The House As I Love It....

Full of poet friends....

How Beautiful Is This?

And this?


And this?


Why I love the Apartment Therapy website.

The Children in the Park

So, today I was out in the garden raining curses down upon the morning glory, when I heard two teenage boys in the park arguing very loudly. "You ain't gangsta!" the one was screaming at the other. Then he proceeded to list his felony charge or charges-- as opposed to the other kid's juvie charge/s. Round and round they went. I only caught snippets of what they were saying, but those snippets were enough.

Ok, so I've become one of these people. I went over there.

Essentially, I became that neighborhood mama. Am I old enough to be that neighborhood mama? I don't even have kids.

But here's the thing. I love this neighborhood. I love the sound of the children in the park. Usually, what they're screaming at each other, while shooting hoops, is, "shut the f*** up!" That might bother some folks. Not me. They just sound like kids to me. But this was something else entirely. I honestly could not stop myself. So now, I'm that crazy woman who lives in the house on the corner, going off on them about mental slavery and how I teach at Auburn prison and they don't want no part of no white man's jail, believe me. And they were as polite as concern for their cool allowed them to be. And they argued a little bit more. And then they went off home. But now, I feel like I need to go down to the county Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention program and somehow get myself assigned to these kids.

Meanwhile, various neighbors passed by while I was ripping out weeds. They introduced themselves and said how pretty the flowers looked. Some remarked at how the house "always seemed empty," that until today they didn't even know whether anyone lived here.

OK, I hate my kitchen...

Maybe hate is too strong a word.


Though, up until this week, I would've just said hate, yeah, hate, without reservations. But this past week I started using the kitchen more than I have been previously, and suddenly I realize, I don't hate everything about it, just a few things. This means the impossible renovation I'd previously imagined may not be necessary. Actually, I'm starting to think, hmmm... a little paint, new light fixture, new counter-top, new floor, maybe a new fridge could do it. (You have to bear in mind; up until this past week my thoughts went more along the lines of: "I have to just rip it all out and start from scratch! My living holy hell, it's hideous! Agh, my eyes! Look at that! I want to vomit every time I walk into this room! Et cetera! Et cetera! F*** barking et cetera!!")

So here's how the change happened...

I woke up on my birthday feeling ok, but suddenly the day took a rapid nose-dive. I wasn't where I expected to be (either literally or figuratively), acupuncture (for the first time since I started) didn't invigorate me, I was weepy and feeling sorry for myself and convinced the day was shot.

Then, I went to the co-op.

Lo and behold, garlic scapes! The skies parted and the birthday angels sang: ah ahh AHHHH ahh. I don't know. I just find these things aesthetically perfect. Just their existence in the world cheered me. I bought just enough to make me feel better. Then got up on Saturday and went to the farmer's market and bought enough for the plan I'd concocted. I would make a giant batch of garlic scape pesto and all would be right with the world. So, I made a giant batch, froze most of it in smaller batches, cooked up some angel hair pasta, invited a couple friends over, threw together a fab salad (Remembrance Farm in Danby, NY sells the best Asian Braising Mix; I live off the stuff! Perfect greens. Perfect.), poured myself a glass of wine, offered my friends some beer, and had a lovely dinner on my front porch. A kitchen that made that possible couldn't be all bad, right?

I was thumbing through Apartment Therapy and, oh yeah, they suggested one clean one's kitchen top to bottom. So then I decided to clean the broiler, which was one of the reasons I hated my stove and longed so passionately for that O'Keefe and Merritt. Then I went through some cabinets and took some stuff to the Salvation Army. (May as well give back for all the treasures I find there.) Today, it cooled off enough for me to be outside, so I went after the blasted white morning glories (bindweed) trying to utterly consume my garden. But then I returned to the kitchen to roast some summer veggies.

Look how pretty these vegetables came out, with their lovely little caramelized tips. Do I really need a new oven? Huh. Maybe not.

Reading the Furniture

Up in the green room there's this wooden desk. It's filled with stationery for writing letters I never get around to. It reminds me how important learning is to me. For some reason I'm embarrassed to write how important the student aspect of my identity is. I broke up with my therapist in part because she never gave me assignments. This morning at my first acupuncture treatment, when Dr. Wang said, "Your homework is...," I know I lit up like a bulb.

There is a bed in almost every room of my house. I envision the house filled with people and my best times are when that vision is the reality. I hosted a poetry retreat the week after I bought it. My friends slept on air mattresses. Last summer they returned, to more beds (and record heat!) We bought plastic fans for the windows. Andrew filled a vase with ice water and placed it on a table in front of one of the fans to blow across him as he wrote. Swamp AC, he called it. I thought, this is what the house is for. My three best friends from college came--Kelli with her husband and kids in tow--and endured heat and humidity too. We drank mint juleps and groused. Kelli: Ok, it's 98 degrees in my kid's playpen!

