Good Sunday morning, post-Sandy…and pre-the Rest of Our Lives,
Sandy has stirred up within me an internal dialogue about the place I call home and, to be honest, a life-long insecurity about losing it. I love to travel, but at heart I’m not naturally peripatetic. I love exploring different landscapes, but some I love more than others (Italy), preferably those with an expansive horizon (Virginia) or an interesting cityscape (New York). It doesn’t matter whether home is my small apartment in Manhattan, which I’ve had for 33 years, or the home I share with my husband, Brian Altman, wherever his work as a surgeon might take him – takes us – I need to make my physical space feel as though I have created it from ground up.
Whether my habit of customizing my living space was influenced by the fact that my father was an architect, or whether it is simply in my DNA is anyone’s guess. Nor does it matter, for it has always been a kind of therapy, psychological to be sure, but also artistic and most certainly spiritual. For it keeps me in touch with the power of process and the surprises encountered along the way. The goal will always be the goal, but any creative person knows that the roadmap between an “idea” and its fruition is often strewn with cul de sacs, dead ends and roundabouts before one can see a clear path through the forest and end up where one intended…or hoped…to end up.
Wherever there is a hardwood floor to be hand-stained, I am its servant. I’ve been hand-staining floors for 25 years, the first effort being my apartment in New York. Then I did the one (all 1,800 square feet) in our small house in Virginia with a friend. In February 3 1/2 years ago. In the middle of the Winter. In the middle of the night. In the middle of wild Winter wind storms.
Staining it, with approximately 75 harmoniously different colors, was that bizarre combination of euphoria, glee, manic effort, torture, physical pain, exhaustion and ultimately utter delight at the final accomplishment. It was so beautiful and I was so protective of it that my stepson once suggested that perhaps he and my husband and our dog learn to levitate in order not to mar its perfect surface. I responded that this would be an excellent idea.
I was obsessed – there was no other word to describe it, an obsession that had taken root when my mother gave me a series of framed sand paintings many years ago. In the Navajo culture, a medicine man will ask a patient to sit on the freshly created sand painting as they do a healing dance around them. I was besotted with their earthen colors, muted ochres and siennas and umbers, rich greens and blues, all against the background of Mother Earth. I wanted to walk on a floor that had that feeling about every day of my life. I wanted a “medicine floor” beneath my feet. I wanted a healing floor. I wanted to be connected to Mother Earth, to our ancient roots, to nature and to myself. And so I made a healing floor in New York and years later another one in Virginia.
Then, in June of this year, the waters came. A leak from the half bath destroyed my healing floor. The whole thing had to be pulled up, along with all of the adjacent dry wall. It has taken 5 months to restore the house, a house that I’m incredibly grateful that I have. A house that I’m aware that so many people do not have. In honor or that I’ve been re-staining my newly laid floor.
In reality I don’t know why I do it. I am compelled. It is primal. And this time I have the great privilege of working with an artisan in whose presence my own obsession with perfection pales. He has made me a Bumblebee for our bathroom. As I stained around it I thought about process, about artistry, about creativity, about inspiration, about paying attention to detail, about nature, about how short and unpredictable life is, about how another person’s creativity can positively influence our own, about how connected and interdependent we all are.
There was an earthquake here last year. And the winds are wicked. And Mother Nature could rip this away from me tomorrow if she so desires. But it wouldn’t matter if she did, because the next day I just would get up and create yet another healing floor on which to walk and sit and lie down. The Navajos know that nothing is permanent, and this knowledge hasn’t stopped them from making sand-paintings that are, in fact, meant to be destroyed once they have served their purpose. Everything gets blown away by the wind eventually. That is the way of things. May our guests who visit us here, feel something of what I feel from the painting of it.
For the curious among you, here is one of many links about Navajo sand paintings. What a magic healing ritual it is.
http://www.anthro4n6.net/navajosandpainting/
May your own homes be places of healing and peace for as long as you have them. Thank you all for reading, as always…
Giselle
November 4, 2012 at 3:09 pm
I find myself, at times, oddly attached to my so-called surrounding as well. The closest I’ve come to verbalize that sentiment — nothing like your eloquence — is that somehow, it’s my sanctuary therefore it’s not just walls, floors, ceilings and “things”
Good morning to you Giselle Minoli
November 4, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Your bumblebee is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing part of who you are and what you believe.
Good morning Giselle. 🙂
November 4, 2012 at 3:12 pm
And good morning to you, Eddie K. Home is a sanctuary. Did you ever hear Paul Young’s song Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home? I love Paul Young and that song and try as I might to honor that sentiment…no, a hotel room is not a home, not all physical spaces are the same…some are home, some are “sanctuaries” and some are not. I’m with you. It is not just walls, floors, ceilings and “things.”
November 4, 2012 at 3:13 pm
That bumblebee is gorgeous.
