The Meaning of Home

BLUE SKY CHRONICLES

The Meaning of Home ISSUE FA L L

02

—

2020

They say it's matter of time , a thousand days and the sun won't shine , before i come back to you I'm happy, nothing's going to stop me.

I'm making my way home , i'm making my way.

For you love i will go far I wanna be wherever you are I know i'm coming back for you.

Our love is a river long , The best right in a million wrongs , I know i'm coming back to you.

And i'm happy nothing's going to be stop me I'm making my way home , I'm making my way

Tom Rosenthal , Go Solo

Letter from the Editor

But, of course, what I know about home is what I learned from children’s books: it must be cozy, it must have nice places to curl up and read, and it’s lovely if you have friends and relations close by.

But that’s not everyone’s idea of home, and that is the beauty of the question, and this collection. Each reflection, each story creates its own world — a small and intimate musing, an invitation to consider what home means to just one person. The stories are different, but in all of them, there’s a tenderness, a particular feeling of humanity and vulnerability.

Home isn’t a place; it’s an idea, a feeling.

Home is the place we run back to, even if it’s just in our minds.

So, consider this not-so-little publication as you would your favorite walk — more of a ramble, a stopping to take in.

You don’t need to read it all at once.

In fact, you don’t need to read it at all.

Just spying it out of the corner of your eye when you come through the door is like a cheery hello, reminding you that you’re home.

And maybe that’s what home does best.

It welcomes you back, always happy to see you.

Sincerely, Kim Agnew

chris schrieber

Flatland Girl

Growing up in Idaho, I could always find the horizon; wide flat landscapes, low wheat crops, few multi-story buildings in our small town, high desert, elevation 4400 feet.

I worked my grandfather’s bean fields, walked the lava tubes just up the 84, hiked beside the tributaries of Smiley Creek, rode my bike to the river’s edge. The ever present horizon was both my true North and my comfort blanket. No matter where in the world I travel, I can always find solace in the horizon; there’s always a horizon. In my later years I have found illumination in the light which meets at the horizon – my

place for solace, sunsets, flying kites, walking dogs, sand in my toes or parka around my shoulders, journal, camera, contemplation.

Returning to Idaho, I feel the spaciousness of my horizon-wide homeland, both completely solid, stable, stationary and completely free.

Right now it is early morning; I hear farmer’s irrigation sprinklers watering the land for her next crop of givingness, I watch the Snake River flow and flow, bending South and on to divide “Oregon” from “Idaho,” I see the desert scrub dotting the plain where hawks circle, call, dive for breakfast, breeze shaking the slenderly tall poplars. It is the sound of slow.

—4

Child of the horizon Flatland girl Knows forever By sight, this place Her place Just over there Earth’s end Curling into sky’s arms Calls to me Always calling me;

Hike out Out to where the curve Of the world meets the edge of ever Light bleeds, in streams layers, all flavors All shades of light And truth Are known here I am both lost and found in singularity’s slice I cannot see But wonder In that place without name Is this my soul’s eyes awakening To find true sight?

Wade out Into streams of source Releasing self Over and over Nourishing earth Traveling life In all forms To their return Skipping stone-shine Dances in ripples Up through My knees Arms casting out I am the rod The fish, the gatherer Cook, bones, storyteller Sky keeper Sleeps warm Full, knowing.

Fly out Moon’s eye view Arcing across dusk If I fly far or just fast enough Catch west meeting east Light and dark Giving way to each other Continuous joining Of opposites As lover and lover Parent and child Black and white Me and myself Rising and falling at the same time Are one wing Flying home.

This is my someplace Location without address Moving with me

Horizon home Of heart and truth Bent into waves Meeting itself Over and over Forming Folding Surrendering Light into light into light At that line never ending curve I too am open, bending With line of the sky Cosmic can opener of illumination As sunset into darkness As spent waves returning to sea As land falls into sky As me into all I Am.

c h lo e c h a p p e

My Collection

of the items from my time creating homes in new places have been included.

Space has always been important to me. I prefer a small room – I like to be close to my things.

In my room, I have a watercolor painting by a friend who visited me in upstate New York the summer after I graduated. I am depicted sitting on a dock with another friend in the middle of a favorite lake. “Twin Lake Gals.”

Whenever I move, I decorate with a collection of items. Those items, although just scraps of paper, create the feeling of home. Going through an old desk drawer the other day, I found some of the items I used to decorate the rooms I lived in during college. Seeing them immediately brought me the feeling of those spaces..

