Matter + Energy
When love at first sight happens in the inanimate world, the opposite attraction is often a house. Infatuations, faddish puppy love and reckless flirtations can happen with other objects, but that deep emotion of unexpected, sudden love usually overwhelms you in the vicinity of some front door. When it does, it leaves you reeling, wondering what is happening and why. What is this attraction? Houses are mere contraptions, created of ordinary materials by human minds and hands, with no seductive eyes or captivating mannerisms to allure us. So how is it possible to be so deeply smitten by a lifeless object?
Scientists tell us that there is a strong relationship between matter and energy: a relationship so close that one can become the other if they agree and when conditions are right. Scientists cannot measure whether or not some small energy—an essence—of an object’s creator remains with the matter, waiting to be discovered by the right consciousness. Nor does science know whether subsequent use might modify that energy, sort of the way a well-designed pair of walking shoes improves after a few miles—if only for people with the right feet.
A sound wave never dies, so it is possible that reverberations of life linger in matter, vibrations we sense but do not fully understand. Maybe they serve as magnets to clues revealing an object’s history. Perhaps with physical objects we intuit silent stories embedded within materials—in the cursive script of wood, the enduring braille of stone, or those faint echoes of a house’s history. Sometimes the echoes are shouts. If such energy lingers in a house, don’t you think it might spark that love at first sight combustion with a living, kindred soul when conditions are right and there is agreement?
Like a home, a magazine is a whole lot more than the materials of which it is made. You sense intrinsic human sensitivities the moment you recognize the photographer’s eye, the designer’s imagination, the writer’s perspective and especially the attributes of the subjects presented—the creations of homeowners, advertisers, organizers,
artists, builders and architects.
There are subtler influences on a magazine’s personality and course: a brilliant comment tossed out over lunch, a homeowner’s door-opening phone call, or the assemblage of wide-ranging professional energies that drive a publication from idea to printed copy. And sometimes, if conditions are right and there is agreement, a magazine can find limitless energy by embracing the enthusiastic good will of thousands of individuals comprising the movement and the way of life that supports it.
Recently this magazine, the Arts and Crafts community and a sea of bungalow owners lost two luminaries—lighthouses on opposite shores, but of equal brightness (please refer to page 111). The lighthouses are gone, but we continue to navigate by their light.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
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