“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (-Albert Einstein)

One more day and I should have my office/studio about the way it needs to be. I sometimes really do wish I was a minimalist—life would be much simpler, I think!

I still have to make curtains for this room…I’ve made them for other rooms in our house and I know I can make simple ones that will create a homier space, but it will take me the day to do it. I was disappointed in not finishing them last night: I had to head to Duke yesterday, and had some work to do last night,…

BUT…I did manage to get some art/photos hung in the room, and I like that I can change those around when the mood strikes me. Over the years, I have cut pretty prints out of magazines such as American Art Review, and save them in files for later. Then, I'll pull them out and frame them inexpensively to brighten up a space. That's what I did here with some of the artwork I hung.

I surround myself with things people have given me and they make me remember folks I love.

“Eliminate physical clutter. More importantly, eliminate spiritual clutter.” (DH Mondfleur)

Oh, dear…wish I 'd heard that sooner!

"What the caterpiller calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly" (-Lao tzu)

A Study of Two Pears
(-Wallace Stevens)

1

Opusculum paedagogicum
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.
2

They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red. 3

They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.


In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue.
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.
5

The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.

6

The shadows of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.

"The world makes up for its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental" (-Thomas Henry Huxley)

“True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.”

(-Florence King)

I’ve always wished I could be a minimalist with sleek furnishings and tables devoid of clutter. How is it that I’ve become such a pack rat? I can’t let go of sentimental things that touch me, and I surround myself with the memories they evoke.

I save letters and cards from everyone who’s ever sent them to me. I have difficulty throwing out flowers, even when they’re obviously lifeless. I guess it’s why I’ve learned to set up little vignettes on my desk, of disparate objects: I’ll never get rid of them, and so I pretend that there’s a method to this madness.

The little vase on my desk reminds me of a trip to the local potters in NC with my friends Gary and Linda. The dried miniature roses are faded and old, but I remember them as fresh flowers and can’t let go. A green glass paperweight is a treasure from Joe that has no particular purpose, it just brings me pleasure as it rolls around on my desk. My son, Eric, brought me a tiny hand-blown glass frog from Bermuda. He and I had traveled there when he was a teenager, and the first night there, I had complained about the awful noise that surrounded us all night long. By the next morning, when I realized that the noise was from the island’s tree frogs, I had fallen in love with them. I kicked myself when I got home and lamented that I should have had the glassworks shop make me a little tree frog.

Eric remembered, and some years later, when he lived and worked there, he had one made for me. When he visited, and handed me a tiny little box, I knew instinctively what he had done, before I even opened it. I was touched that he remembered that, and so of course, now it sits where I’ll always think of him.

Everywhere I turn in our home, I'm reminded of my parents, my grandparents, my son, my sibs, my friends. Their presence would surround me without things, but the things they’ve given me over the years are mementos that are very dear to me.

“The world makes up for all of its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.”

(-Thomas Henry Huxley)

Song for Susan

Song for Susan

Kettle whistles, “Habit now,”
Seems to sing its wistful tune
Sixty years, the ready sound
Sixty years, tea at noon…

(-sue)

My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Scotland, and they figured very prominently in my childhood. When I was young, I wrote a poem about Grandma Susan. Her inclination was to have a Tea Party every day of her life.

As a child, I loved visiting her, because she was an eccentric woman with artistic tendencies. She’d draw and write songs and poems, and entertained us for hours with the stories she made up, that literally lasted for weeks. They’d be continued on our next visit, while we longed to hear the end of her tales. During the winter, she’d bundle us up with her in a huge blanket, and sit with us on the rug, telling us we’d be like “the Babes in the Woods.” While we didn't really know who the babes in the woods were, when she said that, we knew we were about to be transported into her imaginary world of handsome lads and lovely lasses being swept away to balls, like something out of Jane Austen, through the machinations of the little old women who populated her stories.

But the thing I enjoyed the most with grandma was afternoon Tea. She baked every single day, and while the smells of oatmeal cookies and orange marmalade would emanate from her kitchen, she’d put a kettle on for a spot of tea. Her cups and saucers were lovely china, and she had utensils that had real ivory handles on them. The aromas and warm steam coming up from the cups are images and rituals I will always associate with her. She made me a tea lover for life.

"A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwords." (-AA Milne)