Summer, Inside.

Never before has summer been such an interior time. A time of gazing longingly out of the windows at the world, the birds, the unfathomably-green grass, and wishing for just one day of thick clouds. A time of focus on our walls -- on accepting, finally, our containment, and finding joy in exploring what makes a home bright and calm and us.

A time, too, of delving into the real interior -- this has been a summer that has dropped us from the rooftop, and watched as the shards of smashed identity start to flicker with a little reflected light. We've been held up to the great magnifying glass and roasted by the questioning light. I've used the word 'authentic' more times than I've coated limbs in suncream.

And yet, in-between all this, in moments when I wasn't worried about spontaneously combusting from being just that hot, there have been such sweet, cool pleasures. Sampling the swimming pools of local apartments with friends. Sharing yoghurt loaded with tangy stewed apricots with Tilly for breakfast. Feeling the kicks of someone growing in the interior.

Beautiful.

{a colour-study of calm}

An advert for paint played on the telly all the time while we were in England: 

A couple, newly-married, happily painting their bedroom a bright red. They close the bedroom door, and when it opens again, a second later, several years have passed and the room is now a blur of children jumping on the bed, pets howling, and the frazzled parents, with paintbrushes and a can of white paint, frantically painting over the red walls.

Last weekend, I painted our red walls grey. I painted the beige hall grey. The week before, we painted the green kitchen grey. Over the past few months, I've been sewing grey covers for our red cushions. Slowly, slowly, our home is becoming a place of peace and refuge -- a backdrop to the colour we want to add, rather than an overflowing box of paints into which we have fallen.

A few weeks ago, I found this card in a lovely shop in Bryan. "Colour Study of Whole Heartedness," by Karen Horney. Though the colours this artist chose don't capture my sense of whole-heartedness (I don't think there's even a spot of green or purple in my heart), I love the idea of conveying an abstract value or emotion through colour.

And as I imagine calmness, displayed the same way in Pantone shades, it is so much simpler. Not thirty-six shades, small and squeezed in, but perhaps simply four swatches -- a bright white, a cloudy-summer-in-England grey, a moody charcoal, and a red that sings -- each floating in white space, free to breathe.