My collection grew with the people I met or as years of friendship accrued between my old friends and me. Now I’ve created my own home that is neither a dorm room, a college home, or a study abroad room. I’ve lived in my West Hollywood second floor sunny apartment for two years now. The collection of pieces has expanded, but some

Above my bed is a typed poem from a best friend for my birthday one year.

Eight postcards from my collection proudly line one wall – my favorite one is from a Dresden museum. It says in German, “When all art fails, the edible art still remains.”

I love tiny objects. A little orange cone, the size of a thimble, sits on the wainscoting above my desk near a similarly sized bust of Saint Louis (found in a coat pocket my mom thrifted in Paris). I also have a cheese-grater the size of a wine cork. In a large room, these bits are easily swallowed up. My small space is like a tiny museum of memories – I feel at home among my collection.

—6

leslie allen

I was going to start by saying that when I was in my early 20's, it became apparent I was obsessed with home. As a place to live, a place to decorate, and definitely as a thing to buy. But this is not really accurate or the truth. As a kid, I cared where my Barbies sat, what they sat on, and what else they had in their rooms. I made all their furnishings with my father's shirt cardboards (white sides only) and a pretty impressive array of 'doodle markers.'

By the time I moved into my first apartment in NYC at 18, the only things I had needed to buy were bath towels and hangers -- I'd been collecting antiques through high school and already owned all the dishes, furniture, linens, rugs, and accessories a girl could need. A magazine even came and shot my apartment a few years later, and I was pinching myself.

Suddenly there was an appreciation and confirmation of my style and my taste.

Having furnished my apartment and doing DIY projects like wallpapering two rooms, ripping up the linoleum, sanding down the wide floorboards, and painting giant chickens on the kitchen floor, I moved onto furnishing our rental house in the country a couple of years later. I literally dreamt of decorating at night, and thought of decorating possibilities in the day.

When I was 25, and just two months before our wedding date, we bought my “house in the country.” No diamond wedding ring for me, thank you, I wanted my house. It wasn't even a question.

It was the very first house I had ever been shown, and I had to have it. The listing said, "Charming English Cottage"… No truer words have ever been spoken… for me. My mother warned that I couldn't buy the very first house I was shown, so I agreed to see two others the following day. After that, I couldn't and wouldn't look at any other houses. There was no other house for me ever again. It is, and it was my house. I was positively smitten. I couldn't get it out of my head. I visited it on the weekends when

we came out, even before I could figure out how to buy it.

To me, it was like the house in the movie, “The Enchanted Cottage.” I thought It had magical powers but couldn't ever really articulate what those powers were.

Up until my late 20's, I had always felt somewhat guilty and embarrassed by my deep and hard-to-explain love and passion for home and decorating. Maybe even a little ashamed that I wasn't doing something more important and worthwhile. I couldn't seem to justify why I was wanting to make a living doing something that seemed so shallow and trite.

In the mid 80's, Self Magazine came and did a story on me and my house. That's when I met my soulmate, the person who would change my life and my attitude about home's importance. She made me believe that I shouldn't underestimate the importance of what I was able to do. For myself, and others. My ability to create a nest and how that comfort would bring others pleasure and gratitude. She was the decorating editor after all and just “got it,” and every single thing I said. She could practically finish my sentences. We not only became fast friends but serious friends. Someone who changed how I looked at the business of home. Someone who understood and could dissect and, more importantly articulate the importance of home and the importance and relevance of decorating a home. It’s not just about how things look; it’s about how things make you feel and what that does for someone's soul.

It's about where you feel happy and safe and can be creative and thrive.

Although we now have so many places and so many memories, where we have sat and reminisced and discussed all of these same topics, it is the pair of old, faded, gray sofas where we lay that I think of her the most. It is where we have our best conversations and do our best work. Thirty-something years later, it's Kim I credit for showing me the importance of what I do.

—8

jessica chappe

In moments of silence as a child, I would sunbathe in the pockets of light that stretched elegantly over the Saltillo tiled floors at home in my living room. I would lie there mesmerized by the dust particles floating slowly across the light. In those moments, I felt I was witnessing magic. Time became irrelevant; everything on my mind would flutter away.

To this day, I search for that light and carry it with me as I move within the world. The light is my home, where I find magic, comfort, and growth. It is a liminal space, inconsistent, unplaceable. It is a space you share with a person, a space you fill with objects you love, an activity that everyone fully partakes in, or those quiet moments you spend at dusk with a book in hand. Light brings me joy and returns me to my center. In my photography, I focus on capturing that space.

— 10

d a kota l e e s t r o u d

A Home for Myself

When I was a little girl, my mom would tell my brother and I to go have “independent play time.” This was probably her way of needing time to herself, most likely to shut a door, to cry, to allow her depression to manifest in a less tangible and palpable way toward us. But I didn’t mind — I longed for those moments alone. I would sit in my room and play with my dolls, giving each of them a backstory and some bold life to lead.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been creating worlds that I wanted to live in.

