Space

When I read yesterday about the embrace of minimalist living on the part of an increasing number of Americans—small the new beautiful, home the great comfort, lavishness of love but not of spending—I had the tremor of epiphany: For the first time in my life I risk being in quasi fashion. Me of the (albeit darling) two-bedroom house, of the mix-and-match vintage clothes closet, of the predilection for applying my imagination, Anne of Green Gables like, to my standard wood deck and its curtain of trees, which (I pretend) is a studly raft floating out upon the bay of paradise.

The economy has people cutting back, valuing the once (in some quarters) despised small life and suddenly I'm more mainstream than I have ever been. I cherish an America that can and will adapt to pressures on resources. I love living among those who find pleasure in the reused and the re-energized and who can make, of seeming constraints, stunning possibilities.