Abode

I've lived on Lakeside for eight months now, enough time to paint the walls and watch kudzu claim the gorge across the street, to get used to the refrigerators' hum and the basement door that I have to kick in through spiderwebs every time. I'll be here until the next step comes.

You've already met the living room. Here is the rest of my little home.

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need--but are at risk of forgetting we need--within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
--Alain de Botton, from The Architecture of Happiness

Walls: Tranquil Bay. Prints: Mark Rice. Cat: Snickers.

Scooter claims the only rug in the house, and Snickers cozies up to her favorite lamp.

Tree print: Tess Ellis. Broadside: HC Palmer. Goat in the Cusions: Mark Rice (HUGE WEATHER: DATA #14).

Desk: Where the writing sometimes happens. Postcards c/o Diane, Shannon, Roanoke, and Texas.

Walls: Oyster Bisque. Collages: Kerri Ammirata and Corinne Manning. Write, Learn, Read: Beth Rankin. The rest: office, life.

Where visitors sleep.

Doilies, koala hankie: a tribute to Grandma Lentz, all hers.

Snickers' perch above the backyard kudzu.

Two rooms. Chinese animals: a former Chinese student.

Walls: Crushed Cumin.

Home, Where Your Story Begins: c/o Mom. Others: reminders about living.

Peaches. Snickers. Haires. Home.