Pastel Imperfection

Perhaps a portrait this evening. Pastel imperfection. Luminous. Aglow. Harmonious colors. A few crisp contours, but mostly velvety atmospherics. A moment. A feeling…

“I feel like the barn would be better sited further south where it could screen road traffic from view,” I said, catching myself. I attempted to turn it into a joke. “I *feel* like,” I exaggerated, emphasizing an overused — and, in my opinion, too often misused — prefix that irks me. Maybe a slight chuckle from the contractors with whom we’re meeting. Maybe not.

We’re trying to site a barn that will begin construction soon. It’s hotter than the hinges of Hades (and stickier than original sin), so everybody is ready to wrap up as soon as we can finalize our plan. Two hours into our midday meeting, we’re all hungry for lunch. We all have to get on to other commitments. Several have to catch a ferry.

A “severe thunderstorm” alert lights up our phones as we finalize corner stakes, tie elevation ribbons to indicate top of slab and top of foundation, iron out a 2-week timeline, and disband.

After a late lunch the storm arrives sans lightning and rumbling but buckets of earthbound water. A downpour. Followed by clear sky and sunshine. Wind up, wind down, up, down. And now no clear indication what to expect next. Maybe a thunderstorm. Maybe a glorious gloaming. Maybe neither.

I’m standing at my desk in the icehouse loft. Lawn and linden glisten in the sunlight. Blue lake and sky beyond. Pure pigment. Vibrant and intense. Precise. Perfection.

And yet perfection isn’t always… perfect. Less precise. More pastel. Sometimes softer. Sometimes blurrier. Sometimes perfect imperfection. Saturated colors and smooth gradations. Pigments layered and blended seamlessly. Delicate transitions, hues shifting imperceptibly. Luminous. Impressionistic. Moody.

Siting a barn is no time for pastel imperfection. We’re studying the site plan, cross-referencing the structural plan, pulling measuring tapes, checking a laser level. I’m walking along an old fieldstone wall that runs parallel to the road, eyeballing site lines. I’m conjuring architectural elevations into view so that I can evaluate what the new barn will look like from the public view shed, from our driveway upon entering, from our neighbor’s driveway, from the 2-bedroom home that we’re reimagining as a guesthouse, and from the lower lawn on the western shore of Lake Champlain. I squint as I stride, blurring the view just enough to imagine building corners where the stakes have been hammered into the lawn.

“I feel like…” I had said, surprising myself. Now, at my desk, lost in a pair of photographs taken eight years ago today, I’m struck by the pastel imperfection of the millennial habit of prefacing statements with “I feel like…” as if blurring the line between subjective emotion and objective reasoning. Instead of directly stating something, the prefix softens the assertion. Instead of clarity the prefix offers humility, emotional safety, and hopefully harmony.

In today’s photographs, there’s a velvety atmospheric quality that reminds me of pastel imperfection.

To be clear, these photographs of the Essex-Charlotte ferry passing Rosslyn’s boathouse (top) and approaching their Adirondack Coast destination just north of the Old Dock Restaurant (bottom) are not altered. They are photographs. They are not pastel renderings. But the diffused “golden hour” light as well as the gentle gradations between hues and between sky and lake, suggest the sort of pastel imperfection that can powerfully evoke a moment, a place, or a feeling. These atmospheric qualities and the harmonious feeling they invoke captures the soothing serenity that perfect plans and crisp contours sometimes overlook. So perhaps pastel imperfection has its place… even when siting a barn.