Romance
picture by DaveFeyram
The great thing about this time of year is the urge to purge that tends to come along with Xmas and New Year. I suppose I subscribe to that Chinese tradition of ritualistically cleansing the house ever year, what we in the West all know as the De-clutter. Please, it has earned its capital ‘D’. Life is never the same once you make the commitment.
Several years ago I began Linda Breen Pierce’s Simplicity Lessons but never quite made my way through all twelve lessons. I can’t even find it on my book shelf now so no doubt I passed it on to some needful soul. I can’t say it changed my life, but it did confirm the path I was drawn to take. I want a simpler life with a smaller carbon footrprint. I’ve had mixed success and I’m still on that journey.
Then last year I did Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way via an online working group, which further challenged my thinking about work and career and life in general. I suppose I came to trust my instincts a little more, to let myself feel instead of having to intellectualise everything - as I am wont to do.
So it was kinda humorous, and with just a bit of ‘caution to the wind’, that I indulged darling hubby’s desire to move a red hued painting by a friend of mine from a prominent place in the house to the right hand opposite ‘romance’ corner of our marital room. Was he trying to tell me something, I wonder?
Feng shui? Of course, I’m a sceptic. On the other hand, what reading I have done on the subject suggests it’s all about enabling efficiency and flow in our living environments. Flow, being that state where amazing things become possible, is what I’m all about. My inner sceptic, however, isn’t dazzled by the flutes and mirrors.
I must explain that we have not had an official ‘bedroom’ since children came on the scene. When they were small, our mattress remained sensibly on the floor, pressed up against one wall, giving space for other mattresses so that we might accommodate any combination of sleeping babies and children, with washing baskets crammed in the corners, or any other crap that didn’t have a rightful place to go. It was surely a metaphor for the time. Partnership and parenthood were one and the same and there was no space for romance. (Remind me again how four children are conceived??) We had not, until recently, even owned a proper western style bed (who cares really, but it is symbolic).
The process began when someone in my study group for The Artist’s Way raised a discussion about where we keep our most personal symbols of our relationship with our significant other. I had to take note that hubby and I kept our wedding album stuffed in a dusty space under our (recently acquired, Western style) bed. Not exactly a fortuitous place to keep it, that much was obvious.
So I moved it to the bottom drawer in our chest of bedroom drawers, alongside our winter knits and long johns. Also not somewhere we regularly access, as Queenslanders in Australia, the climate is decidedly sub-tropical, but it was still a cosy place, regularly accessed and containing many warm couple and family memories. It’s not who we are now, but it’s who we once were, and it’s good to remember. We’re not inclined to pull out the wedding album and reminisce. That’s not us. But the album seems somehow more contained, more nurtured, and more protected there. That was a year ago and it is still the right place for now.
The most ‘feng shui’ thing about our recent choice, to switch a simple picture on the bedroom wall, was that it resulted in the two of us swapping sides of the bed (for purely logistical reasons) and rearranging the furniture and giving our space a complete clean up. Now it feels so fresh in there!
So the bedroom is tidy now (relatively), and the new furniture arrangement has better flow and efficiency than it previously had. And the cobwebs have been cleaned from under the bed, the dust has been wiped from those hard to reach places. And communication has flowed as a matter of course - as though that’s what happens when couples get in and clean out a room, their room, together. Romance. It’s not what we think it is.
January 28th, 2010 - Posted in happiness, partnership, consumerism, ritual, beliefs, health, self-care | |
2 Responses to ' Romance '
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on January 30th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Thank you for the post. It has made me think …
And to realise we need a ‘romantic’ picture on the spare space on our wall too … not just something random …
Love following your blog
on January 30th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Hey Andy! Welcome!