This is Yellow

October first and I am renting charisma with both hope and structure. I'm tugging on the wisdom of a good friend and creating rules for my challenge. I am setting parameters for my project and with three months worth of posts dotted out on small scraps of yellowy, lined paper, I am ready to begin. Each month with its own theme, each weekday pulling words from what's been waiting, each post a very small door into a very small view of a very small life with very big loves.

For October, I looked to the blackboard inside our door scrawled with a William Morris quote:

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

As someone with many live's worth of collections and a small apartment curated with curiosities, I keep this line in mind in the thrift shops, on the street corners, while digging through piles of abandoned paper scraps (oh those paper scraps do lure). I keep this line in mind when I meander around our home during the early hours of the weekend, visiting my treasures and considering their worth.

There's a part of me, like the skinny girl they swear is screaming to get out of the chubby ones, and that part dreams of minimalism - a bed, a table, two chairs, and a small shelf of books. There's a part of me that dreams of being able to move with one small box and a floral carpet bag - a modern Mary Poppins with magic only in the metaphor.

The me that's writing this, the me that wins, loves her books like babies, her grandmother's spoons like diamond rings, and that collections of her husband's Berenstain Bear books? Priceless. But do I know these to be useful? In part, I guess, as I can always fancy uses for the loved, but more than that, I believe them to be beautiful, and I do not know of another excuse that might rival the presence of beauty, and perhaps more importantly, belief, in a home.

So, this month is a little about sharing with you, yes, but maybe also with myself as a reminder of sorts, these objects believed to be beautiful. One small space a day during the week, a handful of words, a reexamination of life in parts, in the believed to be beautiful bits.