Moving In

The Muse Letter No. 129

Practical Magic (1998)

Look around. Look around. You’re here.

A light cool breeze is entering the room creating a sweet amalgam with the incense that are slowly burning on the dressing table, the leaves softly shaking, some swallows flying by, I think they must be nesting under the roof.

The pocket doors wide open from when I got up to get some tea and warm up the chocolate croissant I got the evening before. I can look into the living room, a giant monstera, plants everywhere, books, candles, dried up roses from the midsummer gathering, friends who warmed up the place, when I had just moved in the day before. Last night just me and S lying on a couch each, sipping tea, resting, talking, watching the light fade into night.

Look around. Look around. You’re here.

I press the little nasturtium seeds into the damp soil, my pointing finger creating little holes, 1 inch deep. A year ago, I had left a flowering garden behind me, now I am pressing seeds again. On a balcony this time, a place where the sun sets, where I sit and have a glass of wine, my feet up on the railing, up in the air and it holds.

All of my life I had a need to leave, the wind would turn and I’d feel the call, to venture out, to venture into myself, which is why I know when I want to stay, when I want to grow into the walls, when I dream of the future and it looks like the present. I know what a home is. I carried it within me all my life.

Look around. Look around. You’re here.

I tell myself every morning. I tell myself standing in the kitchen turning around, overlooking the courtyard. Walking through the large, heavy factory door onto the cobblestones, to the shore, to the park, to the beach, to my friends who live a stone throw away. Now.

Look around. Look around. You’re here.

For a big part of my life, I have been surviving, hunting opportunities, holding on to life rafts, skipping, skipping, skipping, over stones trying to get on dry land. Getting to this magical place, somewhere in the distance. That place that feels like home.

Look around. Look around.

– I’m here.

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SHOP

"Things I Have Loved" the second book of the poetic memoir trilogy

If "Things I Have Noticed" was about growing up and finding yourself "Things I Have Loved" is about the things that were gained/missed/lost along the way.

Told through objects Hembeck has loved, she is weaving a narrative that examines the themes of love, longing and self-worth.

By diving deep into memories of her own life, pop-culture and (lost) objects she is getting to the core of how we love and why.

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