My family moved around a lot, and my current home is actually the longest I’ve ever lived in one place (going on six years).

It hasn’t been easy. It’s hard to be the one who stays.

I moved into this home right before I got married, and these walls have seen relationships flourish and end. They have seen hope, beauty, the deepest love and the strongest longings. They have also held literal space for my pain. My breaking. My growing pains.

I know what it is to lose a home. When my marriage was crumbling, I was sleeping in my old beat-up Chevy Aveo with my dog, Troll, sharing tuna cans from the 99 cent store with her, and occasionally finding refuge on the couches of friends, or a bare abandoned apartment where my dog slept in a box and I slept on the floor.

Once everything ended and I returned back to those familiar walls, I posted all of my furniture on Craigslist for free at 2 am.

Within an hour, an 18-year old girl who had just moved to LA showed up at my door. “Take whatever you want,” I said. She

filled her dad’s truck with my past life and thanked me for furnishing her first home.

She probably didn’t understand at the time why I was thanking her as well for what she allowed me. A fresh start. A transformation.

It’s hard to be the one who stays — it truly is. Yes, at times it would have been easier to move. To give up. To start over. But the redemption, for me, came from learning not to escape my feelings, but to reclaim what is mine. To rebuild. And his leaving gave me the greatest gift. It created space. It gave me a home for myself.

I have learned that home is something you have to fight for. It doesn’t come easily — it doesn’t always feel like a gentle place to rest your head. Sometimes it looks like dinner parties, tobacco + jasmine candles and white roses. And other times, long after the roses have died, it looks like isolation. Crying on the bathroom floor. Drunkenly falling in the shower. Screaming out for whatever form of “god” might still exist. Grasping onto the smallest threads of hope.

I embrace it all. All of the forms and seasons that my home takes on. I have those dead roses hanging in my bedroom to remind me that just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

I have found that coming home to yourself is not always the soft and gentle journey that it sounds like it would be. Sometimes it feels like a disorienting process of spinning, turning, crashing, and picking up the pieces. Every once in a while, I find myself wondering just how many times I will have to rebuild. But in the midst of the exhaustion, in the depths of who I am, I find great exhilaration in the continued evolution.

It’s hard to be the one who stays.

But it is worth it.

— 12

jillian hanson

During her growing-up years, my daughter and I loved to spend long, cozy, weekend afternoons with scissors, magazines and glue spread out over the kitchen table; sifting and sorting, cutting and pasting with music or an audiobook playing in the background. When she left for college I kept going, claiming it as my own singular pleasure.

Without meaning to, my recent collages all seem to be trying to convey something about an inner state of being (that I go in and out of ) that feels like the colored-in petal of the Venn diagram between me and the divine. Home.

It’s an internal feeling that’s

spacious and warm and kind. It offers access to a deeper wisdom when I go looking for it. It’s luminous, just the same quality of golden, rosy light that is night-giving-way-tomorning before the sun breaks.

There’s a singing-bowl thrum of aliveness that fizzes my flesh and ripples my skin, a sweetness that flows from my chest down my arms and out my upturned hands.

Some days it feels like a current—electric or fluid—and some nights it burns as an inner flame, a presence always present, waiting for me to notice it quietly folding and unfolding the Universe just for me.

— 14

a l e x b at e s

“ We are all just walking each other home.”

A favorite quote of Baba Ram Dass that is speaking to death, and yet it is about living and finding home within.

Home is the peace you carry within wherever you are and that quiet refuge and safe port in the storm, for the lucky ones, where we can find peace and calm.

Where we can be ourselves, where we can be.

Home used to be more tightly defined by where my children and husband were but they are grown and scattered about the planet, and now it is the two of us at home or traveling together.

Home is where they are, where we are.

When I am with them, I am home.

I move between two homes, both on islands, but feel most at peace in our simple little island home. I have been working toward becoming a minimalist there - paring back to what is essential, and in so doing, I am making more space for nature, light and thought; and for just being.

Coffee in hand, I sit and watch the light play on the white walls at sunrise, shadows dancing to the sound of the waves, guided by the wind as it directs the tall grasses outside.

By day’s end, the long shadows fall across the threshold, a warm glow fills the room, and I am filled with gratitude for it all — this is home, this quiet peace.

Home is the peace you carry within wherever you are.

