a huge difference in the overall atmosphere of the entire house too... It is hard to believe this is the same room of just a month ago when our renters were living here...   

I have always believed than anyone can have a beautiful home. It doesn’t have to be an expensive or extraordinary one.  In fact, most of our furniture and things in our house have come from second hand shops, including most all of our area rugs and mirrors... It is up to us to make a difference!

I'm participating in:

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE

Of sunrise and ice...

Every new morning is like a newborn baby, and I run up and down the house watching this miraculous event unfold—the sun rising upon my windows, the orange blue light resting on sills and doors.  Once again, life awakens to let us know it can never die; never ceases, nothing can detain it, or shadowed it.  It only pauses to give the night time for another homecoming.  For just a moment in time, life may be overcome by darkness, but it will always begin again; renewed, stronger and forever a reminder to humanity of eternity.  And that’s the promise.

Today, my little world woke up in frosty garments; the first true frost of the season.  Trees and rooftops were covered in millions of tiny particles of ice… ices that glowed and shined and twinkled when kissed by the first rays of the morning star.  Now that my life unfolds amidst rooftops, I have another type of vision of my little world, and I can see things I wasn't used to see, and I can see far far away, farther down the horizon where the big mountains have already selected their icy gowns and are now wearing them all day long…

Sunrises and sunsets are a marvelous magical thing around here… they aren’t just any ordinary thing and there isn’t a day or a moment that they won’t mystify me and fill me with magic and joy.  Every color in the landscape ripples fire under the strokes of that sun, and I stand with my heart in my hands, curled around the rim of this magnificent sky daring those colors to set me spinning, like a seed, into the great unknown beyond it… until slowly and meticulously, the day changes into night, almost in front of my eyes. 

I want the final strains of daylight to resonate in my heart and mind (like a horsehair bow drawn eternal and slow across a violin string) as long as possible, past the colors and past silence, but days are fleeting in the Northern Hemisphere, and night comes upon our bones earlier than anticipated.  I am waiting for the return of the sun upon my world and those longer days of my joyfulness.  I can hardly wait to start working in my garden.  Every day I would stand across my windows and search each corner meticulously, each space, each turn in this little piece of land, trying to learn it by memory… to identify what it requires, and what needs to be done there, what does the soil requires, and which bush to trim to the ground and which not?  I shall wait, and I wall enjoy these white days of December to the full, because yes, they bring their own unsurpassable beauty with them.  And I’m learning that I love it too.  Winter, with its mystical white garments of ices.