When I wake up in the summer bedroom I see back-lit red geraniums, their deep green leaves like paws stretching up. I see a panorama of tree tops and hillside and other too aggressive green growing things that I try not to think about before my second cup of coffee.
My husband and I cobbled the bones of this house together in two summers. We used cinder blocks and stuff we could buy for practically nothing at auctions or cut down out of the woods. If a house can have a soul, this one does.
Maybe a building can earn a soul by sheltering its inhabitants kindly in spite of disasters, or maybe it has to be blessed from the beginning. Maybe being conceived and built by amateurs and having taken shape very slowly in response to what nature was already doing so well, it grew an indefinable essence in excess of it’s architecture and accoutrement. If you were to name it’s style you might call it Neo-Tudor Hacienda, or Villa Mother Earth News or Ode to the Perpetually Unfinished. I’ll bet in the years I’ve been here at least 50 people have walked in the door and said, “If you ever decide to sell this place, call me.” They didn’t know what it was about the place that they loved. There is a philosophy behind it’s creation but I’ve neither examined nor wavered from in all these years.
Where is the value in this home that I and others respond to? The view is both far reaching and private, but not all that unusual for this area. Having virtually no disposable income, I’ve not been able to finish either interior or exterior and just basic maintenance is a question of fits and starts and the cause of frequent despair. I suspect my home’s value to me and others is a matter of layers and depth and I love it the way you might just adore a homely man or woman whose intelligence and empathy captivate your desire.
I am in the grips of a long term affair with a piece of real-estate. Light and gravity and weather have aged us both and encouraged me to ponder the mysteries of beauty and wealth, in other words ‘value.’ My battles here have created, as much as expressed, my aesthetics and my ethics of ownership and sense of who I am and who I will be when I’m done here.
I nearly fell over my work boots backing up the hill.
“Here?” he asked.
“No, not quite. A little higher.”
“Here?” he called from below, moving toward me through honeysuckle as I backed up. We were getting further and further from the road-side building site his practical nature was opting for. I’d been backing up hill for 20 minutes.
“Here,” I said.
He caught up with me and turned to look.“You’re sure?” he asked. But we both knew the answer. That was the late 1978.
Here I am in 2008. For three decades I’ve been in this spot. For 25 years I’ve been the sole human observer. Here I have come to feel awe for the interplay of nature, entropy, vision and weather. Though I don't yet know exactly what that means, it is through this blog that I intend to examine it.
My husband and I cobbled the bones of this house together in two summers. We used cinder blocks and stuff we could buy for practically nothing at auctions or cut down out of the woods. If a house can have a soul, this one does.
Maybe a building can earn a soul by sheltering its inhabitants kindly in spite of disasters, or maybe it has to be blessed from the beginning. Maybe being conceived and built by amateurs and having taken shape very slowly in response to what nature was already doing so well, it grew an indefinable essence in excess of it’s architecture and accoutrement. If you were to name it’s style you might call it Neo-Tudor Hacienda, or Villa Mother Earth News or Ode to the Perpetually Unfinished. I’ll bet in the years I’ve been here at least 50 people have walked in the door and said, “If you ever decide to sell this place, call me.” They didn’t know what it was about the place that they loved. There is a philosophy behind it’s creation but I’ve neither examined nor wavered from in all these years.
Where is the value in this home that I and others respond to? The view is both far reaching and private, but not all that unusual for this area. Having virtually no disposable income, I’ve not been able to finish either interior or exterior and just basic maintenance is a question of fits and starts and the cause of frequent despair. I suspect my home’s value to me and others is a matter of layers and depth and I love it the way you might just adore a homely man or woman whose intelligence and empathy captivate your desire.
I am in the grips of a long term affair with a piece of real-estate. Light and gravity and weather have aged us both and encouraged me to ponder the mysteries of beauty and wealth, in other words ‘value.’ My battles here have created, as much as expressed, my aesthetics and my ethics of ownership and sense of who I am and who I will be when I’m done here.
I nearly fell over my work boots backing up the hill.
“Here?” he asked.
“No, not quite. A little higher.”
“Here?” he called from below, moving toward me through honeysuckle as I backed up. We were getting further and further from the road-side building site his practical nature was opting for. I’d been backing up hill for 20 minutes.
“Here,” I said.
He caught up with me and turned to look.“You’re sure?” he asked. But we both knew the answer. That was the late 1978.
Here I am in 2008. For three decades I’ve been in this spot. For 25 years I’ve been the sole human observer. Here I have come to feel awe for the interplay of nature, entropy, vision and weather. Though I don't yet know exactly what that means, it is through this blog that I intend to examine it.
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