— 16

l i n d s ay l e b e l

Two years ago, I found myself in wildly liberating and paralyzing circumstances: completely untethered to any physical place. I had recently let go of the havens of friendships, love, and sun-soaked apartments in Cambridge and Los Angeles and moved my possessions into storage – grateful for a job that would probably let me work from outer space if I asked nicely.

And in earnest pursuit of my next home, I decided to, well, try on other people’s homes. I made a list— places I’d daydreamed about for their alluring coastlines, bikeability scores, or promise of infinite sunshine.

I started in Stockholm, living with a Swedish chef and furniture designer. Copenhagen called next, and when the days grew short and temperatures dropped, I followed the sun to Melbourne, then chased mountains and alpine lakes in New Zealand – living between a treehouse above the Tasman Sea and a backpackers hostel. When the time zone became too grueling, I moved to the mecca of light that is Lisbon.

For every one of these moves, I bought myself a one-way ticket.

Certain that I would fall in love with the place, that I would effortlessly stumble into home, that elusive thing I was chasing.

In between all the movement, the relentless exploration, I started to recognize what this thing really was: A place where I’m certain to find, in concentrated form, all the qualities I value most. Comfort. Wonder. Stillness.

Refuge. I found the thrill, the enchantment, in paying attention.

In noticing.

I found it in many places and things. In that tucked-away corner in Lisbon’s Lapa neighborhood painted a milky blue that reflects light so beautifully – where the sidewalk curves around the building and crashes into a pile of crooked narrow cobblestone steps.

In the quiet expanse of starry sky above a remote hut in the southern alps of New Zealand, whose memory still makes my heart skip a beat. In those moments on the back of the Moto Guzzi with my dad, winding over the cliffs of Nova Scotia or the hills of Vermont, where we are at the complete mercy of the elements and I feel most deeply alive.

Traveling shakes me awake. When there are no fixed ideas about what is interesting, when my senses are not faded by familiarity, I access parts of myself that are otherwise buried by banality and routine. I start to pay attention to the elements of unsuspected and scattered beauty awaiting me in the remarkable as in the insignificant – the things that have been there all along just waiting for me to take the time to notice them.

The ultimate freedom was not in setting out to explore the world in search of a home, it was in the realization that home has existed in me the whole time.

— 18

naom i h u d son - k an pp

Home: an internal state, associated with flow, connection, a sense of belonging, ease and vulnerability. A metaphorical and literal place where walking around unshowered and in one’s underwear is as welcome as walking barefoot in your favorite ballgown or styled in your best work outfit. The earth, whether it sand, soil, grass or concrete rises to meet you.

Self and environment seep one into the other. Walking city streets pumps the heart and soothes the mind. Radiant sun on sand expands the soul beyond the body. The air after rain travels from head to toe cleansing the cells. A collection of knick-knacks speak of past and future. Your grandmother’s voice calls your name and places you solidly home - loved and love, one in the same.

— 20

glenn mendonsa

me, when in the presence of Al, when reflected through Al — I give thanks.

I lay gifts upon the foot of our friendship.

Al has this way of entering a story. The in breath is a giddy anticipation; the out breath is release. Like big belly laughter.

Again and again, he activates my capacity for interpretive dexterity. I call this the Storytelling Gym. Where I learn to make sense of the world of another. I leave our shared encounters energized. Seeping into and all over the rest of the hour, I awaken to a new harmony. A soft center with a sharp alignment, the space potentiates — makes available possibilities for sweeter living.

I think this feeling, this something, this altering, is home.

Not the state but the shifting. The reminder that your insides can be re-organized. That unbeknownst to you – while you were merged in another, wholly present to their specific brand of charm or their wisdom – magic was in the making. Al always reminds me that the best way to keep a friend is to idolize the best parts of them. I agree, in a sense, but I think the best way to keep a friend is to stake claim to the space you create together. Like the Law of Conservation of Mass: matter cannot be created nor destroyed, it is simply moved around. The more I recognize home as the movement — of the commute I make from one me to another

This offering helps me beat back the threat of deadness. When home and our going “there” together is lost sight of, de-prioritized, decided against…When I’m busy tightening my grip on the grit of soured expectations, or he’s busy being inconceivably “busy,” I remember what makes home most habitable. Not all the needing or the wanting but the being there, as presently as possible. When we want so desperately to hold onto, to extend, to bottle the ecstasy of being together, I am reminded that home is far from fixed. That really, all I have is the hope of re-discovering it. Over and over and over again. Home is in the repeated making, the eventual return, the space between the two. It tastes yellow and it grows wide. The view is so desperately sweet. After all, how would you know home without the dance away from it?

— 22

Kim invited me to be part of this publication and I agreed, enthusiastically, to share something about the meaning of home. It has been at least six months since that day.

