Shelter...It's NOT for Everyone - Notes to Self

posted 08/24/2006
They came to me from every corner of the décor universe, these shelter magazines. You know the ones - resplendent covers showing New England porches in autumn, festooned with antique whaling equipment, festive foliage arrangements, and whimsically placed harvest vegetables (a group of turnips, artfully placed, can make a lovely centerpiece).

Or the ones that have a contemporary edge with the articles that tell you about this impossibly young couple (he's a successful 24 -year -old visual designer and she's the 23 -year- old director of textile reproductions at a major firm specializing in French interiors). The article shows page after glossy page detailing how the couple took an abandoned abattoir in a narcotics-and-rat-infested corner of their city and turned it into an airy, sun lit space. The magazine spread reflects their interests in kitchen appliances of the 1930's, Cumberland Spaniels, and gospel music.

When I really wanted to punish myself and reflect on my lack of interesting interests and stunted worldliness, I found myself in the European shelter publications. It is then that it became apparent that I don't have a library ladder, a stable with the kind of horses that allowed me to compete in equestrian events and enjoy après event buffets, and had not inherited anything remotely approaching a family heirloom. (We did have a toaster from my father's first marriage, but after 60 years, it seemed likely to be a fire hazard.)

These magazines are just oozing the kind of stuff that I don't have (a library or a horse or an heirloom), foods I don't cook (fig pesto, anything with pomegranates) and creative, if ambiguous, employment (upholstery consultant, fragrance representative) that I am unlikely to obtain. Still, for many years, I remained smitten. I bought. I subscribed. I clipped and saved. I was shelter voyeur, and it had been my small-time addiction since my long-ago youth.

I used these magazines as a way to meet people far removed from my own life. I was fascinated how they have fabricated their dwellings to reflect either their own personal mythology, or that of a hired mythology maker.

One couple collects harpoons and hung them in their foyer because they are descendants of New Hampshire whalers of the 18th century. (If I were to decorate in a style that would reflect my lineage, I would have an impressive grouping of single-wide mobile homes from the 20th century and a book called "Husband Pleasin' Sausage Recipes"). Another couple has such a sparse aesthetic that they keep only two stainless steel bowls and a set of zebra-wood chopsticks in their kitchen, and called it quits.

Other people used their homes to showcase their art (wire sculpture), or their deepest longings (a collection of saddle shoes from the '50s, strewn on a replica of a soda fountain), their flamboyance or their individualism ("This loft doesn't have water or electricity or windows - it's just perfect for me my lover, and my chinchilla, Oswald!").

Mostly, I used to celebrate that someone, somewhere, felt the urge to hang harpoons in their entry. I was wild for the improbable residential kitchens as big as airplane hangars, with appliances so complex that they defied identification. I appreciated the colorful interplay between Italian glass tiles shaped liked fish and the antique Persian rug in the guest bath. Look at the cool laundry room with its innovative shelving..look what these people have done by taking a rusted I-beam and fashioning a chic coffee table. Look at the cloister-cum- tea-room, and the ancestral home that has found new life as a business that makes commercial fruit breads. Look at all these homes and the intriguing stories and the curious stuff and the tantalizing enterprises that take place there.

I was on it. I embraced it. I loved shelter magazines, and I loved shelter in all of its inexhaustible guises - sparse, indulgent, gross, modern, shabby, kitschy, elegant, ethnic and Old World. Bring it on. And, although, I did not live in shelter anywhere near worthy of a magazine, I did not begrudge those fabulous shelters to their fabulous residents. My furniture all came from a furniture store, with no history (besides credit). I do not have a recognizable collection of objects, or art that reflects any personal taste whatsoever. My shelter reflects nothing that marks me as an eccentric person living in a space that speaks of my passions, exotic or otherwise. Yet, I was still able to admire other shelters and validate the lives of their occupants with a generous, open heart.

Until, the years passed.and I found myself sent into howling despair when it became clear that the people in these shelters are not just living lives in intriguing environments, with great stuff and doing eclectic work. There is another, insidious evil present.all that amazing space AND they have nerve to flaunt their family ties and friends. This makes me cringe. This makes me feel envious and neglected.

