“Breathing room!” exhaled my dramatic spouse. This could, I’m sure, as much express homecoming relief as critical commentary on my design habits: a literal request for what he most needed right then: air and space. The working world out yonder is a trying arena, civic government most cussedly so. The daily trials wear a body down, torque it by situations of engagement and sortie into shapes operable within the larger Machine.

(The by-contrast snowglobe I currently spend my days inside of is a topic for another post. Here I’ll restrict myself to the choreography of physical objects in space.)

In fairness, the husband may have a valid point about my up-against-the-wall organizational bias (see pill bottles). While it’s true that the specific dressertop instance that provoked the current outburst arose more from dusting efforts than intentional design, yet it was noted as a tic. So I’ve been put on the lookout for tendency.

The other day I mentioned to an art school-trained designer and Etsy shop proprietor I know my ever-so-gradually budding scheme to sell vintage stuff etcetera online. Prompted to assist, she pulled up an array of relevant and tidy product photography by way of example, mentioning offhand the Rule of Thirds.

Sans formal fine arts training, I resort to Wikipedia to learn that this visual arts rule, so-called, dates from a specific instance and publication over two centuries ago. In 1797 one John Thomas Smith, engraver, outlined said Rule as his own device while discussing proportional landscape art design:

Two distinct, equal lights, should never appear in the same picture : One should be principal, and the rest sub-ordinate, both in dimension and degree : Unequal parts and gradations lead the attention easily from part to part, while parts of equal appearance hold it awkwardly suspended…

Analogous to this “Rule of thirds“, (if I may be allowed so to call it) I have presumed to think that, in connecting or in breaking the various lines of a picture, it would likewise be a good rule to do it, in general, by a similar scheme of proportion … applying this invention… whether of light, shade, form, or color, I have found the ratio of about two thirds to one third, or of one to two, a much better and more harmonizing proportion…

In the original from which I’ve excerpted the above Smith engages in rapturous fractions and orderly spatial division likely common in the Enlightenment though it reads now as somewhat manically fastidious. Regardless, it all seems to me consonant with the patrician project of a staking out artistic turf by naming and defining the rules of art.

I should think myself honored by the opinion of any gentleman on this point; but until I shall be better informed, shall conclude this general proportion of two and one to be the most pictoresque medium in all cases.

Q.E.D., motherfuckers.

For my own part I do, I think, have one relevant recollection. Back around about 1987 (o, the predigital days of ye olde 20th centurie I was taking a black and white photography darkroom class at the local community college while on official leave from my real school. On the occasion in question it was a shot I took that occasioned the day’s teachable moment. The instructo, a middle aged (ha! probably not much older than I am now) white guy otherwise uninspiring and whose name escapes me no (though the moment made its mark) held up before the class a still life I’d arranged of a small pyramidal alignment of kitchen objects– salt cellar, onion, spoon, bowl– and then illustrated for us the way this structure worked to move the eye, creating dynamic tension within a pretty mundane context. In retrospect his teaching strikes me now as fueled at least in part by an asymmetrical design aesthetic rooted in Smith’s Rule of Thirds.

The plain fact is I’ve just always made these odd conglomerations of the whatnots that occupy shared space, all unconsciously and even compulsively– reaching out to arrange things just so– hoping to achieve what? Some inner knell of balance. I’d like to say, “Rules schmules, I fiddle till it feels right,” but that would surely be disingenuous. I’ve had schooling up the wazoo. No doubt my outlook is framed by all sorts of foundational and structural beliefs I’m not even fully cognizant of. On the one hand I resent the pretensions of self-proclaimed artistic authorities. On the other hand I guess I get it, the urge to quantify, and thereby justify to a rationalist world, what is at least in part passionate, unknowable, and wild, our creativity– to give it articulated logical scaffolding. But I have to feel that’s ultimately all it is: ladderlike structures clinging to the real edifice, all for polishing the windows.

But it seems worth noting that the shoulder that’s been torqued and paining for longer than I can remember is this morning rolled back into its proper anatomical position. The hip, for that matter, has followed suit and sits square on the chair, ache-free and stable. I am, it’s true, suddenly made aware of the need to strengthen that old “core,” to firm up the marshmellow jelly belly necessary for supporting the whole– but it’s a start.

