A Place of my Own
My work desk
Virginia Woolfe is famous for stating that a woman needs a room of her own in order to create. She isn’t the only one to advise such a thing, Michael Pollan, wrote all about his need for a writing space in his book entitled A Place of My Own. Michael took his need to an extreme by having his architect friend design him a little writing - cabin, shed, hut, man cave, whatever you want to call it - and deciding that he would build it himself with the help of a local man of all trades.
Pollan set his cabin on a hill situated in the woods near his home. He could look out his bedroom window and see his little cabin, and when sitting at his desk in the cabin he could spy the house. As a child, I too had a little home in the woods, it had a kitchen and bedrooms, and furniture even. The one thing my little house didn’t have was walls. My sister and I, raked the leaves to clear the rooms, used rocks to outline the walls, the hall, and the doorways. Used margarine and cool whip containers served as the cookware for making our mudpies and tableware for serving them up on the castoff wooden garden table and chairs our parents allowed to call our own. Our culinary efforts took advantage of the differences in garden soil and the rich humus woodland soil. Cakes of light brown mud frosted with dark mud and studded with pebbles, acorns, and leaves for decoration. After dinner we would retire to our beds, cast off boards propped up on bricks, to get a much need rest. Hours of play steeped with our imaginations, what better way to create?
The view from my desk
When the pandemic struck, my husband and I needed to carve out spaces to work. He made an office out of the spare bedroom, and I got the downstairs. I took over the living room, with its built in bookshelves, wingback chairs perfect for reading, and my desk positioned in front of the bay window, facing east so I get the sunrise over my garden. In the spring and summer I can watch the birds congregate at the birdbath, in winter when the bears are safely sleeping, I put out the birdfeeder. On the road beyond, I can watch more pedestrian traffic than vehicular; lots of dog walkers, bike riders, in-line skaters, parents and grandparents pushing strollers or walking along a toddler on a tricycle, and on the rare occasion a goat on a lead with its owner.
In the studio
My studio is situated in my son’s old room, which he occasionally visits around the holidays or for a weekend. There will always be a bed available for him, but I have repainted the walls, and cleared out and boxed up his things and they anxiously await in the basement for removal. I’ve put my books and things onto the bookcase, brought up an old dining room table to serve as my work surface, which is also situated so I can look out the window down onto my garden below.
Pollan used the phrase ‘genius loci’ - the spirit of the place - to describe finding just the right spot to place his writing cabin. You know it when you feel it. That perfect spot to sit down in the woods for a moment of rest or reflection. The way the sun shines in through a window. The sensation of safety. You too can find that spot in your home to be creative. It may not be an entire room, or even a couple of rooms (I am blessed to be an empty nester who can spread herself out), a nook in the corner of one room, or if funds are available rent a space, and if not look for spots in the community like your local library where you can claim a comfy chair or a spot at a desk.
It boils down to this, as you pursue your creative passion, you will come to need a space to work, to reflect, or to plot and plan. You owe it to yourself to find a spot to call your own. Imbue it with your own ‘genius loci’ and commune with your creative and playful spirit.
