My latest inspiration is simplicity....
small objects -- natural objects...
quiet, simple spaces... things with a story...
like this mobile my sister made from small objects found on a visit to Marfa, Texas....
like this iron headboard given by an elderly lady to a friend, and then to my sister -- it still has the elderly lady's prayer card tied to it from when she was a small girl moving from italy to america...
like the simplicity of cut flowers from the yard, good light, a kid’s doll, and old wooden crates from a barn.
this inspiration is in large part due to my sister and my recent trip to her and T's country house in upstate new york. ever the design aesthete, she and hubby t have created a haven of a weekend house up there. the house was full of charm and super-cute.
living in LA (and especially the almost nature-less area i live in), i had been craving THE EARTH. dirt. creeks. space. Natural sounds..... we spent the weekend strolling slow country roads, dense with trees and smell of rain in the air... watching (with dog tugging and satine squealing) the rush of water churning over the dam after the dump of rain, the rise and fall of the creek... reading, gardening, inspecting leaves and plants and new rosebushes (i've now mastered the identification of poison ivy)... cooking... (and well, ok, lots of dishwashing).
in some small crevice of the day, my breath dropped in a little lower, a little deeper, a little fuller. my spirit felt a little freer and my mind had the pleasure (on its long walk or meadow-gazing or cat petting session) of wandering for wandering's sake -- not to solve problems or pre-multitask my next move. and somewhere, i realized, i had "found" a "missing" piece of myself that i had been too busy to even realize was missing.
maybe it was the verdant landscape. perhaps it was the rain. or waking up to the chirp of birds instead of the grate of an alarm. or the perfect cornflower blue out my window being the first thing i saw in the morning, or the simple wooden floors and "barn-modern" design aesthetic... whatever it was, i realize as i settle back into life in LA, where my surrounding 'nature' includes skunk instead of deer, how much my environs-- even my home interior -- influence my mood. and i find myself cleaning and de-cluttering the house, aiming for simplicity and wishing for a big dump of rain to cleanse the air, and a rocking chair on a porch from which to watch it.
xxo
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