Read along in a shelter magazine and you will find that the owners met and fell in love at an Amish quilt sale. Martin and Tasha knew instantly that they wanted to exchange their hectic city lives (he, a foreign currency specialist and she, a U.N. Cantonese translator) and move to the country. There, they realized their mutual dream of opening an inn, and antique automobile restoration business. When not at the inn or in the garage, most autumn days find them wearing vintage clothing and driving their 1933 Osprey throughout New England for tailgate breakfasts (made from fresh, locally grown foods) with other antique automobile enthusiasts. "We just knew that this was the right choice for us," Tasha says in her interview.

Simon and Earl never imagined that they would live in a lighthouse, or open an organic fibers weaving studio. Yet, buy and restore a lighthouse, they did, with a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work. Simon tells us, "You would not believe how hard it is to decorate in a circle, so we've kept it really informal. Our friends really love coming to celebrate the holidays or special occasions, spend the weekends and just relax." Earl, who is the quieter of the couple, smiles out from the tiny kitchen, indicating with a pair of salad tongs, that he is passionate about cooking with fresh, locally grown produce. They are in love.

Worse, Andreas and Eleanore vacation every summer in Top Bunksport. The main house was built in the 1800's by Andreas' great-great-etc.- uncle, and every summer the outbuildings and yard and screened porch and beach and forest and pond, swell with generations of descendants, half of which are adorable babies and toddlers in sun hats. Days are spent clamming and sailing and playing board games. In the evening, after wonderful communal meals cooked with fresh local foods, the children run around catching fireflies, while the adults drink aged wine around the outdoor fireplace. Then, tired but happy, the kids retire harmoniously and sleepy to dormer bedrooms under the gabled roof, and the grown ups drop into handmade burled maple beds with white linens, fresh from the line.

It is this that I cannot abide. I can forgive them their great houses, and their sense of style and imaginative design. I can forgive that people have intriguing pursuits that have led to interesting careers. I can even, in my good-natured way, accept that there are people who find someone they can tolerate and make some sort of a coupling arrangement.

What I cannot bear, and what shelter magazines make oh-so-clear, is that these people have not achieved shelter alone. Shelter is the subsequent child of the love between two people. People first win the love lottery, then they get the shelter. First they meet at a rare carpets exhibition, then they fall in love, then they get shelter. Shelter is the reward for successful mating, and the reward continues to multiply by the presence of growing families and friends. Wine is poured, candles are lighted, people bask in this shelter. Childhood memories are made under the eaves. Shelter is passed on.

Shelter magazines do not, as a rule, photograph Garland's quaint and remote tree fort. While Garland has a wonderful series of pen and ink fern studies, and his roof is shaped like a toadstool, Garland is a recluse. He is single. He met the standard of shelter, but has not achieved love. What's the point of having a tree fort if you don't have anyone with whom to share it?

Allison may be working on a coffee-table book on squirrels and live in an adorable hut made from twigs and moss, but she is single. Shelter magazine will not be detailing her solitary existence, no matter how eclectic her hovel, her vast pine cone collection, or how outlandish her work. Shelter on your own, ain't shelter.

As the years add, I find that I have fewer shelter magazine subscriptions. Less and less do I flip through any magazine title that begins or ends with "Living" and is combined with country, cottage, urban, coastal, mountain, timber, log, natural, or garden. They are pretty much all the same in their praise of shelter and the coupling it takes to achieve it. I've seen too many happy photo-families in homes both simple and grand, having picnics, decorating for each and every holiday, replete with children and pets and continuity and celebration and vats of cooked food made from fresh, locally grown ingredients.

Perhaps I will start my own shelter magazine.something like "Single Living" or "Only Living". At first, my magazine will just show store bought tables, covered with bills and plates of leftover food made from non-locally grown frozen, pesticide saturated sludge.

But then, I will meet my beloved at a magazine editors convention and we will discover that we share an interest in citrus. And we will move to Florida and we will restore a bungalow in the Keys and use vibrant pink and mangos in our color scheme, and we will collect a lot of something or other.flamingos, maybe. Real ones.

Next column

Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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