Savoring moments of transient clarity

I was walking with our dog on the beach in Oregon this morning and it was lovely. We’d had quite stormy weather lately and the sea yesterday was brown from the big winds and waves and stirred up sea bottom. Today was the blessed relief, the calm after the storm.

And I noticed I was having a similar experience in my mind. I forget how much much my busy mind obscures the moment and what is right in front of me. This morning I experienced spacious mind for a bit and it was so lovely, another blessed relief.

Not that I’m bothered by what I think about and muse on. I find that much of the fun of life. But when I periodically also experience a really quiet mind I’m reminded of the depth of beauty, even the sacred in just the moment. Now this was helped along by the astounding beauty of the sea and Oregon coast. But I can often walk along the seafront and be almost lost in thoughts and hardly notice my surroundings. Anna and I will finish a walk and be surprised how it flew by as we were having some riff about something or other.

Not that either busy or quiet mind is better than the other. But I do love the calm mind as it tends to be the exception rather than the rule. One of the aspects of beauty I so appreciate is it’s ability to bring me to the present and out of my head. Like something really beautiful can be like a dive into a cool clear lake, immediately bringing one to the present.

This is why I explore what is it that is truly moving and beautiful in our homes and lives. Because I think that is also where the gods and goddesses hang out and it’s so enlivening to spend time there!

Finding art that grabs us

We are blessed with a couple really good local art galleries in Sellwood. They both focus on previously owned art by Pacific Northwest artists. I’ve loved learning more about many of the wonderful artists that have made there homes in our region.

I tend to stop into each of these galleries a few times a month to keep up with their steady flow of art. One of the galleries is called, somewhat appropriately, Resale Art. Visiting the gallery recently I found myself intrigued by a piece by an artist I wasn’t familiar with.

‘St Germaine’ by Carolyn Cole

I wasn’t looking for a piece to buy, but I noticed after leaving the gallery the image stuck in my mind. I find art one of the many mysteries in life of what we are drawn to and what the artist creates. The colors and how they related to each other worked for me. But there was also something in the artists use of collage in fairly subtle ways that added dimension and intrigue to the piece. I initially thought it was an abstracted landscape but the more I looked I wasn't so sure. And then there was the title of the piece, which I couldn’t place.

I wasn’t sure what St Germaine referred to, so I found myself doing a bit of research:

There was a young woman who grew up in very challenging circumstances with a stepmother that sounds quite cruel and how kicked Germaine out to the barn to live (or die?) with the farm animals. Germaine also ended up with one hand handicapped. And yet, amidst all these challenging circumstances she found a spiritual home in her faith in God and shared her compassion with any and all in the local village. People were moved by her love to the degree the stepmother felt like she should treat Germaine better and bring her back into their home.

But Germaine decided to stay in the barn with the animals and live out her life of sharing her love and faith with others. She died young but made such an impact that she ended up being sainted sometime after her death.

As it turned out, Anna’s birthday was just around the corner and this art felt like she may love it. I showed her a picture I’d taken of it and she really liked it. And I left it at that. We then had a joint astrology reading to celebrate our upcoming birthdays with a dear old astrologer friend of ours, who is really more of a mystic I think. As he was describing one of the core energies in Anna’s life and chart he used the term wounder healer to describe her. Which for those of you who know her would find spot on.

And it all clicked with the art piece, St Germaine was a wounded healer who was a woman. The artist is a woman. And all this felt like an apt celebration for the person Anna is and the work she does. I purchased St Germaine and in looking at it more closely I liked the idea that the middle strip of vibrant mix of colors and collage is depicting our human life and experience. And all the surrounding blues can represent the spirtual dimensions of life and. how we are always surrounded by the divine nature of life regardless of what colors of life we are experiencing from moment to moment.

Now I have no idea if that is what the artist intended to depict and it doesn’t matter to me, or Anna. We each make meaning and relationship with all those facets of life we care about. And for me, a soulful home is made up of the many aspects of life that have meaning for us. And do we find those things we love, like this piece of art for us, or really, do they find us?

Spring 2022

I’ve been musing on bookcases, which I love creating. Not least of which because I have a a lot of books to create homes for. We have a new/old little apartment/flat we may have as a home again in the UK and as it’s small, every bit of space needs to be well considered and planned. And I have found that laying out the spaces with shelves and furniture to scale really helps get a feel for the space and what will work.

When I say small, I mean a one bedroom apartment with 550 square feet, at a push. But it’s well laid out with central hallway and bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and combo living and dining all lined up along outside wall. It’s on a corner so has good light from two directions. We’re really excited, not least of which because we will be close to friends and family and the area in Brighton Anna and I first had a home together back in 2004.

