A Big Life: Encouragement for People in the Arts –
The shed-not the house. But still.
I bought a house.
It has lots of problems.
But it’s on a quiet street in a safe neighborhood near everyone I used to love.
And yet they’re not really around anymore.
My long-ago move away from my friends, the death of my mother, the losses of the entertainment industry which had once been my hot pursuit, and the destruction brought by CoronvirusCovid19MoreInsultingMonikersIWon’tRepeat (that multi-named disease), has changed my world.
Finally traveling. View over Portland of Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens.
To be back in Portland full time is like returning to a dream I was once in but the dream is not the same. To move back to a place means feeling like nothing ever happened in between and yet everything did.
We got older in four years and everyone looks it.
We died, some of us, and others don’t talk to each other any more.
And yet there are new friends, new places to see, to explore in this new neighborhood.
Me in Iceland in November. Hot hot hot! And cold. Oceanside geothermal pool out by the Reykjavik lighthouse.
There are old friends trying. Trying to muster the energy to get out of their houses again, which is remarkable, considering it’s winter.
What will happen when the sun splats across the needle branches in my cedar neighborhood and the birds which are already everywhere explode into new and bigger populations?
That’s when everyone really comes out.
In the meantime I see the sky from the window in my house but it is not enough sky. Not enough window.
I run into new neighbors when I turn into my cul-de-sac but I do not talk to them yet.
Not yet.
I too feel private.
Walk-in closet. Before–
–And After.
Yesterday the flooring people finally came. After owning this house three months I am now finally able to use the two back rooms.
The scummy unbelievably stained carpet is gone and in its place is maple in the closets and in the rooms, a pale sandy wood which beckons for a desk, a guest bed and a new lamp.
My office to be asks for hanging whale mobiles and paper Danish hangings and the sexy painting I bought in Laguna Beach last summer.
The one everyone will be sure to comment about.
Be Loved Series-Purple Valentines Day (cropped) by #KarenPettyAnArtistInLaguna w/permission – click on the art to go to her site.
A space for a guest and an office too! It is like those dreams you have where you realize there are rooms in your house that you forgot about, or didn’t know where were there, rooms you haven’t been using.
And your mind expands, your world blows up into openness as you step out into the air and trees everywhere and you hope that maybe this year you will write that book…
Singing for summer,
Bob back at the beach house, enjoying the winter sun.
Happy for all this new light already at 5 p.m.,
Touching the pores in the exposed bits of skin peeking outside my coat while I stand in the yard
Pretending it’s here now
Even though it is only
January.
