Beverly Kaye left me a lovely comment on my post Home – recent carving and as I strolled out from home yesterday for a coffee I thought of the way she’d put it, about the nature of a home:
Home as castle, home as refuge, home as impenetrable fortress, home as sheer beauty.
I’m lucky enough to live in Paddington, one of the few Sydney suburbs that’s largely retained its history, and here (partly due to gentrification and a huge rise in real estate prices) some original wooden cottages remain. Some of these were built for workers on the nearby Victoria Barracks, which was completed in the mid 1800s. Though I’m not sure whether this particular cottage was built as part of this effort, it’s a lovely example of the style.
I like walking past these houses, feeling the unique sense of home each one exudes, the pride with which they face the street, and by extension (my fantasy of) the sense of grounded retreat from which their inhabitants go out to meet the public realm.
And although I live not in one of these lovely cottages but in a small 1920s unit (apartment), home is still that for me, a place for me graced with east and north light (the ideal aspect in Sydney), sitting at its top floor corner, catching the breezes, from which I venture, renewed to take my various places in the world.