I’ve sat at my computer many an afternoon and tried to find the words. But no matter which way I tried to come at it, whatever it was that really wanted to be said about home was elusive, absent, nowhere to be found.

I tried a few things. They were trite. They were not the thing of the thing. They were some concentric circle far out and around it.

And then tonight I was peeling carrots and sprinkling salt atop them for roasting when I realized why that is. It hurts to think of home. A lot, actually.

The tears are rising now, stuck in my throat.

A sure sign of truth. Home is a moment stuck in the past. A moment that doesn’t exist any longer, a particular place with a particular feeling and particular people that live only inside my mind now. The home itself, sold two years ago, now belongs to a landscape architect and his young family. I drove past only once after it became theirs.

He had chopped down so many of my trees.

I never drove down the street again.

I can close my eyes and walk through the house. I can tell you all about it, if you’d like.

The blue trim. The red door. The tulip garden in the front yard with six flowers that bloom just days before my birthday every year.

My parents said they were mine. There is a tree in the front yard that was planted after I was born. And a tree in the backyard that was planted after Aleisha died. My sister.

My dad was the first one to leave. But I still remember the days before that. When it was all four of us in the house together. Al and I in the backyard swinging, singing, down the yellow slide. The smell of steaks cooking on the indoor grill coming out the vent. Safety.

A summer night with heat in the air and crickets on the wind and the yellow of inside shining out each window. Soon the bell would ring for supper.

There was a hammock in the backyard where, later, Al would lay with her boyfriend, smooshed close and laughing. Always laughing. Mom was always knitting, sitting on the green couch in the living room or her chair in the den. Setting down her project whenever we walked into the room.

I’m rambling. What I mean to say is, when home lives only in your memory— both the place and the people— it becomes a thing that isn’t so fun to talk about. I’d rather tell you about anything else.

I have a new home now, of course. With Pete. In California. I cherish it. But when I close my eyes and whisper home, it is the world inside that house I see. And I miss it, and them, something fierce.

c h e l s e a s o n ks e n

eliz abeth sheeler

We followed the realtor’s car up the long tree-lined drive. As the house on the hill came closer, it felt as if a door warmly, gently, closed behind us, wrapping and enveloping us in this place. Claiming us. The old, pretty white farmhouse at the top of the hill spoke to me then as it has countless times since, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

It’s true what they say about houses. They have souls. We looked at many houses before this one, and all of them were not quite right in that just-right way. Wellappointed or nicely manicured or stylishly decorated. But they didn’t feel like this one.

There’s love in this house, I remember thinking to myself. I sensed it back then,

and I know it down to my bones now. An old house comes with projects, and we took to making it ours. Renovating and updating but ever mindful of honoring what was here before us. With every mark we made, we became more conscious of the marks already here. The house keeps delivering gifts to remind us: a beautiful set of timeworn keys found in an old drawer; a 1910 fireplace uncovered by surprise behind a wall; and especially, the colorful array of sunrises framed by the huge, old, original front door.

I take a picture of the sunrise almost every day. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it is a daily reminder of just how much love and beauty there is right where I am, if I simply slow down, settle in, and look at it.

— 24

m e l i s s a t h o m a s - c r ot e a u

Home

Black coffee in hand. A check on the sunrise.

Mountains come into view, warming slowly as blue and gray and eventually orange and pink. They rise up to their moment and sit comfortably against the city skyline. Wiser.

The palms rustle and sway knowing the wind’s way. Another dawn-start, remarkable to you but not so to the sky, birds, trees...

Three warm bodies still suspended in their nocturnal ways. Little lumps under layers.

You hate to wake them, to break the picturestory of their dreams but the human world says it’s time to get up, time to get going... time, time, time taps its mean little foot, marking each tic-toc as it passes, noting your hesitancy and awarding it with tardiness.

You try your best to wake them gently, to bring them back to this world, to coax them from wonder and warmth to the cold fall morning whose light is still coming.

Promises of a honey-hued sky lure them finally to begin their daily march.

The warm imprint of their little bodies holds tight to the sheets and blankets you tug into place. You wonder so many things

but they all slip by before anything can be teased out or understood. The clock shakes its head at you again and the slow quiet sputters into a frantic gallop, calling to mind that symphony, and out we go in our various forms of readiness.

The heavy door clicks closed behind us and home lingers in us as we pace through our days. The thought of shoes in the entrée, the way the palms greet us when we are almost there, the way she stands to receive us when we spill out of our day and the walls that hold us together. Where the sun fades early, bringing spring somewhere else.

Maybe if there’s time, we’ll light candles and sit together and watch the shadows a bit.

