Just Like Starting Over

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I've always been fascinated by the idea of living a more spare life, finding a way to live without being surrounded by excess material possessions. I try to purge unnecessary belongings. I try to organize and simplify my life. It goes in cycles, every six months or so I am swept up in a fit of frenzy to clear the excess baggage from my life... in this last year that urge - and the sense that I am too tied down by things - has just grown and the need to pare away the unessential comes upon me with far greater frequency.

When I wrote this old post, I was just moving into my current home. It's been a good nest. A place to heal wounds after a painful and complicated breakup. A place to become myself again and get my bearings. But the last year has brought a lot of changes to how I see the world. I don't feel safe all alone in this house. Incongruously, I've gained a fearlessness in my approach to taking chances that I can only attribute to having lost so much - eventually you start trying things because little failures, embarrassments and inconveniences that you once found daunting are small and insignificant in the face of so much tragedy. I overcame my fear of traveling across the world to meet my family. Joined a local performance troupe that does edgy humor - something far outside my normal comfort zone. I'm working on overcoming my fear of public singing. And I think I'm ready to genuinely let go of the life I built in this house and start anew.

I have an opportunity to move to a much smaller space - an unused studio apartment in the back of an old friend's home. The offer was prompted by her desire to help me set aside savings so that I will be able to buy my own house - something I want dearly to do - but the result will be that I spend the next year in a very beautiful but very small space. Right now I live in a fully furnished two bedroom house. In my new home I will be surrounded by gorgeous views and have a private porch and sit in my bed and look out into vast forest, but I will also cook on a hotplate and have to pare away well over half of what I own.

I'm terrified. And exhilarated.

I once told a friend that, when making life decisions, I wait and listen to my gut reaction. I listen for that little thrill of fear and excitement. A singing of nervousness that ripples through me when I stand in front of a change and some part of my knows that this is what I must do. Because that's where the great fear comes from - from that knowledge. From seeing what must be undertaken.

Since I feel like I'm building myself again - from the ground up - I think going through a similar exercise with my life will be just the thing I need. So I am staring at my books. My furniture. My television. My dishes. My rows of shoes... Deciding what I can live without.

So far, I'm feeling like I can probably live without everything except the bunnies, the books and the shoes.

I feel that rush of adrenaline. I think I'm ready to leap.

"A little simplification would be the
first step toward rational living, I think."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Making Myself, At Home

"The house is a metaphor for the self.”

- Frances Mayes

Poet and essayist Frances Mayes’ wildly popular book, Under the Tuscan Sun, reminded me what it was to love a place and to put a part of yourself into a place. It is a romance of sorts, documenting how putting love and care into your home can create a warm and welcoming space in which to live. To be honest, she loses me a bit toward the end when she leaves Bramasole (her home in Tuscany) and documents time spent traveling in Italy. While I was originally drawn to Under the Tuscan Sun because of my fascination with Italy (my paternal grandfather was from Italy), I loved the book because I understood having a passion for a place and the care that goes into that. It’s about the character of the house, the work required to revive the house, learning to understand the history of a place, and appreciating the people, community and culture that surround the house.

Guilty secret - I also love the film adaptation. The clever, warm, very underrated and only just barely related to the book film. Mayes approved everything that was done with the script and honestly, the changes were necessary to adapt the book to the screen. Under the Tuscan Sun isn’t really a story. It is an account of life, of finding and loving a house and a town and another country. But it has no actual tale to tell. In the script, a story was created for this fictionalized version of Mayes that mirrors the growth and change of the house. Because the thing that the film does retain is the love story between Mayes and Italy and her home there, Bramasole. In the film, the character’s life has fallen apart and her own rebirth mirrors the changes taking place in the house as it is restored to it’s former glory. It is also full of lush images of Italy; the countryside, the food, the people.

The film is vastly underrated. In fact, I’m not sure anyone else thought as much of it as I did. Instead of the chick flick one expects from the previews, it is full of nuanced performances, the subtle beauty of human interaction and an unmistakable lack of willingness to have this woman be saved by anyone but herself (in fact, throughout the film, saviors seem to almost be on offer and each time they are pulled away as if to say, "No, they can't do this for her."). It does have some chick flick elements but it makes her recovery a gradual and organic process, filled with people who impact her in unexpected ways. In spite of the presence of certain cliches , there are a lot of beautiful details that I think critics overlooked. I am particularly in love with the performance of Sasa Vulicevic as one of the Polish men working on her home. He only says a few words in the film and none of them in English, but there is clearly this unspoken adoration he has for Frances that has nothing to do with the story but which adds brilliantly to the richness of the film. His sadness when saying goodbye after the house has been finished just kills me. It’s the little things that make this film great.

I have just moved to a new home (thus my intermittent blogging of late). I am renting. I do want to buy my own home, long for the chance to make a place truly mine by knocking out walls and installing new fixtures and generally imprinting myself. But I am not yet ready for a purchase, still reeling from the changes that have taken place in my life in the past few months. All the same, I want to bring warmth and good food and laughing people into my house and hopefully, in the course of building a life there, also rebuild myself.

I think of it as making my home my “happy place” - a phrase oft used by Sheila (to denote her brilliantly chosen photographs of much loved images that she wishess to share). Instead of having it just be functional or impressively decorated or arranged so as to be most attractive to visitors, what if I made sure everything in it and everything I surround myself with is something I love and that resonates with warmth? I think that decorating one’s own home should be like arranging one’s wardrobe. Get rid of the things that aren’t really “you” or never quite fit. Get rid of the things you never use or that remind you of anything unpleasant. And ignore fashion or whatever is “of the moment”. Making choices that are instead based on what really suits you and what makes you feel good.

