Letting The Outside In

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."

-- Edith Wharton, 

Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

Toy window 8-14-14

"How does light enter a house? If the windows are open.

How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open."

-- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Every summer a war rages in my house.

The guys like it cool.

I like it hot.

As soon as the furnace is turned off in spring, they turn the AC on.

On any given summer day, it's not unusual to hear one of them complaining, shirtless, about how "stinkin' hot it is in here," while I'm shivering in a sweater and jeans under a fuzzy blanket.

If it was up to me, I'd have the windows and doors open all summer long, except maybe during the most heinous heat waves. 

But the guys like to batten down the hatches, lock everything up and seal us in tight day after day after day after day -- like lizards in a terrarium. 

Maybe it's my claustrophobia, but I can't stand being shut in like that.  It's stifling. I can't breathe.

I like to let the outside in so I can feel the breeze, smell the air, hear the rain and the birds and the children and the lawn mowers.

Don't tell the guys, but sometimes, when I'm home alone, I leave the AC on and open the windows anyway. (In the winter, I do the reverse -- open the windows and jack up the heat. I do the same thing in my car.)

But then there are days -- days when the natural atmosphere outside matches the climate-controlled atmosphere inside -- when the temperature settles in at a perfect 70-something and a lazy breeze chases away the dampness and humidity -- when I can throw up the sashes and let the air out there mingle with the air in here.

We're in a stretch of days like that, and I have the place wide open.

These are the days when there's no need to battle and we can call a truce in the window war. 

Plus, I'm home alone and there's nobody here to tell me that I can't.

Something To Keep Me From Totally Flipping My S#!T Because I'm Stuck Indoors

"To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence,

hollering, 'What's it for?'"

-- Robert Fulghum

Self portrait 4-17-14

"Human beings want to be free 

and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, 

there will come a time when they say 'That's it.'

Suddenly they find themselves doing something 

that they never would have thought they would be doing,

simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom."

-- Aung San Suu Kyi

It snowed, again and dropped into the low 20s, again.

Remember those lovely daffodils I talked about a couple of days ago? They're fucked.

After the rain beat the shit out of them, the show completely crushed them into the ground.

I tasted freedom during an all-too-brief weekend breakout, but then Winter threw me back in lockup and slammed the cell door.

I'm trapped inside looking out, again.

Yesterday I could be have used my time in solitary confinement (or as I like to think of it, "the hole") to get a jump on Spring cleaning the house -- the windows need washing, the carpets need sweeping, the furniture needs dusting, the grout needs scrubbing.

Instead, in a desperate act of survival, I spent the afternoon fighting back the crazy by making this self portrait of how I'm feeling right about now. I had to get it out of my system before I totally flipped my shit and started smashing stuff. It's a good thing, cuz I was about to start eating my own offspring.

The grout can fucking wait. I have more important things to do.