Lightly Child, Lightly.

Posted on by Live & Learn

These contrasts of inside and outside, and lightness and darkness, create little thresholds we pass through from hour to hour. These simple transitions, such as walking through a trellis, or sitting down for breakfast, can change your whole mood. A room is a mood, and we need different moods, small and capacious. The past is more past when it happened somewhere else, with other qualities of light. The changes are needed—they make time more felt…

Le Corbusier defined the function of a house as “1. A shelter against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the inquisitive. 2. A receptacle for light and sun. 3. A certain number of cells appropriated to cooking, work, and personal life.” Everything else is merely decorative, this suggests.

— Elisa Gabbert, Any Person is the Only Self: Essays (FSG Originals, June 11, 2024)

Notes:

  1. Book Reviews of “Any Person is the Only Self”
  2. Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

26 thoughts on “Lightly Child, Lightly.”

  2. Eldest daughter and her husband are ever tweaking the “H____ Coastal Pub” in their dining room area. It has a bar and padded swivel stools, lit lighthouses, wispy seaside curtains, straw sea-themed rug, a wicker seat.. they live in Ohio! I so get the change thing!

  3. Perhaps it’s even more…one’s place of safety (ideally), an embrace, freedom to make your space your own, And yes, I know I’m being totally romantic and idealistic – I have lived in a house that could never be any more than rooms with the only mood being one of breathless anticipation (and not in a good way). Home – perhaps a little more than a group of rooms..

  6. “The past is more past when it happened somewhere else”

    We live our whole life towards that room, mood, rhythm.

    I enjoyed all shares from this book. Thank you

        1. I don’t know what took me so long but I only just read The Bluest Eye very recently… and then only got through reading one other book (from a different author) before I had to pick up another Morrison.
          TLDR; I love her too!

  7. We all harbor, within us…mysterious untapped, depths…/// On dealing with light, rooms & shelter…I remember being a very young, married women…going with my husband to a builders home, chatting & the builder placing a number of house plan books on their table…I opened a book…let it fall where it may, spent maybe two minutes looking at that page…this will do…the builder looks at me in surprise and called my husbands name, the sweet husband looked at me, turned to the builder and said she knows what she is doing….the house built, became a home, the land became a wonderful garden, a hidden oasis and 39 years later we are still here….thankful 🙂

  8. We all harbor, within us…mysterious untapped, depths…/// On dealing with light, rooms & shelter…I remember being a very young, married women…going with my husband to a builders home, chatting & the builder placing a number of house plan books on their table…I opened a book…let it fall where it may, spent maybe two minutes looking at that page…this will do…the builder looks at me in surprise and called my husbands name, the sweet husband looked at me, turned to the builder and said she knows what she is doing….the house built, became a home, the land became a wonderful garden, a hidden oasis and 39 years later we are still here….

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