It occurred to me yesterday morning, as my senses were rejoicing in the cinnamon and peaches of a baking cake, that it was possible to fill a house to the rafters with smells and colors, music and moments of light, instead of with things that weigh and halt. Why not live that way, simply, with the fragrances of beeswax and lavender, the extravagance of clean Egyptian cotton sheets, birdsong through the open windows (until a burbling pot steams them)? Or paint a room an intense blue and put nothing else in it but a single tangerine or orange? There are ways of living that are not so ponderous. Getting rid of the piano that I never play, the sewing machine buried under a huge computer monitor never turned on, the books I have no hope of reading. The eternal clutter.
And yet, and yet. The things that make the lightness possible are not themselves insubstantial. For the golden cake, beaters and pans and bowls. For music, stereo systems and unsightly wires, or pianos that scarcely fit through doorways. For beeswax, the long-grained wooden farmhouse table to rub it into; jars and rags and storage shelves. And so it all accumulates.
And what of lost chances? The song I want to find to play again someday on my piano, out of tune and sticky keys or no—the song by Faure or by Grieg, without words, that I regret to this day not having had the courage to play that lilac-haunted spring evening of high-school baccalaureate in the lengthening evening sun coming through the open door of the unfamiliar church. My music books given away, even the name of song and composer lost.
And what of other objects that take on themselves the light, allow the momentary grace? My little light-struck fetishes, the jeweled river of the Tiffany window, the green-glazed sphere above the (laden) writing desk?
I shall weigh the consequences to spirit of letting go—and in the meantime breathe the lingering spice and listen again to what might be my lost song, Faure's Romance sans Paroles, loosed these more than thirty years later.
Image: Christie B. Cochrell, Bear Fetish
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