I am an artist, my hair is rarely tamed & sometimes I sleep till noon,
My house is messy and I speak to the moon.
I care less about the materials that I share with my world
and more about the passion inside myself.
I’m an artist, what more can you expect?
I am full of soul, love and all the rest. – Nikki Rowe
My house isn’t, exactly, a mess, but it could be cleaner. As could my garden be neater, with a lot less weeds. My sheets need changing, but that can wait, too. I have things, better things, to do, including this – writing, along with pondering, walking the big boy, taking a late afternoon swim in a crick, maybe even fitting in an afternoon nap. Reading. I read every day for at least an hour.
If the house is messy at least I know it’s my mess, no one else’s. Well, it’s Diego’s, too.
Someone – an acquaintance, not a friend – visiting my home said, ‘Oh, you’re an artist,” which surprised me, because I don’t describe myself that way, but they were right. Writing is an art, but I feel creative when I’m cooking, too. Life can and, imo, should be lived artistically, colorfully, if it possibly can. I believe that visitor was responding to the color and composition of my wee casa’s interiors, which I gotta say, was and remains a lovely compliment.
Color, surrounding myself with color and light, especially after a long few decades living in mostly small or even smaller white spaces in NYC matters to me. Being able to own a house, to go upstairs to bed, to have rooms that flood with actual sunshine is a gift, and one that I am thankful for on a daily basis.
I over-lit this house, my second gut renovation, largely because the house I owned before this was on the shady side of the street, where well-placed lighting really mattered. This house is not on the shady side, thus my ability to finally, finally have a garden – but yes, I had too many light fixtures installed, a couple of which I don’t, ever, use. Oh well! Live and learn.
Renovating a house is an artistic, creative act. I might have one more gut reno in me. Maybe. I said, after the first one, never again, but here I sit, inside numero two, with my eyes on a few new possibilities hereabouts. But, could I leave my garden, start anew? We’ll see.
I can’t imagine sleeping until noon, not any more, not for ages and ages. Even when I checked coats until 4 or 5 a.m. I woke to walk the dog around 8 or 9a.m., then – back to bed, back to sleep, back to dreamland. I don’t talk to the moon, but I do dance in the rain, sometimes, on my little patch of green, while Diego watches from inside the house where, preserving his perfectly coiffed, very sensitive to the elements hair, he must be thinking (maybe?), “What the hell is that crazy lady up to?”
Well, dahlink doggie-poo, I’m being an artist…
*Nikki Rowe is an Aussie poet and writer, about whom you can Google more, but that’s about all I could find other than she left school early, seeking freedom, and her 2013.poetry collection is entitled Once A Girl, Now A Woman. She is also, like myself, a quote collector. You go, girl.