You were not supposed to find this place.
And yet — here you are. Monsieur Bernie is not surprised.
If you’re curious… step inside
I have received many guests in this house. A remarkable number of them forgot to leave. I considered this a compliment — still do.
I did not arrange these rooms for your convenience. I arranged them for your curiosity — which is, I have always believed, a far more interesting thing to serve. The light will be inconvenient at certain hours and extraordinary at others. The mornings are slow and golden and not to be rushed. The evenings, I have found, arrange themselves without my involvement.
There are spaces here built for conversation and corners built for its opposite. A kitchen that was never meant for one person. Rooms that carry their history the way a well-traveled coat carries its creases — present, but not insistent.
I have placed nothing without intention. I have explained nothing more than necessary.
Move through it as you like. I have never believed in preferred directions.
— Mr. Bernie
I have always believed the best conversations happen away from the main table. Something about proximity to the principal rooms makes people perform — they sit straighter, they finish their sentences too neatly. The in-between spaces are where things get interesting.
The pool house is one of those spaces. It belongs to no particular hour. It has no agenda and makes no demands. It is where the afternoon goes when it has decided — quite reasonably — that it does not want to end yet.
Come here after something. Come here before nothing in particular. Bring a glass of something cold and an opinion you haven't fully formed. Leave with neither, or both, or something else entirely. I have long since stopped predicting what happens here.
Some of the best things that have ever occurred in this house occurred in this room. I kept no record of most of them. This was not carelessness.
It was respect.
— Mr. Bernie
I refuse to call them amenities. The word belongs in a brochure, and I have never trusted brochures. I call them les plaisirs — the pleasures — because that is what they are, and because precision in language is the first courtesy one can offer a guest.
The Pool — I did not install it for exercise. I installed it for the particular quality of light it holds at four in the afternoon and for the way it makes people stop talking and simply be. Float in it. Look at the sky. Reconsider whatever you had planned next.
The Jacuzzi — This is where the evening decelerates. Enter it after something has happened — a long dinner, a long conversation, a long day of being elsewhere. It will take whatever is left of your tension and make it irrelevant.
The Sauna — A Finnish invention that I adopted with complete sincerity and no irony whatsoever. Silence is welcome here. So is honesty. I have found the two arrive together, in the heat, when there is nowhere else to be.
The Fire Pit — Ah. This is where the real night begins. Someone will stay too long. Someone will say something that surprises even themselves. The fire has no interest in what hour it is. I suggest you adopt the same position.
Use all of it or none of it. Start wherever something catches your attention first.
There is no correct order. There never was.
— M. Bernie