Them and me under a blanket looking up at beams and seeing different things, together, one last time before we say good night and slip to our own constellations. Each sweet head off somewhere you can’t go.

Later you will look in on each one and wordlessly cast a tangle of gratitude, apologies, hope, love and try to hold tight to another day of living together under this old red-tiled roof. The feeling that holds and warns you, take care now to love, to be, home.

— 26

g r a c e & ALICE YOON

Growing up with a single parent, we moved around often in search of safer neighborhoods, better school districts or simply for new beginnings.

We didn’t have a childhood home where we grew up with the same furniture, the wall that recorded our heights, a swing on the deck or an art piece that was passed down from our grandparents.

Our definition of home is not conventional but our mom is the very essence of what home is to us: her slippers that we see the moment we open the door, her sweater that hangs on her chair, her scent in every room, her home cooked meals… Umma is our home. The home where we first experienced love, warmth, security and strength.

— 28

r o s e b lo o m f i e l d

I was a homebirth. In 1987, the upstairs bedroom was full of family as my father’s hands welcomed me home from my mother in the apartment where I would grow up.

Santa Monica, California. For the next 24 years: paper-thin white walls; sisters coming and going until they left nearly 10 years before me; sleepovers; graduations; too many pets to count; overstuffed surfaces, a cacophony of story under dust.

We each lived in separate worlds below one roof. Until my parents couldn’t. I was 15 when we stopped sharing Christmas morning. 15 when home splintered like our wood beams and lost the illusion of a place.

Today, home can be anywhere, as much as nowhere. I left another four walls I called home in August last year. Squeezed out by change like the Grand Canyon cracking open in my chest. The thunder shook. There was no bargaining. Summer, a lifetime ago.

The turquoise glass mugs we found that Sunday morning. The Mexican blue and white fabric from California that traveled far to reach our kitchen table. The fresh flowers I no longer buy in the center of our bright one-bedroom flat on the 5th floor in Paris.

I said it was a find and he bought it. From day one, and for three years, we handmade a home together. Yet the feeling flickered, as wills went separate ways, until it went dark, and the walls stayed the same. Now, here, the space between. Nests in two cities. No single set of keys. Better dance, Rose. Better write. Better breath. To wake up where you least expected.

Home… A dream. Dream home. One day. My house. South of France or Coastal California. Golden grasses and slanting sun will warm my daughter’s skin. We’ll explore the cacophony of wildflowers in our back yard. Dust will turn to moss on the stones by the front door. The roof will be strong and make music when it rains as we snuggle under blankets on the couch Christmas morning. Fifteen years will float by with stories told in back and forth of honeymoon, that family dinner, and the sweet in particulars of a new good life.

— 30

j u n e s to d d a r d

Driving north into Canada I arrive at the landing after years of absence finding my way in the dark lit by fireflies and kerosene lamps in the cottages I glide by.

The only noise gentle waves lapping against the wood and canvas canoe my great-grandfather made, guiding with my hand carved paddle, stroking the water as if I have never been gone.

Knowing my way through and around rock outcroppings, points and hidden bays.

A summer homecoming, a hundred years in the family.

Always home to me.

On the rough-hewn boards I step, the pine needles strewn.

I hold the perfect arched branch found by my father so long ago to make the railing for the log cabin.

Open the door.

Reading on the high beds, stuffy old wool blankets, cedar bark peeling off the walls, surrounded by water lapping on the point.

The porch bed swing holding me, as I curl up under the Hudson’s Bay blanket, reading Treasure Island hearing bagpipes through the fog.

I open the door, in or out, it doesn’t matter, all in nature, all of nature, surrounded in memory.

Each rock, each mossy outcropping bringing back my childhood and almost every summer since.

I find my way in the dark on the lake in our canoe, or on the trail.

I know each slippery spot on the log bridges across the wetlands these memories, sensations, my lifeblood.

I swim around the point, awakening cold springs, the lake so big and dark, I swim, part of the lake.

My mother skinny-dipping into her 90’s where she grew up and found her strength, where her grandfather built canoes and was the lake doctor, where her father was mentored by his father, where I became one with the water and found my way, and taught each of my daughters to find theirs.

In or out, it doesn’t matter, all in nature, all of nature, surrounded in memory and knowing.

I find my way in the dark a hundred years here always home.

— 32

Most people want to own a home, a tangible place to call their own. A place to fill with other people, things, and incredible moments. For some reason, I never had that dream. And for the longest time, I couldn't understand why someone else would. I'd moved around a few times as a kid, and I didn't have a sacred, internal connection to a building, one that represented my entire childhood. To me, a house meant settling down, losing freedom and independence, and having to make decisions based on the albatross of a mortgage hanging over your head. It all seemed so...arbitrary.