Back to bookcase. There is one wall in the living/dining room that is calling out for a well planned shelving unit. And I want to figure out how to have this unit, which will be 12 feet long by 8 feet high incorporate shelves for books and vinyl, a decent sized television, a stereo with turntable, a lamp or two and a seating nook. This is a lot to happen in a relatively cosy space. But if/when we pull it off it will define much of the feel of the space. We are also looking to go much darker in colors for the walls and ceiling and bookcases.

I’ll provide some periodic updates here as I play with designs. I’ve attached a couple photos of the existing living and dining space to give a feel.

The first sketch below is of a shelving unit with space on the left big enough for a seat with cushion. And that will rest on 15 inch deep bottom shelving unit big enough for records and bigger books and turntable and amplifier and lamp to sit on.

The second sketch is of the room footprint, which is 16 feet long and 12 feet wide. The entry door and shelving unit run along one wall and dining area and sitting area are created around the room. But just a simple decision of will a 5 or 6 foot dining table work better in the space is interesting to play with. Too small and looks pokey. I’m currently showing a 5 foot table but I think it may not be quite big enough? Too big and it overwhelms the space and feels crowded….. More to come….

Adaptive planning for home projects

I’ve been creatively, and hopefully beautifully, restoring older homes for decades and there are some basic and timeless beliefs around what makes for good design and project planning. Be clear about the desired outcome, identify the actions, and create a work plan. Finally, put trust in your plan and implement.

Theoretically it’s an unarguably good starting point. The rub comes when inevitable bumps in the road emerge. As those bumps launch us into altitudes of discomfort we weren’t expecting, we can become disorientated and disenchanted. It’s no good reaching the door of a much-loved new home feeling like you’ve been beaten down by endless roadblocks and now need to crawl, defeated and deflated, into bed.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book, Streetlights and Shadows, with an insight in the subtitle, ‘Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making’. The author Gary Klein has spent the last thirty years studying how people make decisions. He makes a couple of really helpful points that from our perspective could easily relate to creating satisfying home refurbishment projects, as well as in the planning decisions we face each day.

Klein writes: ‘We are encouraged to control conditions as much as possible. The control-oriented mindset is best suited for well-ordered situations. In ambiguous situations [like refurbishing old homes with all sorts of surprises hidden behind layers of history], in the world of shadows, we aren’t going to be able to control everything that matters. We’re going to adapt. We should expect to adapt. The mindset I want to foster is to expect to run into problems and to prepare ourselves to recover, to be resilient. Instead of putting all our energy into preventing problems – which is unrealistic – we need a mindset of recovering from problems.’

This is a significant shift for most of us, but an essential one in home restoration. I find one of the insights I’ve learned the hard way is to be what Klein calls the ‘detectors’. This moves beyond project planning to problem anticipation and a recovery-oriented mindset.

Klein continues: ‘The point of a recovery-perspective exercise isn’t to eliminate mistakes. That’s the control mentality at work. Rather, the point is to assume that we will get disoriented. When disorientation happens, we want to understand the map to more easily recover...’

So it can be really helpful when planning projects to look closely at the places that may cause confusion, like when you move from developing the detail plan and then the contractors beginning to implement it. Or when multiple contractors will be on site at the same time. By anticipating these vulnerable points, we can be better prepared for the inevitable human glitches that emerge from every creative project.

Finally it’s worth remembering that so often with these glitches, thinking differently and recovering can lead to some of the most creative and exciting developments. With a recovery-oriented mindset, the innate problematic nature of delving into home refurbishment can suddenly become the beauty of it. Problems? Bring ’em on.

Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making by Gary Klein is published by Bradford Books. Support your neighbourhood bookshop and buy locally.

old post, but a goodie

Eco may be chic, but the argument is weak

The September issue of Elle Decoration magazine had a new section called ‘The Trend Report 2011’. This was subtitled ‘Our guide to the trends that will define the future of style’. Apparently, over the coming year it’s going to be all about natural and humble and simple, and good quality. So, it’s official – at least as far as the clothes on our backs – that eco style is hip and fashionable.

On the one hand it is great to see these qualities that we have been practicing for the past 13 years of our work be suddenly in vogue – hey, we like to be told we’re fashionable as much as anyone. It’s even good to see this as a constructive reaction to overly bling consumerist, fashion, style statements on home decor and remodeling.

