My Painted Stairs

I started to paint while the kids were at sleep-away camp.

I am an enormous admirer of Vanessa Bell’s country house, Charleston. She was the writer Virginia Woolf’s sister, of course, and she painted the walls and doorways of her home with her lifelong friend Duncan Grant. Gosh, I always thought, I’d like to be that uninhibited, that free. Then, as I approached the age of fifty, I thought, to hell with this, it’s now or never. I’m just going to start! So I started. And I painted these stairs that lead upstairs from my narrow 1911 home’s first floor. When I climb these stairs, I’m made happy. I am happy. I have a charmed life.

Here’s a larger view. I stenciled the checkerboard part, and painted the rest freehand with Benjamin Moore sample jars.

Online Hallelujahs

Here’s a marvelous web page where people struggle to interpret Leonard Cohen’s mystical song “Hallelujah.” If you love the ballad, you’ll feel for these folks trying to tackle the nearly impossible. If you don’t know the song, here’s Jeff Buckley’s rendition, here’s Rufus Wainwright’s version, K.D. Lang’s nice effort, and finally Leonard Cohen singing it himself.

Embracing the New

Learning new blogging software is not high on my list of favorite things to do. I am reminded of the time I taught myself to breathe on my left when swimming the crawl, alternating it with the breath on the right. I got out of the pool and wanted to cry. With practice, of course, I mastered the new pattern and more. This is always the case.

I am starting to blog again in part because my two teenaged sons have no notion of who I am when I’m not mothering them. “Is your mom momish?” I heard one of them ask a little friend many years ago, when very young. I have been ultra, uber momish for more than fifteen years. In learning this software, I embrace the new. Like I said…I can master this.

The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Watch

Welcome to Chattering Mind, a new blog about healthy living, yoga, and meditation. Lama Surya Das likes to say, “The mind is a terrible thing to watch.” So please watch mine!   But oh, oh, fellow chatterers, where did I put it?

We are still in the process of designing, and sorting through, so come back soon to see it and much more!