Posts tagged home

moving on

The home of Greg Tankersley and Mary Robin Jurkiewicz originally published in Veranda magazine, September/October 2005.

My family and I are in the process of selling and moving out of the 1914 Beaux Arts estate we’ve called home for the past eleven years. The reasons are twofold: planning for the future and a good dose of architectural ADD (given our history, our attention span is apparently a decade). My wife, who is also an architect and an avid amateur gardener, has been riding the emotional roller coaster of leaving a well worn and beloved nest. In addition to her many talents, she is also a poet. The following is a mourning soul bared, easily identified by anyone who’s suffered a haven loss:

Letting the House go

I’ve cultivated the ground
(I’m still cultivating the ground)
Inspired, by the selling process, to do more:
To cultivate me.

Historical, architectural gem,
Not without shortcomings,
But who isn’t?
It’s time to address mine now.

I’ve sold it in my mind
A hundred times;
Snatched it back just as many,
Ambivalence reigning supreme.

How can I let it go?
In all its compelling beauty,
Further coalesced by compliments
From friends and strangers alike.

But, it’s time to cultivate me.
Big gorgeous home, shared lovingly
With all who’ve entered in…
Been there, done that, check.

And check well done:
Excellent stewards of history we’ve been
Preserving for the next one.
Giving a garden, too, but that’s heartache dealt with another day.

As negotiations slink seriously nigh,
I know I’m ready.
“God Bless This House”
And God bless me.

Mary Robin Jurkiewicz

All photos by Mick Hales
All Content on this Site is the Property of McAlpine Tankersley Architecture. Copyright © 2012 McAlpine Tankersley Architecture, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

on finding home

I rest along the way in this beautifully set camp of my making

But it is only a marker of what I know now

it is not meant to hold

For I love to fall through water in the moments when rush parts

And brushes back to touch and accept and be with me

But I also love the lift out and pull away nakedness that a giles the next climb

These points of arrestment and assessment are the evidence I crave

Making physical these subtle fleeting truths is building me

I have no notion that I should possess the portrait only to enjoy it for a while

And search for its lesson

Read its screen and marvel at it temporanious plate as though I were an unvested visitor

Curious, amused, gathering, apprehensive, tentative and smart

I’ll take only what is good

This process

This distallation

Awakens me

Perhaps it’s just roughage

Does binging and purging bring about the light fantastic?

I had an old roommate that said

“I think the only reason I date these guys

is for the exhilarated feeing I get when I break up with them”

And so she cut her famous long hair each time

And was beautiful again

Things are expendable to me

So I’m kind of cocky in the acquisition of them

I revel in these choices knowing they are but sand castles

Temperal and important in the loss

There is a light and cumulative wealth

But then so would say

A gifted whore

Congratulations to Christina@greigedesign.com, who was the lucky winner of last week’s giveaway. The prize, a signed copy of our book “Finding Home” is on its way to you.

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