decorating

For a while things were going poorly in my domestic life. A dark and moody spirit filled the house. Then I remembered how the problems began when I removed all bright colors from my home to replace them with shades of black and purple. I can’t remember why I did this, exactly. I think I was trying to open a portal to the world where spirits live in the hopes of gaining magical powers. At any rate, at a certain point magical powers seem less appealing than the ability to live a normal happy life. So I removed these dark colors, replaced them with yellow & other shades of cheer, and life seemed to pick up again.*

I am beginning to think the secret to surviving in West Virginia may be decorating in a colorful, chunky style, with plenty of homemade crafts and colors from warm end of the spectrum. Earthiness combined with fire.

My natural tendency, of course, would be to surround myself with all things delicate & dainty. But I don’t think lavender lace has the muscle to push through this heavy mountainous energy. And ultimately decoration is about survival, not self-expression.

Every environment presents us with challenges to our spirit. Sunny ones melt our brains, while cold ones freeze our hearts. Deserts dry out our emotions while moisture bogs us down. Plains fill us with desolation and rounded mountains with inertia. Here in West Virginia, a moist and mountainous environment, heaviness and inertia are the demons we wrestle with.

This mostly challenges men** since this squishy thickness makes it hard to be brisk and productive. It is a great place to be a woman, however, because so many of the spiritual and emotional diseases that plague other parts of America don’t exist here.

Mountain mamas don’t get ribs removed to fit into the latest fashion. They don’t see themselves as objects or obsess over the “male gaze.” People here rarely seek meaning through career success, but rather through connections to God, family and nature.

But for men, this West Virginia environment is challenging. It is hard to get that dry, crispy feeling which allows people to think objectively. Hence why we are plagued by functionality problems- poverty, divorce, drugs, decay and disorganization. There isn’t enough yang energy for men to get their bearings.

So, what is the solution to all this? Decorating in a chunky colorful fashion, of course. This will obliterate all environmental challenges and turn West Virginia into a heaven on Earth. I hope. Stay tuned & I will let you know how it works.

* These statements seemed true at the time I made them (yesterday).

** For people who enjoy qualifications, when I refer to men, I am also referring to the masculine side in us all.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

I saw the people form a long thin line
They surrounded me in a circle; I did not want to die
I saw a dark spot move across the sky
Her message was so clear to me: goodbye, goodbye.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

They built their village in the northern woods
This is not my home, one day I’ll leave for good
I cooked my food beneath a veil of stars
This is not my home, I said with quivering arms.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

They crossed the river in a long thin line
Their clothes were stacked upon their heads, piled so high
They held each other’s hands with long thin arms
Though I leave this place, I will remember you as fallen stars.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song.

I wrote this song a couple years ago when I was redecorating my apartment in the hopes that it would magically transform my life into a more exciting one. Since I had already tried every other decorating style I could think of- and my exciting life had not yet manifested- I decided to use reverse psychology on the universe and make my home impersonal and sterile, like a business office. I ‘decluttered,’ removed pictures from the wall, and replaced cutesy soap dishes with industrial ones. I tried to make everything as white and empty as possible. I decided to stop writing songs, to make the void even greater.

And it did make me feel empty. I always get this particular sad feeling after decluttering. ‘Decluttering’ is a popular movement at the moment- supposedly all aspects of your life will improve when you release unnecessary possessions- but I am more or less an opponent of it. Without possessions to weigh us down, our minds become untethered. I learned this the hard way, having given away my possessions many times. When I left one husband and married another, I placed everything I owned, clothing and all, into one duffle bag. I didn’t even have different clothes for summer and winter, just a pair of green shorts and yellow pants that I wore both in snow and extreme humidity. Plus a pink polo shirt with green frogs on it.

Sometimes I still find it challenging to deal with the responsibility of material possessions, but that is life. It is better to be crushed alive by heaviness than to go insane from extreme lightness. Isn’t it?

At any rate, this song is an expression of the ache I felt after turning my home into a business office.