When You Need a Time Out

I’m reading “By Nightfall” by Michael Cunningham and I’ve come across this passage:

“ – a study- with profoundly comfortable swaybacked armchair, in which it seemed you could sit and read forever…there were three lordly and lazy old cats, the shelves crowed with books and elderly board games and seashells from Florida and framed, rather haphazard-looking photographs, the faint smells of lavender and mildew and chimney smoke, the wicker porch swing on which someone had left a rain-boated paperback copy of Daniel Deronda”(page 45).

I love the description of this space and I want to visit it. Inhabit it for a summer. It is a place I could spend an entire season cuddling with the cats and reading all of the books (yay George Eliot!) in a big comfy chair.

Lately it seems as though there has been a plethora of books and articles and websites telling us how to create a personal niche that is truly and exclusively your own. Some say to create a “dream collage”, or “sacred space” or even a “meditation corner”. I say phooey. You don’t need a formal name, an area with a label. All you need a place where you can breathe and be distracted from reality if only for a few minutes. Nothing formal, nothing premeditated or organized. Just a spot. A personal” time out” site. And it doesn’t even have to be in your own home. The little corner table at the coffee shop down the street, the back desk on the third floor of the public library. A place to roost.

I have two spots. One is my bedroom especially now that it’s been repainted. It’s calm and cozy and all it needs is a suitable bookshelf to house all the books I’ve bought but have yet to read (yes…there are enough to fill a bookshelf. At the moment they’re residing in my kitchen cupboards…loooong story). The second in the “big boy” lazy boy recliner at my mom and dad’s. There seems to be good feng shui where that Lazy Boy is situated that can’t be explained.

But, because this is MY space I and I do have a penchant to dream…and dream big I did actually find a picture of my dream “time out” spot. Want to see it? I found it on http://www.desiretoinspire.net/

Here it is: