"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities." So said the magical Maya Angelou

Friday, July 31, 2015

PATTERN

When we bought this big beautiful Pleasant House we agreed that it had to be: Coastal. Clean. Simple.  Getting it that way was work enough, neither of us had band width for more.  So we went with Benjamin Moore Simply White.

Which I love, but really, I'm a sucker for a pattern. As homage to my suckerness and also to Mrs. Stearns, the genius engineer - solo sailer - artist who died here, we left these two patterns intact.  


Guest room closet
Guest room closet, close up
middle staircase at 19 Pleasant
Middle staircase close up
 There's history in these patterns.  Someone thought about them and chose them, thought they implied taste and fortune and good breeding.  I've learned that in/around 1850 when 19 Pleasant was built, "more was more".  Even in hidden places, like our attic stairs.  Look at this:


The staircase to the front attic

Pleasant Dreaming.


(I love Design*Sponge and they love patterns.  It's a great source for pattern inspiration.  And nobody does it like Tricia Guild.  Look. )

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

CLEAREST OF CLEAR

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl, 
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air, 
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white, 
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”

- Wallace Stevens



Water.  Never enough and always the answer.

Water with mint & cucumber, always on the counter.

Flowers. Earth connected with you on a bridge of beauty.  

Newest Hydrangea blossoms in an enamel pail I found in the basement. 
  
Here are wildflowers and mint.  Not just any wine bottle can stand in for the vases we don't have.  (Love the wine, too.  Opici, $10.50.)



Pleasant Dreaming.


Tuesday, July 21, 2015

I Thought it Would be Different

The other day I went for a walk in Witherle Woods with the dogs and had the guts to count my blessings for how good I have it.  Within a half hour, both hounds had a face full of porcupine quills which I spent two days yanking out and making them despise and blame me for their trauma.  

I should know not to think I have it made.

In fact as I'm recalling it, I was holding a perfect yellow and purple feather wrapped in a piece of birch bark when I started yanking quills.  Where did those beautiful things go?


Yesterday, Monday, news came that we're heading into another New Now.  Here we go:  change, uncertainty, a call to "arms".  That was right after I formatted this new blog to record musings about how dreamy is life.  

Life isn't dreamy.  It's good and provocative and a gauntlet, that's what life is.  Gorgeous.