Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Old Houses

  
Old Houses can have a different kind of attractiveness to them.

Oh, I understand that we don't all agree on that. One fella's "lived in" is another fella's "run down".

Same deal with clothes, I suppose. Some like the neat, intense color-saturation and perfect wrinkle-free texture of polyester and rip stop nylon. Others like muted flannel and denim that's not uniformly faded as if by machine, but rather, worn by time and use to the shape of the wearer.


  
Some like electric fired pottery with glaze applied like paint and decoration characterized by complete intentionality. And others like flame-fired pots with glazes a marriage of vaguely controlled accidents and hope.


One person's driveway that needs tending -- new gravel and better edges -- is another person's two-track invitation to a more inviting, more mysterious place that just MUST be full of stories and history.

  
Old houses have old plantings. Yews can still make neat lines, but one can no longer perfect their geometry.

Ivy weaves itself into a lawn so gradually that it's impossible to remember when it was restrained into shady beds.



Pines that started out as little more than seedlings and dreams of eventual natural privacy fences, display -- once mature -- their own idea of what should and shouldn't be seen beyond their border.

Some might see an old house that sits in the middle of an industrial park and notice the scrap metal yard to the West, the orthopedic giant to the North, or the heating and cooling shop to the South... 



....while some would rather feed their pastoral imaginings by enjoying the hay field to the East as the neighbor's John Deere pocketa-pocketa-pocketas its mowed hay into windrows on a sultry Summer morning.

Check out the changes to my show schedule.  I've added a few and cancelled a few.

1 comment:

  1. We like it! Good writing and good sentiment.
    Prefer the comfortable denims too!!

    ReplyDelete