I imagine the house filled to capacity: coming down to make breakfast, walking through the tv room past whoever's sleepy-eyed and bed-headed in the antique twin I bought from the Salvation Army. Pancakes with blueberry compote. Poached eggs over fresh greens.

And in the living room there's this wholly debauched lady in red:

Red Whorehouse Sofa

If I stuck my tongue into these old grooves
the furrowed wood of the red whorehouse sofa
I might find a splinter and fill my mouth
with the taste of blood and old dust
It curves scoliotic sags like a shoulder
I follow its lines a lumpy terrain the almost rust-grained
nap of velvet It hides rips held together
with safety pins like the worn gown
of an old woman who refuses mirrors
whose seam split a slit run too high
revealing pale varicose thigh
It keeps the smells of marrow the memory of fire
and dead wood I could strip it find it animal
a skeletal patchwork of horse-hair stuffed boards
its black iron lion’s paw feet screwed deep
into its splayed legs In my lust for texture
I am afraid to leave its broken lap
It offers a layered history of lives I slip
into like shadow familiar as family
I have built my living room around the beauty
of its battered curves the creak of its belly when I twist
or turn its bawdy sinking the thought of recovering it

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, "Red Whorehouse Sofa" from Black Swan (University of Pittsburgh Press) Copyright © 2002

Use things; Love people

As promised, pictures from a borrowed digital of the beautiful meal my fabulous friend and colleague brought over Thursday night. It had been a very rough emotional day and I had contemplated calling off the dinner party, but then decided (correctly, it turns out) it might help to have people around.


Post divorce decision, I had been mostly eating off paper plates, because for the past year I could not make up my mind about what kind of dishes to buy. I was completely immobilized. (Check out a fabulous, pitch perfect story about what such immobilization feels like in the New Yorker. It's written by Miranda July. I think it's called Ron Spivey. Robin first insisted I read it just before my trip to the city. Also, since you're going to be reading anyway, check out Robin's fabulous blog.)


Anywho, Thursday, knowing people were coming over in a matter of hours, I ran to le Target and found these turquoise dinner plates on sale. Wonderful, since turquoise is my primary accent color downstairs. I snipped some salvia sprigs and the first blooming black-eyed susan from my woefully neglected garden and stuck them in old spice jars (i heart spice jars) passed down from my out-laws. And there was my Village Cigars print (a gift from Kathleen Piunti) to remind me of the city.


So, "nothing gold" be damned. What does stay is my sense of gratitude. Even in grief, my life is beautiful. I am so very blessed.

The Yellow Room

I was in love with my house when I bought it. I had so long wanted to own my own home. It represented for me arrival, the beginning of a new, more settled phase of a beautiful life I would share with the person I loved. Each day of the past year and a half I've learned, a house can do nothing for grief but hold it. Today, I look at these pretty walls I've painted and they bring me all the pleasure they can. But I can't help thinking of Robert Frost's poem:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I Heart Food

Just back from New York where I gave a reading at the International Center of Photography. I spent the weekend in Carroll Gardens where I was borrowing my friend Robin's fabulous apartment.

How I do love that neighborhood.

I walked around, stopping into the yummy boutiques. I tried on a fabulous Corey Lynn Calter dress (--at Dear Fieldbinder. If you love dresses you should go there. Seriously. No one's paying me to write these things.--) and I almost cried when it did not fit me perfectly. Anyway, now I've decided my writing project must include an essay on closets... something that touches on my love for dresses and shoes and being seriously high femme. More work for me.

I also ate my way through the neighborhood.

Loved sitting in the garden at Frankie's eating antipasto and drinking a bellini and reading The Poetics of Space.

Loved sitting in the open windows at Panino'teca scarfing devilled eggs with caviar (so simple; so delicious!)



Loved my breakfast of crepes au sucre at Provence en Boite. That morning the owner's little girl's class was having an end of the school year party. I love the sound of children. (I guess I'll have to write about that, and, specifically, the sound of the kids in the park across the street from my house, later too. More work for me.)


Loved (despite the terrible, weepy, vicious hormonal night I was having) tea and pastries at Sweet Melissa.

But the most spectacular food moment was my lunch at Jill's. On the menu, and the specials board, and on the website, there's this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: "In this food I clearly see the presence of the entire universe supporting my existence." Are you eye-rolling? Well, guess what? In that food I clearly saw the presence of the entire universe supporting my existence. I sat there, precariously perched on that too hip, wobbly little stool, and thanked Jesus for my life after eating that food. Then I demanded the chef to come out from behind the counter and I kissed him. (On the cheek, honey!) Then I took Robin there for lunch the next day.

