Masquerade at Home

(Home for a few days.)

Up for air. Oxford was a whirlwind. I worked for two days straight, then Chris arrived, calming me. We stayed at my friend's place in the county, a B&B in the former location of a hunting lodge. I always feel comfortable in that place. My earliest memories of a meal there was at dusk. The walls, a creamy white wood tongue and groove, combined with the airy overhead mast created a dreamy place where I could dine and converse quietly with my companions.

I don't know how C.B. and I became friends, but it happened the same way you fall in love. Isn't that how good friendships begin after all. She was overseeing a rehearsal dinner for a wedding I was playing the part of bridesmaid. From the outside, she saw my dedication to this affair while the bride-to-be seemed to overlook it. I couldn't live up to the bride's expectations no matter how hard I tried, and by the end of the wedding weekend, we quit talking to each other. It's remained that way, more or less, ever since. As misunderstandings go, the bride and I were never able to make amends. I felt slighted, she didn't feel waited enough upon, and I let go. She did too in her own way. Yet out of this tragedy (because it is tragic to lose a friend) I discovered a new friendship.

C.B. lives in the restaurant she and her husband own. Well, they live above it anyway. Only this last visit did I realize how difficult this must be. People in your home most every day and at every hour. I think of myself cringing at times when I come home and there is a foreign car parked our driveway. I put my happy face on, and for a moment, entertain the guest, whoever they might be. I feign happiness despite getting in an accident or getting laid off when all I want to do is cry.

I wonder how we can live in places where masks are worn as often as the clothes on our backs. I think of my friend and what I can offer her. Recognition maybe or perhaps I can just tell her, "Yes, I know you. I"m glad you get me."

Short Sheeted

(Under the sheets. That's where I like to be.)

Another week gone and here I am packed and ready to leave for Mississippi once more. How many people can say they look forward to visiting Mississippi? Only people who've been there. It will always be a special place for me. In fact, during an interview today with Lucy Schultz of the Oxford Eagle, I was asked where I grew up. I was born in Tampa, I said, but I grew up in Oxford.

I'm departing solo in the morning. Chris will join me Friday afternoon but until then I'll be tying up loose ends with the film, visiting with friends, and relaxing. It's been a rough beginning to my week. I spent the good part of the morning in an Atlanta courtroom waiting for a parking violation case to be dismissed, the afternoon at the drs, and the evening paying bills. Needless to say work is in a slump and I find myself anxious once again.

Then I spoke with A. who has been off for the last two weeks studying for an exam. We haven't spoken in months due to both of our busy schedules, but we were able to update each other with the most pertinent of news, including our grievances and were able to encourage each other. That said, A. sounded good and seemed settled well into her new home in the Crescent City. I'm just wondering when my uneasiness with Atlanta will be a distant and laughable memory.

Too Long, Days Too Short

(A glance back while moving forward.)

I am not at home. I wish I were though since it's 2:33 a.m. and I've been parked in front of a computer for the good part of my Friday and Saturday. I arrived in Oxford, Miss. on Thursday evening, and I've spent most of my time in a office working on the documentary film, which debuts in less than two weeks. I can honestly say that I've thrown everything into this project and it will be nice - and daunting - to see it in the company of an audience that's been waiting patiently for it.

Getting to Oxford was interesting. It's been half of a year since I've returned. The landscape was green then, and the heat forced me indoors, but it's been mild the last few days with the exception of the cold rain that only began to fall a few hours ago. I am enamored with the landscape of north Mississippi, and driving across the states gave way to a pleasing transition of shape and color. Hard edges became soft hills. Pale vegetation glowed beneath a blue sky at en route to my destination.

This morning I awoke to birds and soft light. A few hours before, the neighbor announced his return home with a drunken farewell I heard outside the window. His goodbye seemed more like it was a part of my dream and it didn't bother me. I smiled and feel into a sleep I haven't had in too long.

Choosing the Path Home

(What children think of home.)

A crazy but long week. I head to Oxford, my former home and stomping ground - at least until I started grad school and disappeared into academia - Thursday. I'm staying with a friend while I work with colleague and co-director of the film, Joe York. I feel like this has been a long time coming and I'm ready to finish this project and move on to the next one. I was just telling Chris last night that I don't ever wan to be one of those people who constantly recycles old material, and part of moving forward is letting go, or putting things to rest. Of course, mastering something would be nice, too, but what to master?

