Babies, Goats
And living life so you have an epic estate sale
Memorial Day weekend, I went to a local estate sale. It was the last weekend and most of it was already picked through. What was left was so incredibly gorgeous, cool and weird that I almost can’t fathom what it looked like when they first opened the doors to the unassuming tucked away large home that I have jogged passed for the last several years we’ve lived in the neighborhood.
The little lady that lived there used to sweep and tidy her front yard daily and me, just like all of the neighbors, would see her and say hello. She would cheer me on when I was jogging. It was very sweet. She passed away recently. I don’t know anything more than that her and her husband’s lifetime’s worth of belongings were offered to the public.
I LOVE estate sales. I avoid them because I literally have no self-control and buy crazy things. I love antiques and old things and looking at the beautiful detritus that human beings collect over their lifetimes of travels, boons, losses, loves and heartaches. For example, I picked up some incredible vinyl recoerds, a few odds and ends and this incredibly bizarre and wonderful Victorian-style salad condiment caddie.
Browsing through this collection of gorgeous furniture and objects, I oddly felt very inspired. I know you can’t take it with you, honestly, it must be nice not to and this home was clearly a representation of that, but there is a gift to the world with estate sales that passes the abundance forward. All of those memories wrapped up in an object travel forward to accrue new memories and the holographic scintilla of this accumulation hangs about like the mist on a dewy fresh morning. It’s romantic, it’s magical and it feels important. I think there is definitely a mood in the air that as we get older we need to downsize and get rid of things. Sure. Get rid of the boring things, the mundane things, the things that don’t make your heart sing anymore. But I suddenly became inspired to die (not anytime soon, of course) and leave the absolutely most epic estate sale behind, one the neighbors will talk about for years.
On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, my babe and I visited my cousin’s farm where a batch of baby goats was born the morning we arrived. The above photo isn’t as good as I had hoped since juggling taking a selfie, holding a baby goat, and keeping my child looking at the camera is more challenging than you think. But let me just say, that baby goat therapy is real.
It was lovely to be reminded of the freshness of life in its rawest form as well, feeling that incredible in-between space that birth and newborns can evoke. It’s just as liminal as the space just before and after death. There’s some phase shift when we enter and exit this world and it may be one of the clearest reminders of the preciousness of life when we encounter it.
Next week I am excited to share about several openings that I am in on June 15th in San Francisco. If you are local, I would love to see you at Modern Eden for their Portrait Show and or at ARC Gallery for the ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion opening, both on the same night. More on that next week.
For now, I’m working on finishing a really fun commission painting for a client that is a wedding present to his daughter and trying to keep the aura of baby goats and estate sales about my person.
What’s the coolest thing you found at an estate sale?