Otium is an abstract Latin word that means rest and absence of work. The word is adorned on many things inside, usually in the all-caps Latin styling with the "V" instead of the "U": OTIVM.
From the street entrance to Otium visitors find the gate and a winding road up into a wooded hill, and that's all. There's no sign of a dwelling beyond the trees at the hill's apex. Following the narrow asphalt driveway for a steep mile through wilderness brings guests to the main entrance.
As far as castles go, Otium is modest. And feels lived in, which is probably a hard thing to do for folks who build houses on secluded hills. It's not the largest place we stayed by square-footage on this trip, and while it's not opulent per se, the guest rooms do come with laminated instructions.
It's also a museum, but not just a place to stash old things to which people attach value: it's a museum to the life my uncles have lived together for the past thirty plus years. Making that realization was important for Corrie and I, because that's exactly what we have.
Obviously we don't have a castle on a hill, we have a tiny beach apartment. But the essence of no frivolous things for pretty's sake and everything has a story attached to it and reasoning behind it is shared. The world today and our backgrounds are different, but my uncles and Corrie and I share a specific decorative philosophical outlook.
Anyway, I've been calling it a castle rather than a house because to me if you build the walls with stone and floors with reclaimed wood and make every door fifteen feet high and the glass doors to the veranda open and shut using a bolt and rod mechanism that looks lifted from Firenze circa 1550, you're allowed to go with "castle."
From the back veranda of Otium you can see for miles, just not the road below. Here's a look at that back, with the kitchen offset from the main stone footprint on the left:
The kitchen was awesome, but not overdone. The Great Room, or main living room, is that central cylinder above and opens onto that veranda, and it's pretty cool. You could probably tip our apartment up perpendicular to the ground and fit inside the Great Room. There's a double sided couch in the center, splitting the room into two distinct halves, but never really feeling like you're separated from the other side. Looking up, there're views of one half of the upper library:
And from that side of the library looking down, the central couch is visible as well as the other half of the library:
That picture is blurry and not my first choice, but it shows the symmetry better and has more of the library and chandelier than my other picture.
The rug in that room was so lush; I didn't even know that a grey ordinary looking rug could be so fantastic.
This was my third trip to Otium. The first was 10 years ago for my Grandpa Tom's 80th birthday; the second was 4 years ago for my cousin's wedding. This trip was for the gathering and discussion of and divvying up of Grandpa Tom's remains, he having passed last summer. The memorial was last October.
Cassius, with his Roman reminiscent name, was a star this visit:
To have convened to make final arrangements for the remains of a powerful family figure needed this influx of promise and hope, this little bit of human vitality. Cass was a very important piece of this, or at least I've convinced myself he was. The next chapter in many legacies, one of which was Tom Schumacher II, Cass embodies.
Grandpa Tom was cremated last summer, and during a lovely afternoon in July of this summer on a hill in Hillsdale, his family discussed who was taking ashes where. Dozens of glass jars with screwtop lids were acquired, partially filled with remains, and handed over to volunteers to take all over. There is no timetable to get this done, which is necessary because some places are further afield (Berlin, Tahiti) and some won't be available for intimate visits anytime soon (the White House).
This was the motivating event for this entire trip. I came away with four jars; three within a hundred miles of Long Beach, and the Tahiti jar.
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