I have been wearing the same faux leopard fur coat with hot pink lining for years and years. It is never really in fashion but not out of fashion either. It is odd, it is loud and it suits me to a T. I get more compliments on that bizarre coat than anything else I own. I want my house to be like that (not hot pink and leopard print, mind). Exactly what suits me from top to bottom. Filled with things I love and things that make me happy (which probably means that 50% off all matter inside the house will be books) or remind me of places and people that are important to me. I want to walk in the door and feel centered because everything about my home is warm and welcoming.

The new beginning of a move is largely metaphorical and has little to do with the reality of everyday life. Somehow, however, the cleansing mental image of having a fresh start is tremendously reasurring and imbues each choice with a great sense of possibility. And so I am rebuilding. In every possible way.

The Morning After

”No one loves a Christmas tree on Jan. 1. The wonderful soft branches that the family couldn't wait to get inside to smell have turned into rapiers that jab you. The wonderful blinking lights that Daddy arranged by branch and color have knotted themselves hopelessly around crumbling brownery and have to be severed with a bread knife. The stockings that hung by the chimney with care are hanging out of sofa cushions, and they smell like clam dip.

And the angel that everyone fought to put on top of the tree can only be removed with an extension ladder that is in the garage, and no one can remember how to fit it through the door.

Next to the presidency, detrimming a tree has to be the loneliest job in the world. It has fallen to women for centuries and is considered a skill only they can do, like replacing the roll on the toilet tissue spindle, painting baseboards, holding a wet washcloth for a child who is throwing up or taking out a splinter with a needle.”

- Erma Bombeck, from a column published From a column first published January 1, 1987

It's bot as bad as all that, is it? I usually spend the day after Christmas in a kind of warm glow. I can be happy about the season but I can also stop worrying about presents and wrapping and mailing things and whatnot. Plus my house always looks cleaner because all the gifts I purchased and all the wrapping acoutrements and such have left the building.

This year I (gasp!) didn't put up a tree, so I'm not having that ceeping edginess about the tree - you know, where you look at it's lovely glow and sparkly baubles and instead of looking pretty it starts to look like work? Yeah, I skipped that this year. My mother has gotten one of those white wire monstrosoties that is covered in white lights and looks like a shiny tree skeleton - it just folds right up after the holiday. At first this seemed creepy but the day after - when other people are chucking dead trees into their front lawns - it actually starts to seem pretty sensible. And no trees had to die in order to entertain my family this year.

Spring Cleaning

It almost never happens in the spring for me, but that's how I think of it. Every so often I absolutely MUST clean out my home. It starts slowly and then gradually rages out of control as I rummage about in my house delighting in every discovery of something I do not need and therefore may get rid of.

It's more of a mental and emotional excersize. What am I willing to let go of? What have I learned that I don't need? How have my priorities shifted since the last Spring Cleaning? Who am I really and, as that person, would I wear this dress?

You know, the important questions in life.

I am on the verge of a "Spring Cleaning" (which ironically so rarely involves me actually scrubbing anything. I hate scrubbing things.) I have arranged for some boxes and already know which things are going first. I have checked to see what hours the local women's shelter thrift shop accepts donations. There's probably something wrong with me that the idea of getting rid of any material possesions that I can bear to part with makes me incredibly happy, but it just does. I think it's the sessation that I carry the weight of my material possessions with me in life, and that they are what ties me to the ground. The fewer things I own, the more free I feel.

Earlier this year a friend of mine sold everything she owned - literally opened up her three bedroom home and sold everything but some boxes of keepsakes and some sentimental things - and then sold her home and moved to another coutry with just a few suitcases in tow. I watched her progress with envy and glee as everything slowly disappeared from her home. Maybe I felt crowded as a child, or perhaps I was traumatized by a particularly scray home redecorating program - I have no idea. I just know that on Monday I will step more lightly, immersed in the illusion that my ties to the ground have been eased.

Ikea As Recreation

I am going to Ikea tomorrow. Amidst my planning (because spending the day at Ikea is, for me, an event that must be planned), I went online to check out the website. Because I am odd, I chose to google “Ikea” instead of just typing in ikea.com. That’s how I ended up with This Article by Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti fame.

I have to say, not only is the video-game-style walkthrough hilarious, but I had a good giggle over the fact that crazy wacked-out lunatics LIKE ME who plan a whole day at Ikea are exactly what inspired it. Mind you, this is a lot funnier if you are also someone who reads / downloads video game walkthroughs. Cuz the format is pretty much dead-on. He even did the cheesy reproduction of the Ikea logo in dashes at the top - such attention to detail!

In spite of this good laugh at myself, I still started marking pages in my catalog with post-its and checking the website for availability. It’s a sickness. In my defense, I don’t actually buy entire rooms of furniture there. Usually I fall madly in love with an oddly shaped serving plate that I suddenly find I can’t live without. Mostly it’s about THE IKEA GAME - which involves setting yourself a relatively low limit (unless you need something big which in no way counts as a recreational visit - that’s just practical shopping which isn’t even remotely similar) and then figuring out exactly how much you can get for that amount. I suggest $50 or less. The goal is to buy a) as many items as possible, b) only items that you cannot buy anywhere else - what’s the point if you could pick up the same thing around the corner at Target? - and c) only things that you actually have a use for - i.e. no fair buying 20 things that cost 99¢ that you actually have no plan for once they reach your abode. The person who leaves with the largest, most creative array of purchases while staying within their budget wins. Unless you’re by yourself. In which case YOU AUTOMATICALLY WIN. It’s a great game that way.

....then you go to the Ikea restaurant and feel brilliant and thrifty while eating poached salmon for only $5.99!