Moon Magic
When style and spirituality collide
On the night of the full moon, 24th Feb ‘24, I spent an inordinate amount of time fixating on interior style, mood-boarding my ‘perfect’ next home until the early hours of the morning. In my quest to materialise my visions, I began using Freeform for the first time - a new vision board app that came with my brand new Apple Air. Surprisingly, it was easy to use and as I dug deeper into the web, Pinterest and my visual memory of homes and furniture pieces coveted in the past, I came to the Ikea Idasen glass cabinet shown in Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s second family home featured on The Design Files. I must say, it’s a pretty simple piece of furniture. Powder-coated metal, rectangular, broad and neat. Contrasting with Julia’s bric-a-brac stacked ceramic bowls and vases, it just looks ooof! But the thing that threw me was the beige colour. It was not available in Australia… on the Ikea website, on Gumtree, on eBay, on Facebook Marketplace. No. Where. In. Australia. Perhaps it was once available on our shores, or perhaps Julia brought it back from Japan, her husband’s native country. Who knows, but who cared at this point. I needed this piece of furniture and even the 3am migraine and a pair of dry stinging eyes couldn’t deter me from digging further and further into an internet abyss. I thought of succumbing to a black version purchase but it would not suffice. How on earth could a black version create such a soft and beautiful scandi-country vibe like in Julia’s humble little kitchen? With throbbing pain and the realisation the moon had got to my head, I shut my laptop, turned off the light and slept a dizzying 4 hours only to wake up at 7am, hungover from my home styling mania.
I spent the morning in bed, cancelled plans to take the kids out and left everything to everyone else. After all, this full moon coincided with my February period and I had just explained to my husband the difference between a white moon cycle and a red moon cycle. I, was on a red moon cycle, when menstruation begins on the full moon. I was always intrigued by my frequent red moon cycling. According to an article on the web, historically, the red moon cycle belonged to the medicine women, the midwives, and the wisdom keepers of the community. While most of the other women would bleed on the new moon (known as the white moon cycle), the healers would be ovulating, giving them plenty of energy to nurture and care for the bleeding and resting. I liked the idea that my menstrual cycle indicated I was a rarer bird and that the healer role was in my nature.
After a few hours of morning bed rest, I decided a family walk would do my hazy head good. I had a shower and gathered the troops, ready for the promise of some fresh air. For a February midday, it was rather fresh and I was thankful for that. Down the road we walked, kids on scooters, navigating through hoards of potential bidders and nosy neighbours at a nearby house auction. Once we passed that minor frenzy, clarity became of me. Perhaps it was the post-crowd relief, but with some few extra steps I calmly approached a heap of thrown out furniture on a nature strip, amongst it, the Ikea Idasen glass cabinet - in beige.
This isn’t the happy ending though. There were three parts only - the frame without its back, and the two front sliding doors, all disassembled. It took me a while to digest the sheer calamity of the sight. I kept on walking, processing it all, until I quietly told my husband what had become of my ignorant full moon manifestation.