A few friends have inspired me to pick up my camera again. Armed with a better understanding of the process of art making, I think I'm ready to switch gears to a visual language. I've even discovered a cache of photos of homes I shot a few years ago and I'd like to play with that topic again, but this time dig deeper. There are a few books I'd like to order to expand my thinking on homes, and after finishing another film project of sustainable building, it would be nice to combine the research. I find it tragic that we endeavor to built a sustainable home, investing oodles of money to create a livable, earth friendly space, rather than work on the relationships with the home that give it its meaning.

Dear Isla-

We made our temporary home in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, for New Years. It was a striking contrast to our Atlanta digs - white, bare, airy. It was enough space though, a bed, opposing side tables, a small TV on a table, and a chair not to be used for sitting, but for drying wet bathing suits. A bathroom with a door provided the essential privacy needed for a vacation in gastronomic hinterlands, and it also was home to a mini-fridge capable of cooling the entire room were it necessary. But my favorite thing about the room was that just beyond a floor-to-ceiling panel of windows: a balcony that faced west. Naturally, evenings were spent there sipping leftover wine from the night before or cold beers. It's true that the simplest environs are the most satisfying.

Over the course of the week the room became cluttered with things collected from our adventures around town: sea glass, wooden toys, a can filled with beans and covered with Christmas Contact paper used as a shaker to ring in the New Year, and sand, lots of sand. Every day, a maid came and mopped the floors clean, made our bed, and altogether made me appreciate the life more lived. Instead of making our bed we were speeding around on a moped watching waves crash and the sun set over emerald water.

In Isla, People left their doors open for my prying eyes. Beyond each threshold were small spaces decorated with dolls and twinkling lights, pink cinder block walls, statues of the Virgin Mary, and worn furniture. There seemed little difference between the interiors of these homes and ones I seen in my own. All of these things, these trinkets, are memories.

Blue Plate Special

We finished the bathroom - finally. I don't even have pictures of it yet because we've been busy with the holidays, but they'll be up soon. For now though, it's a pale shade blue with white tile -- two inch on the flor, four inch in the bathing area - and a white pedestal sink and matching toilet. We moved the honey colored vanity from our bedroom into the bathroom which had the added benefit of opening up our bedroom. The piece also adds character to the space, and gives me a place to dress in the morning without having to compete with Chris for mirror time.

While I was putting together chocolate mousse for Christmas Eve dinner, I rediscovered my old dishes (although it felt like I was seeing them for the first time!) In particular, I found the blue lined French plates A. gave me a few years ago. Then I discovered two other blue plates, one with a seashell and the other depicting a boat, and I decided that I would somehow integrate these plates into the bathroom, perhaps on the wall. Chris was not keen with this idea. "Old women do that sort of thing," he said. So I took one of the French blues and put the current accouterments arranged on the vanity -- a tea cup of matches, bottled bath salts, and an empty vintage spirits bottle yet to be filled with bubble bath -- on top of the plate. The others, and there are 4, I stacked to the side. I plan to hang them along the bathroom door despite commentary from the man who just installed a flat screen TV at the foot of our bed. (Of course I did not protest this since I bought the thing and intend to watch Pride & Prejudice and other "old women" films with it.)

Pink Peonies that My True Love Gave to Me

(Pink peonies for the lady's Southern garden.)

I just read about Clare Cooper Marcus, a UC Berkeley professor who has written about the home in her book House as a Mirror of Self. I don't know why I hadn't read about her research until now, but it's something worth exploring. She using Jungian theory to explore how our homes speak to who we are. Home magazines never seem to make that a point likely because if people realize that home comes from within they'd stop spending so much money trying to emulate someone else's world.

It's nearing winter but I'm thinking about gardens. I've been dreaming of a garden I once had the pleasure of experiencing years ago. I tended to its lettuces and tomatoes, plucking leaves and fruit as each meal required. I long for a garden though I know with the granite dome on which our house sits this is far from a possibility. Living in Mississippi I was surrounded by gardens and their happy gardeners. Clare Cooper Marcus' latest intrigue is how gardens heal, a theory I'd like to explore in tandem with my understanding of homes. (I think about this now and I can't think of a single crumudgeonly gardener so gardening must have a positive effect on disposition.)

When I moved to Atlanta and began assessing my new residence I had dreams of planting hydrangeas (in honor of Chris' parents), forsythia (in honor of mine), and peonies. I had once seen peonies at the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn and have ever since imagined their soft petals a part of my personal landscape. A few months ago I spotted the neighbor's righteously overgrown pink peony bushes and decided it was sign to plant some of my own. While we haven't progressed beyond the threshold of our home, perhaps in the next planting season I'll have my peonies planted firmly in the soil of Atlanta just as I plan to be by then.