For the first time in awhile things seem to be coming together.

I love his thoughts about Highclere Castle’s architectural/political history (nice too how he intertwines the two aspects).

On writing characters: “You …build on emotional predicaments you have witnessed.”
You take their problem with their mother, whatever it is… It’s only ever a lifting-off point.”

On the period chosen for the story:
“Both Gareth and I were very keen that although these people were leading a life that in some ways is like something on the moon, we wanted to make it a recognizable life. By 1912– I mean, my grandmother was pregnant with my father at the date we open this series. He was born in the following July, and this is my father– it’s not my great-great-great-grandfather– this now. He only died in 1999. It’s not that long ago. It gives us cars and trains, they have a telephone and electricity and all that. When people are watching–obviously I don’t mean they relate to the way of life, because they don’t live like that–lots of them didn’t live like that then– but they understand the life… It looks like these are kind of modern people in a sort of modern world– as opposed to when you do something about the Civil War, it’s miles away.”

On what he wants viewers to take away:
“We examine different human predicaments. We examine relationships with your parents and disappointment and sibling rivalry and failed love– these things go through the series whether or not they’re servants or family. I think that the way managing this world emotionally– and people knew the rules. I mean they could be friendly, certainly– I mean handling that kind of television cliche when everyone’s horrible to their servants is unrealistic. There were lots of jobs, they didn’t have to stay. The average length of time a footman in London stayed in service was 18 months. The old thing that everyone stayed forever is all nonsense. .”

O panoply of most microscopic yet irksome concerns…
it would feel more worthwhile
to occupy myself with someone *else’s* needs,
a child’s for instance, legitimate, developmental…
but that there’s a whole ‘nother topic for another post.
In the meanwhile I excavate the geography of my own face–

I did it to myself. I mean, it’s not a zit exactly, though I do get those from time to time, too, even unto Middle Age, le sigh.

No, this particular little bugger stems from having plucked a hair. That’s all. Took my surgical steel tweezers to that little bugger and nipped him out– only to have it go and get all irritated and ingrown like they always do. A surely victimless plucking event recently routinely followed by two weeks of cosmetic histrionics: swelling, unpleasantness, and social blight.

high school classmate echoes out of yore,
“Never touch your face!
The oil and dirt on your hands
will make you break out!”

In point of fact it must be noted that I’m temperamentally prone to a mindless digital nitpicking (when Chris catches me at it, he gently slaps my hand away and I, in my more gracious moments, thank him to do it) which could surely have contributed to the exacerbated infection in this case… To be sure some sort of egregious disharmony has surely been struck to render this here chin a Rorschach of “dark spots”– apparently attributable to what amounts to genetic compulsion: based largely on stray observation I conclude inherited tendency toward facial self-dissection through the maternal line. I suspect my sister, too, quite frankly– therefore both sole observable blood-kin cast as big pickers. Not so the now-deceased Victorian dowager Grandmother by adoption– she’d not have deigned to pick so crudely upon her visage with a filthy digit. But those brash and vulgar redheads are another matter altogether, now, fairskinned ill-gotten sprouters lightly furred with glowing down on chin and cheek which caught in the right backlighting proves perceivable as both haloey and soft but inevitably is punctuated by the odd stray follicular rebel, that one that will occasionally spring forth, so absolutely singular and fat with ambition.

Then, by gott in himmel, my mother, my sister, and I myself will pluck that hair straight out, right there and then, just wherever the moment finds us in the course of daily routine (though in strict point of fact we’ll likely as not have been picking already, absently scritching away with fingernails in creeping persistent survey for telltale tiny roughnesses to remove), this unconscious digital address having located a specific marauding irritant will fix upon the discovered protrusion, urge together those always too-soft fingernail tips, reflexively scissoring to grasp and pull!

Unfortunately in response (in my case alone for all I know) these wiry buccaneers of my biology, solid sprouting hairs grasped  between crescents of thumb and index finger snap, then plunge and burrow and cause to fester itty bitty swollen caverns of reddening fleshly gore, churning subterraneanly with uninvited microorganisms, fashioning and forming around a minuscule kernel of aggravated infection.

