Meditative Prose
Saturday, 15 December 2007
The Nest — Photo by Sarah
When I moved to Vermont with Sarah about a year and a half ago, we didn’t have jobs, a place to live, or a bed. It was as close to starting from scratch that we are likely to come in our entire lives. Since then, we’ve been involved in the slow process of turning the space we inhabit into something like a home. The other night, we couldn’t help but look slowly around this room, with its plain white walls and hardwood floors, and appreciate what it has become. We framed shots with our hands, and everywhere we looked was beauty, not planned but not random, a kind of cosmic feng shui that just happened as a result of living and loving in this space for more than a year.
On the window sill is an empty blue sake bottle, from when my brother and his girlfriend came to visit, and we drank the clear, almost tasteless, rice wine and played basketball in the dark. One window is bare, but the other is covered by a bamboo blind, which I’ve always loved for its simplicity. It came with the house, as did the white paper lantern overhead that glows like the full moon when the bulb is lit. There’s a hand-dyed silk scarf hanging on the wall, yellow, orange, and pink, a gift from a friend. There’s a bookshelf overflowing, a silent red-brown djembe, and yoga mats resting in the corner. On the floor is the new rag rug that matches the brown hand-made quilt on our bed.
The Nest, Part Deux — Photo by Sarah
And there are the plants: a red ivy begonia on the small white dresser, fighting winter and blooming still; a tiny jade, a cutting of another one — a gift that outgrew its small hand-made pot; a big aloe, raising its spiny arms to the light, good for my dry skin during the winter; and a new little Christmas cactus, tipped with hot pink buds that are just about ready to open. The plants make me really happy. Sarah and I are learning to listen to them, to see what they need and respond. Just having them here makes this room feel like my home in Pennsylvania, where my mom kept plants on every windowsill and would sometimes ask me to water each one.
I don’t know what we are making: maybe it is a space like a mirror, reflecting every part of us, from the lowliest & messiest to the holiest. Maybe it is just a nest. Whatever it is, it is beyond our conscious control — a humble work of art, taking shape as the days pass by, changing as we change.
