I’m Dibsing This

It’s pretty odd when walls are left the same color for years and years and years but it seems to mean that they have been gotten happy with — at some point, the just right color was fixed upon and settled.
When they still aren’t happy with, random colors are slathered upon them in anticipation of a new mood and left to ponder some and sometimes left with slathers of odd and varied colors for far too long — trying to ferret out what is truly wanted — appearing as a mess in someone else’s mind — possibly art to the one considering.
And when a cabinet can be looked upon and into and the doors not opened to adjust a thing and by the time the spaces the things inside have been keeping are outlined by dust, it is fairly known that some semblance of order has been achieved within the mind and soul of the starer.
Dust aside.
What kind of happy making can things be.
Spaces need filling.
The trick is in filling them with things of higher meaning and in a manner that creates a rhythm and flow that is pleasing — ups and down, highs and lows, ins and outs, texture and pattern — a depth of understanding.
Higher meaning almost universally agreed upon except when otherwise not related.
Comfort is key and tantamount to any other consideration such as aesthetics — the mind though, still does need comfort as well as body, so pretty is as pretty does some trick of comforting ethereal things like floating thoughts and arbitrary meaning.
And sound.
Leaf blowers need doors to close to block them some or curtains on the walls and windows for absorption such that high pitches seems less grating or intrusive.
Good neighbors think more kindly than to use them.
But some aren’t kind so sometimes curtains help a little — especially if they are pretty in the meantime.
When the house is the house your mother kept if how your mother kept it wasn’t pleasing or of a manner in your keeping, you might be happy to know that you can show your own way of how to keep a house if you so want to.
I think my mother would like mine.
My house still has her in it —
Her things and the way I am and unmopped floors and that dust that settled on the things that haven’t been moved because they have been gotten happy with.
Dust settles on unhappy things too, but that’s the dust that is easier to clean because it doesn’t matter if things are moved much.
My mother wouldn’t paint walls somewhat because she was afraid of landlord disapproval but mostly because it didn’t matter to her like it matters so to me.
“You do have great taste”, she’d always say and that pleased my soul to hear as she waltzed around my tiny little abode in those days that she was depressed and staying with me for some nights to help her fight it —
touching and holding all the things as she waltzed by them.
Mother’s love is better than any color.
In those days I had a landlord too and walls were all a shade of alabaster and not ever to be painted.
I keep as many of my mother’s things around me as there is any room for them, even if they are in boxes hiding in the studio.
The ceramic unicorn she gave me saying, “I’m dibsing this to you because you are unique too”.
“I’m dibsing this to you, when I conk out“, she’d always say instead of die.
A house full of meaning and rhythm and reason, a house built upon from what a mother left you — inside and out — is the house that is a home for any season.
Still, whenever I rearrange or change a color, I wonder for my mother’s approval. Would she still say, “You do have great taste” and I always wish that she could visit.