The difficult pale knot so accomplished will then rise with ohso stately grimness from the epidermal underworld, brim and build to a white welt of threat, tauntingly too deep for release, yet, ugly and evil with lurking— until at last I can bear no longer and go and fetch equipment and tools and set to turning the whole thing inside out.

Begin: Hot hot water on a scrubbing cloth:
dip, apply; dip, apply and hold, hold, hold;
dip, apply; repeat.

Bit by bit the thing will give, some small entry will open, softened, sometimes chafed, to opening, and then, oh release, the grotesque and voluptuous thrill of expression. 

Lately when I play dressup, I’ve caught myself thinking of the style I’m concocting as Gypsy Schoolmarm Chic (swirly typeface in my head).

Liking the whirly wild of the one combined with the sexy stern of the other, I offer it up as a sort of fanfic elaboration of the naughty librarian motif.

Part of the project, frankly, has to do with locating and/or innovating apparel that allows me to dispense altogether with the brassiere (that hateful scratchy mechanism in the tradition of corsets and bound feet). Consequently I gravitate  toward quasi-renaissance accessories in thrift racks which provide, by way of buttons, hooks, ties, and an assortment of latchy catches the strategic cinching and trussing up of collective bits into a shapely yet comfortably wearable form. This granted Madonnaesque tic toward support attire à l’extérieur instigates a slight revision: Exoskeletal Gypsy Schoolmarm Chic– not quite the domain of Steampunk, but retro-dramatic costumery all the same.

Recently I came up short with a raft of self-induced anxiety about this, ahem, fondness for thrifting (which becomes paradoxically frequent in inverse proportion to availability of funds). There I was, all caught up in dramatic and fun! throes of characteristically gothic self-recrimination when of a sudden I was visited by a windfall revelation– or, rationalization, maybe– either way the idea descended with the benificent flutter of virtual rose petals: I could open a resale shop on Etsy.

 Cue chorus of heavenly host. Oh, I know, grand online sales dreams are a dime a dozen. Still, it just might be a workable solution, if not to global belligerence and rampant economic inequality, at least ameliorating a bit the losing equation of household finances. (Theoretical) income could (conceivably) offset expenses ($ if not time). Given how the lowrent resale shops I frequent are so universally void of dressing rooms, this plan as well accounts for the bits that simply don’t fit that I inevitably wind up home with, having raptured over decorative stitching or fabric tooth and thrown my couple bucks down on the secondhand roulette wheel (more soon on affiliated seamstressing badge also currently undertaken).

It further makes me happy that, in allowing some space for (occasionally absurd and undignified) play and exploration, even up against the starchiest of uptight bugaboos like Mr. Worthwhile Use Of One’s Time and Money, I’ve succeeded in pushing past and through simple narcissism (ooh, shudder; tho who’s to say not simply a deeper form of narcissism)– all that dressing up and posing for webcam timer ding (honestly)– push past traditional scruples and modesties, brushing by (clearly) a couple of very widgedy Shoulds, to arrive at a delightful arena for the performance of theatre in the miniature peopled with variable invented personas, each attired expressly to suit her role.

(Quite possibly my imagination runs to the theatrical lately thanks to Julian Fellowes, whose wonderful attention to costumery I’ve been engulfed in lately by way of both video and ebook.)

Floyd thinks I should simply pay more attention to the squeaky hedgehog.

Write a book, he says. This thingamajiggy is only for people who write books.

Instead I write a moany email to to a friend. All about my habitual (indulging) inclination toward stuckness, blah blah blah. Immediately after hitting Send I see the whole thing illuminated in reverse: the simple problem being my inadequate supply of stick-to-it-iveness.

And so I sit me here writing. As episodic and halting and whatever whatever as the project may be. Regardless, so, I write.

I’ve been grappling a bit lately, actually, with what indeed to post here on the blog, words-wise. Images seem to have been no problem whatsoever for awhile now, but I can’t seem to fix on a doggone thing to say out loud in this space. Facebook yadda yadda and Twitter blurt and nary a paragraph for Navelgazer. The thing’s become a dingdang slideshow.

