We went to the Three Rivers Arts Festival this week for the first time in a while, and I was surprised at how different an experience it was. I remember going to the arts festival as a kid and really thinking of it as a catalog of lifestyle choices. Even now, if I walk around long enough, I'll find something I'll inevitably picture as centerpiece of my imagined and idealized living space. And then I'll find another. And in my head there'll be this High Noon showdown between some charcoal toned print of neglected factory machinery vs. a breezy watercolor autumn landscape framed in reclaimed barn wood. A lifetime of this conflict is evident in my decorating choices. The decor of my home is late twentieth-century American "hey-do-you-want-this-table-we're-getting-rid-of".
The weird thing about my job is that I see the inside of a lot of houses. I feel like I'm not supposed to like it. But, boy do I.
It's fun. It's ALL fun. The huge new-money places with acres of hardwood floor, the small utilitarian shacks where everything is tight and on point, I love the hoarders... I love the purgers. I love a weird smell. I love an old dining room that is now entirely dedicated to an ill-maintained model railroad. I love a ranch house clinging to mid-century, clean-line splendor while slipping into arthritic and cataractic disarray, reminding us that middle-class is a fluid state. God DAMN. There are so many houses.
Every now and then, I see a little hint that someone is chasing an aesthetic. I was in a super-contemporary townhouse where someone had set up this little still life -- an antique writing desk littered with old books and papers, a delicate pair of 1920's reading glasses placed carefully askew to suggest their owner had been momentarily called away. Everything arranged to exist within the overlap of natural and the visually appealing. There are a lot of 60 degree angles at work. It was in a perfect location to stack junk mail, but they didn't. Well, you'd suspect that one of them was more into it than the other and that the Junk Mail War is waged every now and then.
My problem with choosing an aesthetic is a lack of commitment.
I pulled up to a house in an area like the one I live in, where the houses are packed kind of tightly and on their way to being two hundred years old. People in my neighborhood, and presumably this one, don't really decorate with a palette or motif.
The porch was painted bright white and reflected the sun intensely back into my eyes, but I made my way to the door and rang the bell.
As my vision returned, I could see that the front door was open. I could see through the screen door into the house and everything, literally everything, was white.
Everything. The kitchen floor, cabinets, table, chairs, living room carpet, couch coffee table... literally everything. And I'm not using the word 'literally' in its figurative sense. I'm using the word 'literally' literally. I'm also using the word 'everything' literally. I guess what I'm saying is that the word 'everything' is doing its job perfectly and I should stop trying to apologize for it. I could see into the kitchen and the dining room and into the living room and saw nothing, not a thing, that wasn't white. It was spellbinding.
The wind picked up and drew a breath of Clorox through the door.
From deeper in the house than I could see, I heard footsteps and became very excited. I knew that one of two things was about to happen and each of them seemed impossible. Either a person was about to come to the door dressed entirely in white, which was going to be too much for me to bear (I didn't know exactly how I was going to lose it, but I was going to lose it), or a person was going to show up dressed in regular clothes -- like someone who didn't live in the White Palace. And I couldn't imagine that either. I was filled with anticipation, little suspecting that there was a third possibility that hadn't occurred to me.
A woman came to the door dressed entirely in red.
It was deep red, a burgundy. She was like a single drop of blood in a porcelain sink. I was dizzy with joy. She was exactly where she wanted to be in this and probably every aspect of her life.
If I have trouble sleeping, I'll page through a Google image search of Diesel Punk Art Deco PC Cases and fantasize about really nailing down a theme for some little corner of my life, only to doze off and dream of Shop 'n Save bags filled with Shop 'n Save bags, graceless artifacts I'm doomed to treasure against all reason, and the tide of junk mail that washes my beaches like the cargo of the Exxon Valdez.
The weird thing about my job is that I see the inside of a lot of houses. I feel like I'm not supposed to like it. But, boy do I.
It's fun. It's ALL fun. The huge new-money places with acres of hardwood floor, the small utilitarian shacks where everything is tight and on point, I love the hoarders... I love the purgers. I love a weird smell. I love an old dining room that is now entirely dedicated to an ill-maintained model railroad. I love a ranch house clinging to mid-century, clean-line splendor while slipping into arthritic and cataractic disarray, reminding us that middle-class is a fluid state. God DAMN. There are so many houses.
Every now and then, I see a little hint that someone is chasing an aesthetic. I was in a super-contemporary townhouse where someone had set up this little still life -- an antique writing desk littered with old books and papers, a delicate pair of 1920's reading glasses placed carefully askew to suggest their owner had been momentarily called away. Everything arranged to exist within the overlap of natural and the visually appealing. There are a lot of 60 degree angles at work. It was in a perfect location to stack junk mail, but they didn't. Well, you'd suspect that one of them was more into it than the other and that the Junk Mail War is waged every now and then.
My problem with choosing an aesthetic is a lack of commitment.
I pulled up to a house in an area like the one I live in, where the houses are packed kind of tightly and on their way to being two hundred years old. People in my neighborhood, and presumably this one, don't really decorate with a palette or motif.
The porch was painted bright white and reflected the sun intensely back into my eyes, but I made my way to the door and rang the bell.
As my vision returned, I could see that the front door was open. I could see through the screen door into the house and everything, literally everything, was white.
Everything. The kitchen floor, cabinets, table, chairs, living room carpet, couch coffee table... literally everything. And I'm not using the word 'literally' in its figurative sense. I'm using the word 'literally' literally. I'm also using the word 'everything' literally. I guess what I'm saying is that the word 'everything' is doing its job perfectly and I should stop trying to apologize for it. I could see into the kitchen and the dining room and into the living room and saw nothing, not a thing, that wasn't white. It was spellbinding.
The wind picked up and drew a breath of Clorox through the door.
From deeper in the house than I could see, I heard footsteps and became very excited. I knew that one of two things was about to happen and each of them seemed impossible. Either a person was about to come to the door dressed entirely in white, which was going to be too much for me to bear (I didn't know exactly how I was going to lose it, but I was going to lose it), or a person was going to show up dressed in regular clothes -- like someone who didn't live in the White Palace. And I couldn't imagine that either. I was filled with anticipation, little suspecting that there was a third possibility that hadn't occurred to me.
A woman came to the door dressed entirely in red.
It was deep red, a burgundy. She was like a single drop of blood in a porcelain sink. I was dizzy with joy. She was exactly where she wanted to be in this and probably every aspect of her life.
If I have trouble sleeping, I'll page through a Google image search of Diesel Punk Art Deco PC Cases and fantasize about really nailing down a theme for some little corner of my life, only to doze off and dream of Shop 'n Save bags filled with Shop 'n Save bags, graceless artifacts I'm doomed to treasure against all reason, and the tide of junk mail that washes my beaches like the cargo of the Exxon Valdez.
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