The Bewildered

The Dutch have a saying for those moments when you’re so surprised by something that you can’t respond, can’t do anything, can’t say anything, can only just stand there staring as some flabbergasting detail tries to seep through your ignorance and into your consciousness. In moments like these, the Dutch say, “I just stood there with my mouth full of teeth.”

For instance, you might be recounting the story of how at breakfast one morning your boyfriend abruptly stood up, tossed his eggs in the sink and told you he was leaving you because he was convinced you were dream-cheating on him in a three-way with Michelle Williams and the ghost of Heath Ledger. To say that you stood there in shock, doesn’t quite capture the feeling of having your stomach drop into your feet and root you to the floor (not to mention the ridiculousness of the accusation); to say that your mouth was agape is too high-toned. But think about concluding this story (or insert your own variation on the theme), with, “I just stood there with my mouth full of teeth.” Yes! I think it touches on something about these kinds of moments; the phrase tries to describe the oddly frozen response we can have to shock and awe, the strange disabling of all the neurons that might otherwise direct our mouths to say something, or cause our passions to rise, our anger to spill out into plate-throwing and name-calling.

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In about grade three, you probably learned that a group of geese is called a “gaggle.” If you were sufficiently bookish, like me, you promptly went to the library to fact-check your teacher, and found that the phenomenon spread much further, and got progressively more delightful. A group of blue jays is called a “scold,” and a group of crows a “murder” (birds, it seems, most benefit from this system, many of them spending, as they do, most of their time in large groups), but, it gets much better than murderous crows terrorizing your scarecrow…

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Did you notice in the last post that Elsie de Wolfe included a picture of “a corner of [her] own boudoir” in her book The House in Good Taste? Moreover, did you notice how bland the picture is? A writing desk, a few bookshelves, some papers strewn around… a far cry from the sets of “boudoir” photographers with their soft-focus lighting and satin pillows. The difference between what I imagined a boudoir to be and that very ordinary space was striking enough to make me dust off my dictionary and figure out where my imagination and Elsie’s reality had diverged.

The OED says the word boudoir originated in late 18^th century France and literally means “sulking-place.” (It comes from bouder, which means to “pout” or “sulk.”) Ah history, always so offensive.

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Candace Wheeler was one of the originators of the notion that women should construct “homes” for their husbands and families through attention to decorating and design. Not to be dismissed for spawning the likes of Martha Stewart, Wheeler actually helped to institute interior decorating as a viable career path for women at a time when women largely didn’t work outside the home. She published Household Art in in 1893 and Principles of Home Decoration in 1903, which gave specific  instruction, both to emerging decorators, but also to women, now encouraged to think of themselves as makers of their homes. These are just some of the patterns she created for her female-run design firm, Associated Artists. Nice work that somehow doesn’t betray its age.

“It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual castle in Spain, but it isn’t necessary to live among intolerable furnishing just because we cannot realize our castle.”

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I’ve been thinking about the idea of home a lot lately. Like many people my age who moved out early, I’ve spent the last decade shifting between people, places, education and jobs. In the past 12 years, I’ve lived in 10 different apartments, been in 8 or so serious or semi-serious relationships, completed 8 years and counting of higher education at two different institutions, worked at 5 different and unrelated jobs (and a host of other casual or contract jobs). Though with each change I felt I knew what I was doing and where I was going, the thing that began to feel lost was my sense of “home.” In all the flux that characterizes a life being shaped, how do we find “home”? When no place ever feels permanent, when the next opportunity is always being anticipated, how do we build a sense of home? Home can’t help but feel far away, stuck in some past childhood moment when we lived in some unquestioned place called “home.” But, where is home when your parents have sold the family house and moved into a condo? When you’ve lived in dozens of different places with a host of different people, from roommates to cats to ex-lovers? Will we ever feel at home again?

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I re-read Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on “late-bloomers” recently when I was included on a group email from a friend, sent out to our cadre of 30-something friends who have each pursued various artistic/creative/thoughtful pursuits. It was, I think, meant to inspire.

The article distinguishes between two types of creatives: the early genius and the late-bloomer. The former, he argues, is our stereotypical impression of the artist. The tortured young soul who is captivated early by a passion that must be expressed and who spews out evident classics before most of his (and, of course, these geniuses are historically male for reasons of gender bias in record keeping and publicity) peers have figured out how to tie their ascots. However, Gladwell points out that many artists did not achieve early success, and, in many cases, were mediocre at best in their early years, before producing masterpieces late in life. These artists are, of course, the late bloomers.

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This is a test & only a test of the Emergency Test Post System. Should you actually need to post a test, test the post by posting a test with text about the post. PS. Mucho Love…