Up: [[Place]] Related: [[Hestia]] Created: 2026-01-24 I’ve known the guiding image of my life for fifty years, although I didn’t realize its importance until I started studying depth psychology. Since age 16, I have had an abiding fantasy of travelling to Wales to live and write in a thatched roof cottage by the sea. In my fantasy, I’m just going to be there for two or three months, long enough to fully immerse in writing a book, short enough for a simple, friendly acquaintance with the folks in the pub that I’ll walk to each day for my lunch of hearty beef stew and crusty bread. I’ve held and elaborated this image for decades, every idyllic moment of it. It is a fantasy that I still want to make reality although over time the details have changed: Scotland, the home of my ancestors, rather than Wales; forget the thatched roof — it’s messy, invites rodents, and is usually accompanied by a bare bones, very old cottage with antique furniture, when I want some luxury; a combination of art and writing rather than a book for publication, and in walking distance of a town with a variety of shops, including a bakery and a bookstore! While an extended stay in Scotland is still in the future, I am both awe-filled and grateful to have recently made my permanent home in an 1837 stone cottage by the St. Lawrence *Sea*way. I found Hestia’s cottage on a real estate website seven years ago after doing a search for properties in walkable small towns near water in southeastern Ontario. I travelled three hours to see it the next morning and bought it that night. I had been thinking of moving but hadn’t listed my current home for sale and didn’t look at any other properties. I simply knew, instantly and without a second of hesitation, that this was meant to be my home. From the beginning, I was determined to make it my dream home. That meant gutting it completely, working with a series of contractors over eighteen months, and spending double on renovations what it had cost to purchase the property. But it has been worth the hassle and the expense because this environment totally supports my vision of living [[Hestia]]'s qualities There is a beautiful moment in *Alchemy of a Blackbird* when the surrealist artists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo visit Frida Kahlo’s home. > [!Orbit] Claire McMillan in *Alchemy of a Blackbird* > “I’ve been in houses that have this same apart quality,” Leonora said quietly. “As if you’ve stepped out of your life and through a portal to another time. I’ve decided it is a quality of the occupant. How clear is their vision? How fully have they inhabited their life? The clearer the vision, the more they have allowed it to spread to every corner of their environment, every article of clothing and adornment. The clearer the vision, the more you will feel, when entering their house, that you have stepped into another time.” (p. 173) This is the integrity of place that I am embracing and developing — my home exuding comfort, coziness, the artistry of a life devoted to creativity, beauty and simple pleasures. ![[House exterior.webp]] ![[House Sign.webp|300]] See [[Hestia Symbols]].