And then I met Jenn.

Jenn did want a home. She did want a building she could call her own, filled with people, things, and hopefully, memories.

Jenn wanted all of this because she'd had it her entire life. Her father had built the house she'd grown up in, and almost every significant moment from her childhood happened within those four walls. Birthdays, graduations, laughs, and tears. The moments she'd created with her parents and sisters were the real foundation that her life had been built on. Jenn wanted to give her children that same feeling. Who could blame her?

At first, this terrified me. But after a while, I realized that what mattered to Jenn was exactly what mattered to me. The people in my life. The birthdays, graduations, the laughs, and the tears. Someday, Jenn and I will buy a house. Because it's important to her. And she's important to me. And wherever we end up, the neighborhood, the paint color, and the architectural style won't be so important. What will be important is the people inside that building.

They say home is where the heart is. And my home is certainly where my people are, where my love is. My home is a home with boundless love. My home is where we build our life, the place that is ready to comfort, to hold us through it all.

But this home with the red door, the one I grew up in as a child, the one my dad built, is more than just four walls sheltering us from the weather. These four walls are the reason I want to give my future family a home with a red door. So that they may always know that no matter what kind of day they had, no matter who broke their heart, or what happened out in the world, that their home with a red door has magic potions waiting to be made under the grandmother willow tree.

Their home with a red door has a built-in fashion runway, a place to create their own world. Their home with a red door can hold the magic of their first kiss, and the pain of their first heartbreak. Their home with a red door can hold new friends, parties and laughter. Their home with a red door can watch family leave and come home again.

Their home with a red door can welcome new family members, can hold the love and celebration of their new and carefully selected forever partner.

So what does "home" mean to me? Home is where you belong. And as long as I'm with the people I love the most, I'll always be there.

I always knew I wanted a home, that's what this home with a red door taught me. But my home was always incomplete. Then I met Jay. And the first face in my future home became clear. Our future home with a red door, wherever she may be, will hold it all, every ounce that life has in store and we will always come out of that door with more love than when we arrived. I know because I'm building that home with Jay.

— Jay Mattingly

— Jenna Reiss

— 34

ellen o 'neill

It was likewise an irony of riches for a ‘maid’ or me. A wrap-around terrace with cinematic views of Manhattan, a wood-burning fireplace, 10- foot ceilings, a postage stamp kitchen with a skylight, a bathroom large enough to accommodate an upholstered chair.

I saw it. I bought it. I knew it.

I remain despite the covid exodus. My building is 20 % occupied, but I’m 100 % closer to my covid comrades. I shop for Mirabelle plums, and apt 15g makes cobbler. I grow mint on the terrace, and apt 11 m delivers a julep in a jar. I think my one room is claustrophobic, but I’m grateful for the cocoon. I can only be in one room at a time. I have an entire wall of windows...I can check the weather, assess the tulips on the terrace, bang pots and pans at seven every night. I can hear life on the street...voices, the barks of dogs, traffic. I’m luckier than most in this pandemic. Gramercy Park is at my doorstep. We’ve never been at a loss for food or supplies.

I can wfm. I haven't been sick...and as much as I think I need or have tried to get away, I always run back.

— 36

sarah funkhouser

Uprooted Once when I was very lost I surrendered to a lack of roots, a cutting speechless, wordlessness planting my legs in the helpless water until I grew sprouts, then sturdied myself deep in the soil that is G-d and felt for Light to grow & lean to, true.

Light came Slowly in the form of music & kind vibration.

A sorting for truth & beauty Thorough & proper rising. in the kind and fervently steady eyes of the friend who posed this question. …Of home.

Love My childhood home of 18 years was lost before I could gather my things thoughtfully Or say goodbye Home was also deeply rooted in times spent

with a childhood friend, catching crayfish in the ponds & riding bikes to find candy My first friend in the world lost to me & the planet too soon found dead in the woods Not our woods.

Not the woods that led to the pond to catch crayfish that became her beloved pets.

Some strange and felled woods Though the trees stood Far from home Her laughter was silent But you’d know she was laughing by the deepening of her dimples & the way her whole body moved with quiet giggle almost like wind through a tree.

Senses of home of the first part of my life were lost to me In ways that bring me to my knees I never want to pray that way again

So I have avoided home In a traditional sense Increasingly minimalist me It is the trees of my youth In particular three large willows two birch & one smaller dying olive that should have been cut down But I begged my father to leave it because it was a tree I could climb very young.

Home is in the way He did just that.

