My Friends, Inspirations

In which I find great inspiration in my women friends and the hows and whats of what they say to the world:

"A: I hope that it says we are about love, kindness, finding beauty in the little things, and loving each other for exactly who we are and celebrating it. I also hope that the friends who visit feel welcome, comfortable, and cozy. That our home is a little escape from the everyday."

Melissa's answer when asked what she thinks her home says about her. 

"...I can't know what it's like to be the other kind of child" Sarah Manguso, Believe It or Not

(suggested reading)

"...In another, Dolores drove into a tree before we

were ever even born; in another, we owned a house

with a garage that kept the rain off, the rust out,

and the paint nice; in another, it was all mine,

we’d never met; in another, yours and someone else’s...."

Jennifer Knox, Pimp My Ride (first published in the New Yorker)

"At night, lying in bed, you think:

I haven't figured out my life yet.

Had children. Bought a house. Landed a career I love. Made peace with myself. 

I can't do all the things that will make you proud if you check out so soon.

Will they even mean anything to me after you're gone?...

...When it's over, I want to say all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.  

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

Persephone Harrington

On connections between childhood beautifully considered, it's singular impressions, possibilities of its unfolding, pear-shaped and back again, how we can try to control the ways life gets done, how we strive to understand ourselves, what has happened to us, through what we make, the stories we tell, the lives we are joined with, the lives we create, watching it unspool until we wind it back up again; these, our responsibilities. 

The above powerfully good women in the inspiring ways that they do, I am thankful for the above in my life, I am thinking about my father who would have turned 92 this week, I am thinking of going back to it, now that the only thing I've done so far today is create an opportunity to think about the above, ruminate, move through it. Maybe you can see it better than me.

top 2 photos of Melissa's interiors by marichelle

3rd is mine, 4th is Robert Doisneau: Papa’s Airplane, 1934, 5th is of my parents by Alexa Vachon, 6th is by Jim, in Marrakech in the Badii Palace