I admit, I just looked at my own floors and thought…maybe I could…but then it passed and I recovered.
November 4, 2012 at 3:16 pm
LOL Jodi Kaplan. I am sure that my husband wishes there were a “cure” for me…that he could send me away to some center for a month, from which I would emerge never wanting to do something like this ever again. Oh woe is me (or him…).
November 4, 2012 at 3:17 pm
And good morning to you Terry McNeil. And thank you…
November 4, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Good morning Denise Baxter Yoder. We all inspire one another…at least I think we are supposed to. Clifton also made me a Lady Bug and and Ant and three Lotus Blossoms. Maybe I’ll do another post with an album of them when it’s all finished. It really is an homage to nature I suppose. Thank you for your sweet words…
November 4, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Thank you Christopher Burgess. I can’t decide on a name for my Bumblebee…I name everything…even my Gargoyles…
November 4, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I would name the bee Holywood. my car’s name is Gunther, my former vehicle was named Colorado. All living things should have a name, we have had this discussion, I know, but I thought it would be interesting to see who else names their cars.
November 4, 2012 at 3:50 pm
At times like these, when so many people have lost their homes, your words are particularly moving. May you always be able to work on your healing floors, and may the ones who suffered from Sandy be able to recover and rebuild …
November 4, 2012 at 4:33 pm
But Christopher Burgess…what if it’s a boy Bumblebee?!?!? george glavas people do name their cars..the ever witty Colin Lucas-Mudd suggested that I name my mini cooper Carlotta, which cracked me up!
November 4, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Having lived through earthquakes in California and hurricanes in NYC, my home by accident of birth, and hurricanes in the Caribbean, my home sanctuary of choice, and hurricanes at sea in a sailboat and a submarine, I can understand and in small measure, relate, to your desire for a feeling of sanctuary that is more ephemeral then merely a place or things — I thank you for so elequently expressing your thoughts and for capturing the transitory yet timelessness of mother nature and our surroundings.
November 4, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Wonderful post, Giselle! … very inspiring!
November 4, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Luis Roca I like the idea of tearing away excess and nurturing the few, core pieces…and I like the idea of preserving, conserving and restoring. In this way my heart I think is more Italian than American. Here we are so used to trading in the old for the newest, the latest, the shiniest, the most opulent. We own dozens of cars before we die, live in many, many houses and go through people like they mean nothing. And in the process we forget our connection to our homes and our communities. It’s all very unsettling to me.
Yes, Friedl Fuerst… Gary Stockton in a conversation yesterday mentioned how unsettling he found the photographs and videos of women rummaging through their destroyed belongings. We have come to make light of what things mean to us. I don’t agree with the interpretation of non-attachment becoming a lack of feeling, a lack of connectedness. To mean non-attachment means profound respect for something, coupled with the knowledge that it might get taken away, as through a storm or flood. Non-attachment most certainly does not mean not caring. Nor does it mean disowning or denying.
November 4, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Hi stuart richman I so like the idea of a sailboat being a “home.” I went sailing twice and loved it both times. I hate the idea of a cruise…but sailing…working and navigating one’s way toward a destination…a cooking for oneself on board…I love that.
Underneath your words, however, I do wonder whether a person who has experienced many hurricanes or earthquakes or disasters that are home destroying become more detached…or more attached. Different people can experience the same disaster in profoundly different ways. Just like two people can sit side-by-side and watch the same exact movie, but interpret it completely differently.
November 4, 2012 at 4:58 pm
Good morning +Giselle Minoli I have a severe dislike of cruise ships but love living on a sailboat, I have logged about 50,000 miles of open ocean navigation so far by sail, about an equal amount by submarine with the Navy. As to your question, speaking only for myself, with each loss of home, I have become more attached to my sense of “home” but less attached to the “things” that fill it.
November 4, 2012 at 5:02 pm
After reading this thread I am inspired to write the following… Our home is our soul, our soul is not just something that leaves us when we die, our soul is the universe that animates us, our home is where ever the universe leads us. Yes Giselle Minoli we do inspire one another .
November 4, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Well Giselle, if you’re in NY next summer and you want to go sailing just holler.
November 4, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Giselle Minoli i can’t wait to see our bumblebee and the ladybug and the gas stove that makes cooking fun for you.
November 4, 2012 at 5:32 pm
My love Brian Altman you make cooking fun for me. You make painting the floor in the bathroom where you soak and read in the tub…and wonder “What sort of crazy woman would paint a floor like that?” fun for me. Without you to levitate over its surface…it’s not the same.
November 4, 2012 at 9:59 pm
What a great post. We are currently in the throes of a kitchen re-model, so this really resonated with me today. We’re in camping-out-in-the-dining-room mode right now, looking forward to our triumphant return to the best room in the house.