To Enter Enchantment

Each summer, I leave the daily rhythm of work at Ibu's Charleston studio and showroom and head to the mountains of New Mexico. Here in the crackling dry air of Santa Fe, I work remotely during the day in all the ways technology provides. But in the early evening, I close the laptop screen and its unending river of messages, and I walk. 

I walk alone under these wide skies and read the esoteric messages of clouds paying homage to the setting sun; trace the white moon rising, the cactus blooming, the scuttle of hares… and leave my own tracks over dusty roads.

In the morning, I rise to coffee on the Indian daybed you see in this picture above, the crooked lampshade lighting the early hour before the day begins. The lavender suzani I had to have from an Istanbul bazaar holds me there, fabrics from Guatemala and Morocco cushion me, a quiet purple passion eases me into the day. And here my meditation of the summer is one of deepening into the heart, rooting the work I do all day in the places moist and rich in love. 

This week, like so many others, I turn from summer back into the swing of September, of school and schedules and the excitement of beginning again. I admit I sometimes fear the pace the autumn will demand, the overwhelm of activity just ahead. But I know that I am bringing with me the radiance of the clouds at dusk, the quiet of my lavender garden, the illuminations of dawn on a daybed. Summer is a season that feeds us throughout our busy year, whether it is the roar of the ocean you bring back with you, or the familiar fun of family around the grill, or the chords of a concert caught under the stars.

What matters is that we honor the seasons, stepping back in order to move forward again, tending the inner and the outer lives we inhabit. What matters is that we enter enchantment from time to time, and live in gratitude as well as grind. What matters, for me, is a lavender cushion on which to greet the day, the crooked lampshade to light a book in my hand, the dahlias on the garden table, the rhythm of rigor and repose.

All the Best,
SHW