It’s only in times of stress that I start thinking about all the things I’d like to have, and all the impossible projects I would love to complete. Sometimes I find some strange “prizes” on craigslist, particularly in the “free” sections, and they become all I need to set the dreaming in motion. Spring is coming and the levels of stress, like sap in the sugar bush, rise easily. So I want to indulge in a small amount of hedonistic desire.
To top things off, everything at this point is exactly upside down and up in the air and looking very damned precarious. I am, sigh, once again in the seams between the proverbial rock and the hard place. I am @#$%!*@!!! tired of it, too. While driving around today I contemplated bridges in that old familiar way no one wants to hear about anymore–then realized the only way out is through. Consequently, everything is irritating me, everything is an agitation. All my thoughts naturally turn to consumption. The timing is perfect then: desire, consume, create.
The antique gas range, above, makes me want to convert the fruit barn on our property to a functional, compact loft studio apartment, something I feel it’s been yearning to become since I first set foot in its pineplanked haven. I love its open space, the fact of it being a relic from some other time. It looks out over seyval blanc vines and oak forests on one side; on the other, it opens out to a gravel parking area (where a balcony might certainly come in handy, as well as another staircase to create another entrance). In my mind,
that old farmhand’s sleeping space would easily make a home for a single person. It has enough light, height, and room for antique technology to make living in it almost cost free (save for electricity, but it won’t use that much–and this kicks in the other big fantasy of solar panels for passive photovoltaic, and passive solar water heat as well. And ultraviolet light water purification! And a cistern to collect rainwater from the metal rooftop! Or a rooftop garden! Sigh).
When pieces like these are just being given away…well, then I can let my imagination get the better of me. This old stove to the right would never work as a woodstove, which would make heating the old loft that much easier, come winter. Bu it looks much lighter than an AGA, which would fill that demand easily enough except for one thing: I have a fear one of those would go right through the floor, splintering the pine right through to the old fruit refrigerator directly underneath. Of course, that fruit refrigerator could take on another use, I might even revive it’s fruitwood lined pastlife by removing all the odd changes put in to convert the room into a barrel cellar/still closet for the alembic. Yes, that’s what’s there now. Please don’t ask.
Maybe I could use each of the stoves in two different places: the fruit barn, as a means of converting its loft; and the old livestock barn, to convert the entire space into a two storey apartment structure, suitable for one person or two who are willing to share the same sleeping space. There are so many unused outbuildings on this property it would drive an architect to tears. It drives a frustrated architect wannabe like me to tears, or at the very least to distraction. Distraction feels damn good, at the moment, I’m pretending I’m anything but what I am while I design not just the structure but the rooms and the entire building scape–like a frenzied little rural planner! And just who would inhabit these new living spaces, so functionally advanced and green? Who?
More shock happens as some old patterns resurface, and financial stresses increase. I think about tucking all those renovation plans away in favour of the increasingly irrational options, consumption with no real goal other than accumulation. Suddenly the wish list includes things such as:
A reasonable time limit (2 hours should do it, not a nanosecond more) and an unlimited expense account at John Fluevog on Queen Street, since sculptured heels have been a reality in his design for quite a while now (and I’m not sold on the ugly Prada “blossom” heels, or the hideous Fendi stumps). Copper’s good against my skin, the heels aren’t that high (fine: yes they are) and Fluevog knocks off no one. The time limit is just to keep the greed level down…after all, a man should be paid for his work, and my appetite for pretty things can be insatiable.
The red “Madly” (from the “Truly”, “Madly”, “Deeply” series) shoes speak for themselves. Though I think they’re a tad on the understated and conservative side, until you picture them being worn with clothes not strictly meant for the outdoors.
Pink? Gold? Okay, these are pretty and they’re chic Bally Switzerland shoes. They’re also a puzzling choice and they don’t really suit me. But for some reason I think I might just clean up real good if I chose something natty and feminine to go along with these. Natty, feminine, pink: it’d be like assuming another persona. No one would recognize me until I let that first curse word slip into my conversation. On second thought, those shoes just don’t look safe anymore.
The Yamaha Virago coordinates with none of the items pictured above.
It always comes in my size, always comes in my colour.
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