through the eyes of others

when you live in your own house and even in your own life, you stop noticing things and stop putting the pieces together, because you're so in the middle of it, you simply don't see it anymore. it's just how things are. you may see the bits and pieces around you, but you don't actually see the whole.

but then, people come to visit and because it's all new to them, they notice things. and they ask you, "hmm, do you have a thing about drawers?" and you realize there are really a lot of drawers in your house - 21 drawers in the kitchen, 38 in the blue room, 25 in the dining room. three old drawer units or købmandsdisk that once stood in some little country store somewhere. and so you begin to think about why it is you love drawers so much....possibly for their ability to keep things safely tucked away and out of sight. they may be a mess on the inside, but you can't see that from the outside.

and then you begin to think about what was in the drawers in the house where you grew up. the big buffet drawer with the beautiful, old, rather art-deco looking (in your memory at least) pistol  that your great uncle bought after his wife, your great aunt, was kidnapped and ransomed by bank robbers.  and you think of how you used to open the drawer and peek at it, but never dared to touch it. and the drawer full of cards on the china cupboard where you used to get decks of cards from for family games of "tell," which is really called "oh, hell," but your grandma didn't like the swearing. and you realize that drawers are both wonderful and mysterious in your mind.

eventually, you open up all of those drawers in the blue room and share your entire stash of pretty papers and embellishments and ribbons and buttons and stamps. and the energy that comes into the room from all of the creating that results from those beautiful materials being used is really quite overwhelming. but it's also extremely gratifying, to see everyone's head bent over their journals, clipping and gluing and opening up to something inside themselves that they maybe didn't even know they had.

and you think how fortunate you are to have met these people who wanted to come to visit you and spend one of their weekends with you, having this experience. and you shudder a little bit, thinking of the randomness of it, how many blogs are out there and how unlikely it was that they would find yours or you theirs and how so many little things had to fall into exactly the right place to make this thing that feels very big happen.

top and bottom photos are of elizabeth's beautiful soul food project. we got to see it in person, but you can read all about it at landanna.