Front Room

Things are starting to take shape around here, we have accomplished a lot since moving in less than two months ago. We now have a better idea about what we have to work with, and what we want our home to become. We are just now beginning to think about what to do with some of our less populated rooms.

The "front room" is one that we have high hopes for. It is the first room you encounter as you enter the house, so we believe it is important to develop the right feel in there. It also has a few things going for it which we are hoping to capitalize on. It connects to the dining room, the kitchen, and a sun room. The sun room contains a great upright grand piano. There is a nice flow between all of the rooms. As you enter from the porch you will find stairs to the right that lead to the bedrooms. The room needs to be in sync with the rest of the house, while establishing a feel and welcoming visitors. It has a dark oak wood floor, and gets excellent light in the afternoon. It has simple, but substantial woodwork, and a nice archway leading into the dining room. The room is painted a classic tan green that looks really good behind the old fashioned radiators. Right now the room contains a crappy Ikea chair, and a crappy Ikea lamp on a crappy filing cabinet. We believe the curtains were bedsheets in a former life. The paintings were hung in an attempt to activate the space. None of the furniture will stay. More information to follow, the suggestion box is officially open.

Your Balzac is Dusty

Instead of pulling the stump of our dead tree from the ground and planting something new, I was thinking about creating a permanent monument to the great Auguste Rodin.

We have a friend who works at the Museum of Modern Art. He once told us a story about a woman who approached a security guard to inform him that the "Balzac" was dusty. She was referring of course, to the sculpture proudly displayed on the museum's ground floor. A museum publication begins to explain the importance of Rodin's Monument to Balzac:

Commissioned to honor one of France's greatest novelists, Rodin spent seven years preparing for Monument to Balzac, studying the writer's life and work, posing models who resembled him, and ordering clothes to his measurements. Ultimately, though, Rodin's aim was less Honoré de Balzac's physical likeness than an idea or spirit of the man, and a sense of his creative vitality: "I think of his intense labor, of the difficulty of his life, of his incessant battles and of his great courage. I would express all that."

Several studies for the work are nudes, but Rodin finally clothed the figure in a robe inspired by the dressing gown that Balzac often wore when writing. (He liked to work at night.) The effect is to make the figure a monolith, a single, phallic, upward-thrusting form crowned by the craggy ridges and cavities that define the head and face.

I hope to generate a similar sentiment by carving the remainder of our tree into a replica of Rodin's Balzac. Doing this will create a lasting tribute- a veritable icon of solidarity representing all that is good in suburbia and the world beyond. The likes of which the North-Woods has never seen before. Plus, I'm pretty sure it will increase our property value.

Rodin said this, "to the artist there is never anything ugly in nature." I think the neighbors will agree.

I feel sort of bad about this . . .

This past weekend we learned that the one tree in front of our house was dead. We immediately began the process of removal.

Here is the before and after:
before

after

Monday Sketchbook

Instead of putting an area rug under our dining room table . . .
how about putting the rug around the table?

leaving the hardwood floor exposed where the rug would normally be.

Streaks on the China

As the work grinds on, the need for help becomes pressing.

What's In Your Netflix Queue?

In the next few weeks we plan to post updates on what we have accomplished in the house so far. Included will be recent photos, a little bit about our thought process, and questions on how to proceed. It has truly been a lot more work than I envisioned. This may explain why I feel indebted to the house, and why I have been suffering from a strange sort of self-imposed house arrest.

At some point during the process of buying a house I had a fantasy of moving in, stockpiling ammunition, and never going outside. Well, now that my Netflix subscription is up and running, it finally may be possible to do so. We used to get our movies from Rick's Piermont Pictures. It was only about 200 yards from our apartment. We would walk over, browse the selection, chat with some locals and maybe pick something up. Rick's collection seemed without parallel and we loved going in there, so it hurts to admit that Netflix is actually better. Our Netflix membership seems like an oddly appropriate symbol for our move from the village to the countryside, but I have to say that I am very pleased with everything. As it turns out being isolated is easy. We have made a lot of progress and seen some strange and wonderful films along the way. So, as we continue working and watching, I would like to ride out the weekend by posing a simple question. What's in your Netflix queue?

Read more about Rick's in this previous post.

The Chaff or The Trash Heap Has Spoken

While peeling the green checkered wallpaper in the kitchen, this shape appeared. Everyone present agreed that the shape looked like a goat. I took its appearance as an omen. See, in certain cultures egoic delusion is represented by the "willful goat"(the leader of the deluded people is a goat-man, the devil, the Prince of Pride). Here is a picture of a real goat:

The resemblance is truly uncanny. The weird thing about all of this is that I can't separate the vision of the wallpaper goat from my memories of Fraggle Rock. When I downloaded the photo at the top of the page I realized why. Look at the two creatures to the right of the Trash Heap, they look like rats only they are not. Those two creatures are known as heckling heralds and they are dead ringers for my wallpaper goat. To find out why this may be significant let me tell you a little bit about the Trash Heap. The Trash Heap, also known as Marjory, was "a wise being, similar to a shaman, that was the garbage dump of the Gorgs(you'll have to do your own research to find out what a Gorg is.) She and her heckling heralds lived near the Gorg's garden, and she gave the fraggles guidance and advice, which the fraggles regarded with reverence, but not worship." So what the hell is going on here? Why did a symbol of the false beliefs of the conscious mind manifest itself on the wall of our eat-in-kitchen? Let's try to get to the bottom of it by looking at our home's deeper mysteries.

Here is the upstairs bathroom with Yankee stripe tile and flowery wallpaper. A demonic combo.

The Yankee theme continues into the half bath downstairs, which has been known to cause dizziness and nausea.

These spackle-dust shadows leave you with more questions than answers, Where is the hammer? Where is the handbag?

A freshly lit fire. A lifeline.

What will fill this void?