"The Details Are Not The Details. They Make The Design." Charles Eames

I call them "watch-dogs". I believe that they were meant to be card holders. I found both them in separate junk shops on the same day in the mid-1980w... but have never seen another since. I collect bits & pieces of clocks & watches for The Husband to use in his assemblages. His work is often about the passage of time.

My balls.

Words To Live By... Post Apocalyptic Bohemia is crowded with quotes that inspire me.

A Little Spin Around Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

I had an unexpected day off today: no obligations, no husband, no agenda, no automobile... just time alone in the house on a blustry spring day to read, Facebook, blog, nap, & cuddle with Junior. Sometimes don't you just desire some alone time & a rare chance to "just be"? 

Before

After

(You can click on any image to enlarge)

The Husband on the other hand, can hardly stay still. On his own day off with the house to himself, he reworked the front room & edited some of the collections. In the winter we use this room for the fireplace, in the summer we move to the back of the house to enjoy the back garden & The Boys' Fort. 

Below are some details from the mantle. More than a half decade ago, the Husband removed the original tiles surrounding the fireplace with the intention of replacing them with mirror tiles. I loved the resulting look so much that I had The Husband put off finishing it. He did silver leaf a corner. The fireplace & mantle have that Post Apocalyptic Bohemian look that I have a passion for. This part of the house seems to be part New Orleans shotgun shack & part Venice Palazzo's decaying sitting room.

The framed ExVotos are early 19th century Venetian, purchased at a favorite junk shop in Venice on our anniversary in 1991.

The crucifix is early 19th century Indian carved ivory, found in a NYC shop that sold goods from India. Also in this tableau are a hand beaded sea anemone (a wedding gift), a piece of coral, & a pencil that belonged to The Husband's sister who, in the beginning of the 1970s, passed away in her early 20s from diabetes.

Mantle details

The Husband collects boxes, possibly to balance my collection of orbs.

Details from one of the Husband's in process assemblages.

The ubiquitous shots of Junior.

I hope you enjoyed the tour. I hope you will come back soon. I feel bad that you didn't have time for a cocktail!

Inspiration

The Husband & I have been doing Inspiration Walls in our seperate work areas since that late 1970s. We have also always had a joint Inspiration Wall... located, of course, on the fridge.

The Husband's Wall in his studio.

 & the current Inspiration Wall of your host.

Junior looks to the daddies for inspiration... tell me, where do you go to be inspired?

Fine Dining

When we moved into Post Apocalyptic Bohemia 9+ years ago, we dismissed what had been described as the "formal dining room" as a nook of little importance. The Husband announced that this space would never be a dining room & that we would be treating the space as a "nook" off the front room.

In 2004, the Husband took this space down to the bare studs. We lived with it this way for 6 years. I loved it! It was very Post Apocalyptic Bohemian, the style that I go for. I was always inspired by spaces in Venice that were elegance layered with decay. I always thought I could love in a reclaimed ruin.

We seem to be getting all grown up. Darn! The Husband, with some help from T, has been finishing this space (or at least until he gets his next big idea). What I enjoy the most is the gradual transformation from the least desirable part of the house to my favorite spot to sit & just be. Larry & Junior find it to be inviting also.

Two of the walls are boards that the Husband cut, bleached & stained to look the color of Oregon driftwood. In late February, he plastered the other wall, repeating the stripe made from the joining of the boards of the other wall. It took the Husband 5 tries to create an effect he was pleased with. At one point the Husband had buffed the plaster, without the stripes, so that it looked like animal hide. We both hated the result. Tears were shed, with the Husband doubting his own talent. I never doubted him.


The Husband & I met 34 years ago in the Theatre World. He was an extraordinary set designer & his talent is what first drew me to him. The telling is in the details. Here are a few details from a space truly transformed through talent & tenacity:

Goings On At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

I was startled to hear someone else say what I have been saying for a decade- "Your house is like the Winchester Mystery House, if your husband keeps working on it, building, changing... he will never die."


Post Apocalyptic Bohemia is situated in a regulation working class bungalow in a working class neighborhood. The original house had 2 small bedrooms off of a tiny hallway. Those bedrooms are now each of our workspaces. The husband recently sealed off the original door to his space, & built a wall.  On Monday,The Husband & our dear friend T, a gilder by trade, silver leafed the wall. When you enter the front door of our hovel, it is a straight shot to the new wall. On reflection the next day, the Husband owned up to feeling that the wall was ostentatious. I am crazy about it. What do you think?

Before

Where there once was door & now there is a wall

The process, & you can't have too many boys in horizontal striped T-shirts. Skinny guys really piss me off! If I wore horizontal stipes, I would look like a carnival tent.

Do I like it, or am I frieghtened by the silver wall?

Larry & I enjoy the wall this morning...

The piece of woodwork at the top is a vintage Thai architectural element, also gulided by T.

There is no reason to post this photograph except that T has a fine ass & the Husband is handsome when he is earnest.

The State Of The Art

The Husband would like to have a cleaner palette, I am quite sure. The Post Apocalyptic Bohemian style came about from the husband's willingness to deal with my collections juxtapositioned against his desire to strip things down to the basics, like walls, ceilings, & floors, & then leaving them unfinished as he considers his options... for years.


Our little working class bungalow from the early 1940s, was designed with a short hall way that led to the 2 small bedrooms. One original bedroom is my workspace & the other is the Husband's studio/office. The Husband recently walled up the original doorway to his space & knocked out the wall between our 2 spaces, with idea of using 2 lovely old doors fixed to a barndoor track that will divide our spaces. This may happen in the teens, but I am hoping it will be done by 2020.

