Everybody knows that big game cats kill their targeted prey some very small percent of the time, right? (It might be as low as 15%).
I thought of that (half-remembered) fact photographing the sedum this morning. They are bowed down from last night’s rain. It really came down hard for awhile, and they bear signs of repeated pummeling.
Still, they soak up the sunlight and afford bees their nectar like any other day.
Do they wring their petals with self-blame because they are not standing upright?! Thinking to themselves, “I am so weak, so bad, so stupid” ? Of course not! Sedum can’t wring their petals!!
Just kidding. Even on a day not particularly marked by self-doubt, I like to remember that fact about cats. We think of them as such mighty hunters – and THEY ARE – but they fail more than half the time!! Imagine how much poorer their kill rate would be if they berated themselves for all those misses?!! What if when I was bowed down, I could still soak up the sun just like any other day? Absent the narrative?
I am also interested in the FENCE in this picture. Over at Spirit Cloth, where I am taking another cloth class, I have asserted the house as my motif (what? again?) and noticed that, unlike wings (Jude Hill’s chosen motif), houses are about enclosures, security and shelter. So different from flight, freedom, and expansion. But, the house sits on a parcel of land… and that has an edge too. So, there is something to expand to from the edges of a house. Or, there is a secondary enclosure.
Kind of thinking out loud here.
In what ways does a HOUSE bring freedom?
And, if a house does or does not afford freedom, why? What does it depend on — who lives inside? where the fences are — if there are any? the foundation?
my most recent house is a trailer house. an old one. 1970 something i think, or 60’s even. anyway it’s just a metal box perched on the dirt. so different
from all houses before that had basements. the one my kids were born in had a basement made of stone. a stone foundation.
this metal house is so flimsey Wind moves the walls with ease. Cold seeps
through again with ease. the woodstove heats only the immediate surrounding.
but what i love about it and what i would not want to give up is the most
basic sense of Shelter it gives. it keeps my stuff. it gives my stuff a place to be that is dry. it gives me a place for my bed that is dry. and that’s about
it. basic. and i like that. a lot.
and you know…writing that comment above has given me an urge to try to depict my sense of this house in a cloth. maybe i will sometime.
it occurs to me, Grace, that most of what I know about your home is looking out from it, or interior shots… so this is kind of news to me.
The basics of shelter, as you have stated them, are really pretty elegant. I am not sure I have your wherewithal to stand wind and cold, though, and my basement houses all my fabric – when I think about downsizing, I can’t quite imagine.
PS. our house was dubbed ‘carriage house’ to the neighboring colonial (which was built in the 1700’s)… but really, it is clear that the original structure was a barn. There is a low window in the original upstairs bath that was clearly a hay throw, and we have discovered rusted horse shoes in the yard. There may even have been a smithy here, given the charred beams discovered when we opened up some walls to build an addition.
i guess it’s been a while since i put a pic of the whole of it from outside. will
probably do that once the cold sets in. having lived all my previous life
in “normal” houses, it’s an interesting comparison. i like your basement.
have seen your pics of it. And i forgot. when i left Michigan the first time,
i lived in that Airstream for about 5 years. before here. THAT was a
challenge. i still want a yurt. maybe if the move to N. California happens,
maybe then.
Dee you house/home has so much character. I love that it may once have been a ‘smithy’s” …. finding the horse shoes, the charred beams …your house giving up part of its story to you. So many stories (if only walls could speak as they say) …. I can see so much room for storytelling here!!! Exciting for you.
For me a house is shelter and comfort….physically and emotionally. Shelter from the elements, a haven/retreat from the world outside . The comfort of family and your favourite things …
Then there is the idea of houses making up a community….
I’m sure you’ll have fun with this.
Jacky xox
Thanks for your comment, Jacky… I like that word ‘haven’…
I have always been a bit adventurous and what goes on in the wide world, beyond my home’s walls and barriers, is very tempting. Freedom is out there for me to live. But I wonder whether freedom would be so sweet if I didn’t have a home to come back to, a shelter awaiting me. What does freedom out there taste like if we have nowhere to go back to?
our youngest was born in the house we live in, for our two boys it’s the only home they’ve had and they don’t want to move, this is Home to them, this is where we all feel safe
I’ve painted it in many paintings, our island in the Big World, the haven we return to
btw: love your work too
ersi – your life has been defined by a lot of movement, hasn’t it? So interesting to get your perspective. Part of why I love this home so much, and was glad that our boys lived in it for their entire boyhoods, is because I moved so much as a child (every 2 to 5 years)…
Saskia – same for our boys… although we are now old enough to wonder what it might mean to buy ‘down’, I can’t imagine painting over the woodwork where we have ticked off the boys’ heights all these years!
a house divides space into a place small enough to understand. and understanding can be a type of freedom.
hi Jude – as I read yr comment, I thought of the nine patch…
Actually, I also think of our house as a place to be free, “Free to be Me”. Free to have chocolate pudding for dinner, and other guilty pleasures. Freedom from judgement. Or maybe that’s the same thing as security….