What is cringeworthy is the way in which designers conjure up a transient label that we may wish to temporarily tag on to our lives. What’s more, humility suggests a lack of vibrancy, which is very far from our experience of working with nature. Nature is not humble – it is glorious, spirited and shamelessly original. And eco is not reserved, but bold and protective and optimistic. By all means call it humble fashion. Please don’t call it eco fashion.

We have spent our years in practice focusing on homes and materials that bring together, yes, natural and simple and well made, but also character and style in abundance, and originality that belongs uniquely to the people who have fallen in love with their home. These qualities are the essence of good design and beautiful, comfortable homes. Humility? No. Modesty? That’s more like it.

Fashion and style-oriented designers may get some aspects of the look, but they miss the spirit of this work that, for us, is based on both craft and deep love. Don’t get us wrong, we hope that some of this latest fashion can become more deeply embraced by the wider culture, providing they understand eco’s fuller potential as a statement of optimism and sassiness, not earthen drabness and shoe-staring meekness. We also know that, ten years from now, we’ll still be exploring the riches of this more natural approach to creating homes regardless of where the next style trends have gone. And we know from our clients that to live with the deeper meaning of eco in all its celebratory glory makes for a more deeply satisfying, healthy and comfortable home.

Idling

When you visit our coast spot you will notice a variety of reading material exploring the notion of ‘Idling’. Whether that be books and mags about design, landscape, art, or the art of living. One of my fave books and mags is ‘The Idler’. One of the things I like about them is that embracing idling is so counter cultural, subversive even.

I grew up in a family of Presbyterians, I like to think of this as Neo Calvinism. So much celebrating of work ethic and calling and ambition and earning ones way to God’s graces. And while this didn’t make a lot of sense to me, I was an early believer in beauty and chilling, I absorbed more than enough of this aspirational believing that I have spent a jolly good part of my life tangling with this worker bee mindset.

For the longest time I couldn't seem to get past the idea that my self worth was tied to how productive I was being and how much money I was making. Now that I’m 63 and have found myself slowing down my ‘worker’ life, I have watched this old mindset continue to want to set the agenda and my self worth.

I was sitting down to write a couple mornings ago and I was feeling a bit foggy and had the thought why don’t I feel more clear about what I want to write about? This is a very familiar internal dialogue for me. And as soon as I wrote these words down I found. myself writing, ‘why not embrace meandering and muddling along?’

Now in sharing this, it may not feel like a big deal. But I don’t think I have ever really considered that meandering and wandering around was something I could actually appreciate unless it was getting me somewhere more meaningful. What I can say is since having this riff with myself, life looks just a bit different. I can now catch myself going off on some tangent of what should I be doing next and have a chuckle, even appreciating the near absurdity of the ongoing search for something better.

All to say, ‘The Idler’ mag glows that bit more and feels closer to my own religion than the Presbyterian sanctity of work I had been thrown by my family and culture. And the coast sanctuary is a perfect place to be and to be idling.

Happy 2021 and Coast Sanctuary Transition

So that was an interesting year. I notice I’m breathing a bit easier now. And that is no doubt helped by sitting in front of the fire on a gorgeous January sunny and crisp day here at the coast.

One of the rituals Anna and I do at the end of year is reflect on new imaginings for the coming year. We’ve had our coast cabin back for a couple years and we mused on how we want to use it and share it. Last year we experimented with sharing it more broadly using a rental agency. Even during covid, or maybe because of it, in the first year it was rented every day all summer and into the fall. And we hated it. Not specifically any particular people, just the volume and annonominity felt a bit yucky.

So we thought what would work better? We feel an amazing abundance being able to have created and now buy back this place. And we want to be able to share it with people we care about. And it’s nice to be able to cover a chunk of the ongoing expenses of keeping this spot up to scratch.

We realized that what feels most satisfying for us and people who stay is for them to be friends or referred from friends. The longer we have had our home back here the more it feels like home. Which means a home with art and furnishings and books and music and landscape that is well loved and cared about. And we like the idea of being able to share this place with a few people who get where we are coming from and get to stay in a home away from home.

And we want to be upfront about what you pay to stay and what costs you help us cover. We’ve totaled our annual expenses (maintenance, utilities, taxes, deep cleaning, internet etc) and they come to $15,000/year. We aim to cover our annual out of pocket expenses, not counting the cost and financing of our home, with your stays. And you get to support the local craft people and artists and sustainable principles embodied in our home.

If you are interested in booking a stay, reach out and we can chat about what may work. Our place is not for everyone, and that is just how we and others who stay here like it.

Drop me an email if you are interested in booking chazkingsley@gmail.com