Where have I been writing? A bit on my iPhone, on and off. There’s a running Note called Writing/Thoughts. It’s undated, unfortunately, so not so terribly helpful in a journal or blog sense. Sort of blowsy impressionistic blur of days around the hood, most likely, maybe something in it for the essay I’ve been noodling so long now.

Suddenly, now, the past few days there’s been a spate of urgent chronicling and inventory. New year and birthday and all, o, that august numeral of forty-five.

I’m both embarrassed and ashamed to be so insistently insolvent. The lizard brain somehow still lurks among the 1% while the earthly body sinks down through the muck of ninety-nine.

I seek reprieve in video consumption, social media, and fattening snacks.

My husband works and sleeps then works again.

It’s cold, or maybe just lonely. Distances are shrinking. She strings lights from star to star, pegging down heaven to the immense yawn of prairie. Possibly she imagines a rainbow, somewhere.

Your yearning yawns and splits
the present day wide open. I am here
for you. My arms are wide
enough, unraveling to receive
you back, to wear
you like a living suit of
embers. I would fan
with your wings.
You are truly
not doused. Come, skin,
step into me,
pour your pearls into my
voice and we will sing
aloud with a single,
singeing cry.

Even as my friend asked me to elaborate, I was already considering what in fact I did intend by such a hifalutin phrase.

Chris and I had spent the first half of the day driving through the November rain-grey boots of Michigan, swooping a pass across the shoulder of Ohio, traversing the rural clavicle of Indiana to our heartland destination.

In all the flurry of holiday feasting and travel to see family we’d neglected to bring a bottle of wine. Remembering belatedly my horror of arriving emptyhanded, we stopped in the last neighboring town to our friends’ farm to try to pick up something– unlikely as the venue may have looked.

Unfortunately we’d forgotten about Indiana’s Sunday Blue law ban on alcohol sales, and Chris garnered the actual comment from smoky bar patrons, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Meanwhile I sat in the car deciphering road warrior bumper stickers on the motorcycle parked out front.

Happily for us, our hosts were of the most congenial and forgiving sort, toasting our collective wellbeing in generous style with bright and delicate cider and beer home brews, all the while sharing absorbing and poetic how-to insights about the brewing process, even contributing a fortuitously-named bottle of wine to accompany the lovely meal of fresh-picked garden greens, ruby beets and fragrant garlic.

I’ll admit to being a bit in awe of these two, visual artists both, who’ve seemed to manage gracefully and seemingly effortlessly the sorts of homesteading compensations that fill gaps of ready availability that come with rural living.

Present in each element of their existence is a foundational intentionality toward creative living which extends from the handmade art on the walls to the ingeniously engineered fixtures casting light to the homemade laundry soap Janet instructed me how to whip up for mere pennies*.

Eliot refers only partly in jest to his wife as The Laundry Soap Evangelist. In point of fact she nurtures a bright vision of sharing homearts secrets with a wider audience and is in fact positioned well to spread the word, characteristically interwoven as she is, nexus and tax-preparer to a wide circle of creative folks.

The art of lifestyle here seems to me both indelible and resonant where every gesture of existence becomes infused with a spirit of ingenuity and downhome resourcefulness shaped by an intuitive eye for gracious elegance.

Seated at their table, immersed to the ears and eyes in this ethos, I found it a little difficult to point out one factor distinct from another to articulate my point to those who exuded it– but for all that knew myself to be partaking with each inhalation in the gift of my friends’ lifestyle art.

* Homemade Laundry Soap recipe:

Grate 1/2 bar Fels Naptha soap into 6 cups water. Heat until dissolved, then add 1/2 cup Washing Soda and 1/2 cup Borax. Stir until dissolved. Pour into 5 gallon bucket and add 6 cups hot water, then 1 gallon cold water. Add 20 drops of essential oil of choice for scent. Stir and let stand for 24 hours. Soap will gel. Ladle into leftover plastic pint dairy bottles. Use 1/2 to 1 cup per load of laundry (about 4 loads per bottle).

(Not for front loading washers)