Home is in the bright yellow daffodils that circled some of the trees Like an earthly halo The angel that the Talmud speaks of Whispering to them “grow, grow” And so I allow them these words that flow and walk me home again & again deeper to myself and the eyes of a friend.

— 38

stephen earle

Home.

The very word makes me happy.

Home home home ... Home is as essential to my happiness and wellbeing as sleep, food, or love. The most delicious, warmest feeling I know is opening a front door, stepping inside, and closing the door behind me.

Home.

It never fails to both thrill and calm in equal measure. It never gets old. I never take it for granted. While my work life has circled around and around the creation of home and my free time is largely spent fixing up or feathering one nest or another, home for me is really less a place and more a feeling.

This might surprise most who know me, as I am never - never - not in the midst of renovating something. Half-finished rooms drifted in sawdust, and sorting through flea market finds is my idea of heaven.

Don’t get me wrong: pushing and nudging space and stuff into a new and welcoming haven gives me incredible joy. An arrangement of beloved objects behind a door that shuts out the world conjures that feeling. Just thinking about

home takes me there. And to find that happy place - it doesn’t even need to be my own home. Or even a real home. Creating the illusion for a photograph or a model or a showroom gives me that same perfect feeling. And for me - I am always after that feeling. A dream came true several years ago when I happened upon a small cottage in coastal Maine. If I turned into a house, I would be this house. Everything about it makes me happy. It feels like the perfect suit of clothes, and I am slowly filling it with long packed away treasures. A day’s drive from where I live and work, perhaps not the most practical home. Friends ask, “Maine ... really? So far away? How much time do you even get to spend there?” to which I reply, “Actually, or in my mind?" Because I spend a lot of time there in my mind.” That is the magic of home for me - it’s a spell so strong that I only have to think about it to feel warm and safe and happy.

— 40

ora

Homecoming

When we have lived all our lives like this, we hear every story every building holds but no building can hold any space for ours.

I remember holding her body as if our hearts could find something permanent if they were pressed enough together.

My own body wrapped around her my arms trying to protect her as if she were the last comfort left on Earth.

But she wasn't and our bodies, our touch, our connections are homes in place of places and she is no longer here, but I understand: If every wound I endured to get here has stayed in my body so has all the love I've ever made and now that I hold myself I treasure the comfort of knowing this love is how it feels to have a home to return to

— 42

You are home, here.

e d i to r s

— Kim Agnew & Jillian Hanson

designer

— Alex Cohen

blueskyblacksheep.com 2020

—— 45 45

The feeling that holds and warns you, take care now to love, to be, home.

Melissa Croteu

CHRIS

SCHRIEBER

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

CHLOE

CHAPPE

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

J E S S I CA

CHAPPE

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

LESLIE

ALLEN

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

ALEX

B AT E S

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

JILLIAN HANSON

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

GLENN

MENDOSA

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

— 47

CHELSEA

SONKSEN

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

ELIZABETH

SHEELER

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

MELISSA

THOMAS-CROTEAU

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

N AO M I

HUDSON-KNAPP

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

G R AC E

&

ALICE

YOON

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

ROSE

BLOOMFIELD

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feugiat. Malesuada id adipiscing aliquam faucibus ipsum diam justo, tincidunt. Tristique augue

JUNE

STO D DA R D

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Table of Contents —

—

06

CHRIS

—

08

CHLOE

—

10

JESSICEA

—

12

LESLIE

—

14

DA KO TA

—

16

ALEX

—

18

JILLIAN HANSON

—

20

L I N D S AY

—

22

GLENN

—

24

ELIZABETH

—

26

MELISSA

—

28

N AO M I

—

30

G R AC E

—

32

ROSE

—

36

JUNE

—

38

BIOGRAPHIES

SCHRIEBER

Poetry CHAPPE

Photography CHAPPE

Photography ALLEN

Interior LEE

STROUD

Photography B AT E S

Photography

Collage LEBEL

Photography MENDOSA /

CHELSEA

Written Refection SHEELER

Watercolor THOMAS-CROTEAU

Photography HUDSON-KNAPP

Pohotgraphy &

ALICE

YOON

Photography BLOOMFIELD

Photography STO D DA R D

Poetry

Meet the Contributers

SONKSEN

W H O L E

B E A N

C O F F E E

FINCA PALESTINA, GUATEMALA 12 oz. ——— 340 g.

Produced by a collection of 900 varieties, (including 266 female plants)

Kansas City, Mississippi 1 9 0 0

B R O A D W A Y

— 51

BLUE SK Y CHRONICL ES IS SUE NO. 002

the Meaning of Home This is an example quote for the cover around this length. Perhaps another line to create a visual balance.