How I wish I had a digital camera (gotta do that, H.I.) so I could show you pictures of that food. Besides being delicious, it was aesthetically perfect: beautiful little purple micro greens against the bright backdrop of the green curry sauce for my rice paper spring vegetable ravioli. Steam rising from the white teapot where those gorgeous sprigs of mint steeped. God is good.

Now I'm back. My kitchen (wholly un-renovated, and in need, in my admittedly embarrassingly "bourgie" opinion, of a refurbished 1954 O'Keefe and Merrit Stove and a Summit undercounter refrigerator and freezer) should be put to good use tomorrow. A friend is coming over to make Ethiopian food. God is good.

Someone else's cool tile

Yesterday was so lovely. I walked to the corner coffee shop and read and wrote , then meandered around the neighborhood--to the drug store and grocery store--enjoying the cool air.

Ok, so, today it's 90 degrees. So much for dreams of winter.

This is not a picture of my house. It's from my ideas file. I'd love to do something like this for the floor of my downstairs bathroom.

I Heart Pitchers

Yesterday I woke up to weather in the 50s, a lovely cool breeze, the grey sky I've strangely come to love. Though, perhaps not so strangely. I've always loved heather grey as a color for clothes--cashmere turtlenecks and ribbed tights and over-sized sweatshirts. I just never payed attention before moving here to the way grey makes other colors pop. (Thus, my choice of background colors for this blog.)

I still feel like a Southerner. My southernness is integral to my identity in ways I find difficult to tease out. Yet, since moving here, I find myself wistful for winter in the middle of spring. I recently bought this cocoa pitcher from an antiques vendor at one of those random little tables full o' junk that sprout up in the center of the mall. I can hardly wait for a true chill to put it to good use. I'll fill it with steaming white hot chocolate, served with marshmallows and a little sprinkle of cinnamon, perhaps a nip of some fabulous liqueur. So many months to wait....

The Need for Blinds Ruins One

As my partner likes to say, having a house is like having a high maintenance girlfriend who is never satisfied. Looking from my desk out into the living room, at first I'm pleased with the view. Even though the paint job in there (like the one in the green room) reflects my learning curve in terms of edges, when to pull the blue tape off, etc., I love the color. (Martha again; Miso Red.)

But then the nagging starts... When are you going to finish those blinds?

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy about my decision to make the window treatments myself. (Have you seen what it costs to have blinds made? It's highway robbery!) It's just, I work very slowly. I haven't been sewing all my life and I'm really fussy--probably too fussy--about the measuring. I should probably not admit this, but it took me all day to make that blind above that (Salvation Army steal) wing chair. Now there's the bay window off to the left, hands on hips, harumphing, and me, three years in, stammering, "I'll get to it tomorrow, I swear."

Disposable Digital

I am one of those people who doesn't have a cell phone. No ipod. No cable tv. What am I doing with a blog?

I blame these peonies.

They came into full bloom day before yesterday, hot pink and stunning. It was one of those wretchedly sticky hot days. Hot like Florida. Hot like, How is this possible? Here? And I'm from Florida. How have I so quickly become someone who writes descriptions like "wretchedly sticky hot?" Anyway, the peonies... they looked so beautiful from the green room window. Then the heat broke and the rain came and beat them to the ground. So, yesterday, I cut them and put them in a vase in the green room, but immediately wanted to share them with everyone I know. (I did give two to friends who happened by when I was out in the garden, but the feeling didn't go away.)

So, today I ran to CVS to grab a disposable digital. (You didn't think I owned a digital camera, did you?) But here's the thing: I'm so in love with my endless project of a house that I did not stop with the peonies. A writing project about my house was already in the works. I've managed, for now, to convince myself to see this blog as an extension (yeah, that's it, an extension) of that project and not the time suck black hole of procrastination I'm afraid it could become.

Writing space: view from my desk, blue daybed

Writing space: detail of blinds I made with my mother-outlaw

Writing space: detail of bookshelf, my beautiful mama

Sleeping in the Green Room

The green room is painted a color Martha Stewart calls Creeping Jenny. If memory serves, it is the first room I painted when I bought the house. How describe it?—It is an almost chartreuse, a green potentially too bright, the kind of color folks are quick to label, either delight or disaster. Three years ago, I had not yet perfected my painting technique, nor discovered the proper tool for corners and edging, so near the ceiling it has an uneven, color-washed look that used to bother me but now I’ve come to like. The ceiling itself, still, as yet, unpainted, has four or five messy splotches of Creeping Jenny where my roller brush slipped. The trim remains the dingy cream color I initially found in all but one of the rooms at purchase. (That room, the master bedroom, was painted half blue, half purple--in shades not even I could love--with a floral paper border between. Eek!) Three years later, I have yet to make blinds for the windows. (Where does the time go?) Though it is not the master, I've recently taken to sleeping here like a loungey B&B guest in my own home.