This is the view from where I sit at my worktable. The Husband cut the slit that opens my space up to the kitchen with a view all way through to the tiny dining room.

After the wall came down, this became the view from my worktable through to the Husband's Studio. The strange looking device mid-picture is one of the many exercise devices that the Husband spotted on an infomercial, & just had to have.

The view from the Husband's studio to my work space.

This is the new wall where the door to the original bedroom always existed. The Wolf Head, made of archival cardboard, glue & screws, is by Seattle artist Scott Fife, who along with his talented architect wife- Susan, were our neighbors & good friends in Seattle for 20 years. Here is another link to Scott's Work. The Husband added a bare Manzanita branch that he has hung with crystals & placed it with a piece of salvaged iron work. All the components have been in other parts of the house, but I really like this grouping. It looks very winter & vaguely Russian somehow. A Chekhovian Christmas scene?

I feel that the Husband indulges my need to join the practice of posting bits of ephemera on the stainless steel refrigerator. Millions of households stick soccer schedules, post cards & shopping lists on their fridges, mine is just, well... Gayer. Some of the scraps of paper are phrases that I have had on the appliance for decades. Some of them have become tattoos. One side has vintage photographs from my Men With Men Photo Collection. I once finished the NY Times Sunday Crossword, in ink, with no errors. It was on my fridge until it turned yellow, brittle & crumbled away. Do you have flotsam & jetsam stuck to your fridge?

 This is a reverse shot through the slit, looking to the back of the house. Can you spot our Christmas Tree in the very far background?  Our Christmas tree is always outside, not in.

Some of these images have been on 3 refrigerators, in different houses, & 2 cities going back decades.

This is Baby Butch playing the Baby Jesus, a long time Post Apocalyptic Bohemian tradition.

 Click Here.

There Are Spirits In The Material World

I could sleep with blackout curtains. I love a dark, cool room for slumber & I desire cold sheets & pillow. The husband likes to let in the light & only draws the heavy drape on our bedroom’s French doors part way. Our sleep habits are so apposed: I like to sleep with my feet very tucked in with perhaps a dog head resting on them; the Husband kicks the blankets off his feet during the night. I like the blanket up to me chest, with shoulders exposed. He sleeps with the covers up to his nose. I like to go to slumberland in corpse position- flat on my back with my hands folded at my mid-chest. He sleeps on his side, changing all night long. I sleep naked, always have. He sleeps in a tee shirt. I go to bed 1st. He stays up & watches old movies & sometimes starts sleeping there, in front of the TV. We make for odd bunk buddies.


I wasn’t surprised to find him asleep on the day bed in the room with the TV. I woke him & asked if he wanted to continue to sleep there, curled up with Junior. He came out of dreamland & explained that he was forced to sleep in another room because I “had been speaking in tongues” in my sleep, loudly & with urgency & an edge of panic. He also claimed that he would answer me in gibberish & I would respond. We supposedly had an entire conversation speaking in tongues. He couldn’t take it anymore & moved with the little terrier to another room. I was left to wonder if I had a special gift, & maybe we needed to record my nighttime ramblings.


The very next night, in a somewhat unusual turn of events, the husband came to be amorous, not his modus operandi in most cases, add in that we are coming up on our 31st anniversary, plus we are old, & I felt it was as odd as speaking in tongues while sleeping. I couldn’t get a feel for what hour it might be, & before we got to the point of no return, I felt that I should know the time because I have to get up at 4am to be at work at 5am.


I reached for the light on my alarm clock & heart went to my throat when I read that it was 5:18am! My staff arrives at 5:30am, & although it has happened to other managers in other parts of my company, I have never been late for work, & I have never left the staff stranded outside, waiting to start their work day. Like a bad trick in my youth, I shrieked- “I’m sorry. I am really late for work. I need to go right now! Finish yourself off! I’ll leave my phone number... call me sometime.” The Husband said- “Yeah,  well thanks a bunch!”

I jumped up, put on my uniform, no shower, no shave, no socks, & into the automobile. I drove like a mad man. ¾ of the way to downtown Portland on I-5, I looked at the dashboard clock which read 3:40am. Some spirit in the night had changed my alarm clock!  The song on the car radio was the Rolling Stone's Time Is On My Side. Was the universe playing with me? I decided to head into work anyway & accomplish some of the things on my considerable to-do list.


I started began my opening duties. I turned my computer on & it froze on “loading your personal settings”, which I swear was what the Husband whispered in my ear an hour earlier. I tried to re-boot, but the thing froze on the same dialogue box- “loading your personal settings. It was all very unsettling: speaking in tongues, clocks changing time, computers sending me cryptic messages. Was I entering The Twilight Zone, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen?


The next night I slept a lovely sleep, flat on my back like a corpse, with my dogs & the Husband with me in a cool dark room. My alarm went off at 4am, as it should, just as I was ending a dreamy dream of making out with James Franco.

Around Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

The wheel is one of several slightly different sized circles that held the ropes that rang a church bell. It is from a19th century English church. I originally purchased it, with the guidance of the Husband, to hang on the huge unadorned wall of a yet to open restaurant where I had been hired as the wine steward. I thought it looked superb & it really filled the space. I am certainly attracted to architectural elements & decrepit utilitarian objects with a patina.

A disgruntled restaurant  customer claimed that the wheel on the wall was "satanic", & the cafe's owners freaked. So, it came into our life where it has been lovingly displayed on different walls in 2 houses & in several outdoor spaces. It has recently landed in the garden pass through, a covered area that connects the house to the back garden & the Boys' Fort.



I am a huge fan of young English jazz musician- Jamie Cullum. He is astounding in concert. This song- Wheels is a current song that I am just zany about. Have I ever mentioned that I love & collect orbs?