Windows on the Sea

And speaking of windows on the sea!

This is of course a far different window than the one I imagined yesterday, but no less magical.




image:  Isulasicilia, Stefano Mirabella

Window

Oh, how I want this window!

Windows are our way of negotiating the outside and the in-.  They are the space—the interface—where we decide moment to moment whether to travel out, whether to let things (and which things) into our private sanctum, the rooms where we think, write, live, breathe. 

They’re places of possibility.  Of yearning.  Of hesitation, and off-putting.  Sometimes, shuttered, of refusal.  Of negation.

Windows like this one draw us, offer daydreams, embody peace, the sun-struck happiness of being where we are.

image:  Il lago del Silenzio è Poesia__

Places I Would Rather Be

And I am!

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Window, Canyon Road, Santa Fe

Windows

Any given window can greatly affect 
one's outlook . . .

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Kenilworth Latticework

Windows

Nice sparkly clean windows are wonderful, but I also like atmospheric old windows with stories written on the glass—like the window looking out on turrets in my little room atop the winding stairs in the castle in Durham.

Windows with sun through them are always my favorites.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Window, Durham Castle

Windows

I am excited at the thought of getting our windows washed on Friday.  Here's a concept, though—not having glass to worry about getting dirty!

This lovely view of the River Tees and its valley was at Barnard Castle, Richard III's favorite.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Window, Barnard Castle

Summer School

The cool light of a disused classroom (this at Mills) makes me long for summer school, and by association for the ruined red clay tennis court across the road from my prep school, the court belonging to a convent there in Santa Fe.  I think of The Magus, John Fowles's mysterious novel about teaching school on the island of Spetses, south of Athens, full of summer sea and sun and lessons on life.

Things I’ve studied in the summer:

typing

handwriting

writing mysteries

ancient writing

painting Zen circles

British archaeology

Alpine archaeology

the Impressionists

tennis

Pilates

horseback riding

book publishing

French

photography

Healing Touch

Mallorcan cooking

 

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Classroom Windows

Windows

I give in, always, to the allure of windows—those liminal spaces that offer often anything, for love or money.  The glass is never barrier, but rather opening, or passageway, or conduit, the realm of Hermes, god of mischief, serendipity, the path.

Holiday windows are especially full of magic and of fun.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Montreal Window

Windows

Pottery Shop, Allied Arts, Menlo Park, Christie B. Cochrell

Windows

Wherever I am, I like to coax out quiet revelations, luminous and lovely—the play of light, the journeyings of time, things ephemeral and ancient.  I'm especially fascinated by the liminal space of windows, by the ambiguities of outside and in, substance and reflection, glass and what's printed on it or held within it.
 
Joyful things; joie de vivre.

 “The reality of any joy in the world is indescribable; only in joy does creation take place . . .  Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness. . . .  Joy is a moment, unobligated, timeless from the beginning, not to be held but also not to be truly lost again, since under its impact our being is changed chemically, so to speak, and does not only, as may be the case with happiness, savor and enjoy itself in a new mixture."

     —Rainer Maria Rilke, January 1914

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Ducks, Sonoma