Comstock's simple epiphany;
Quietly siting his harmonious homes, as if planted before the forest matured around them
The enigmatic boughs of cryptic Cypress crawling and drooping the roof line
Organic are its elements…. a modern day Tor house…. stone, fire, wood and water
The antidote for sheets of steel and glass and the cold concrete mass of Meunning’s Big Sur bungalows
The calloused masonic hands of Issac
The God-given style and gift of Giles meticulous woodwork
Together, miraculously marrying otherwise stolid stone;
To arcane hand-hewn timber
Fervent and transformative in their efforts, this grand illusion now real!
Perhaps the scene now before me provides the words… the illustration I seek?
The exquisite sweep of Samuel Maloof’s ‘rockers’ gracing the hoof warn wide plank floors
Floors aged to vintage by centuries of barn stock and stomping ungulate
Rockers turning the imagine loose like the swoosh in a wicked Witches broom
His hallmark joinery of half-lapped tongue and groove shaped to meld unnoticed into the chairs surface
While atop the broken hearth stone, a fortuitously shaped oak slab is sculpted into a wild Shroom
To my eyes as sweet and pungent as the Périgord truffle
It came to me by way of haggling de rigueur pour la bon prix in the flea markets of ol’ Pari’
All juxtaposed to the weight; to the bold mass of an inviting fireplace
The scale reminiscent of the outsized fireboxes of ancient Fortalice’s in the great Halls of Crookston, Craigmiller, and Wales
A place to satiate the belly, warm the hands, carry on with ruby spirits and brethren of dubious breath …. or simply rock in silent repose
Even the surrounding objects of my affection ooze with craft and carry their weight with a certain aesthetic perfection:
Driftwood emblazoned with gold outshining the reflective sequins of Sea,
VanAlstine’s massive sculpted Adirondack gems of iron and slate,
Inexplicable floating on the thin air of God’s fate
French love instilled in early 1900’s leather chairs,
Cozy comfortable corners and lairs for family to lay their heads to bear,
Ancient folk-art floors ordered in Ardeche oak squares,
Elements of nature encapsulated all about me;
The skinned bark of the Poplar tree,
Casting casual grooved shadows like strands of sand etched by the sea
Murano’s blue green glass recapturing the light aquatic,
Earthy tones entombed in stone,
Mammoth mantels framing fires of warmth and glow,
Relentless waters that fold and flow,
Rich black soils glistening with abalone and the decaying bones of Ohlone,
And the sweat and salt of Mexican labor that fashioned these gargantuan stones