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traveling through Europe, Asia, and Africa, learning Serbo-Croatian, studying with monks, and collecting original sculpture. |
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At first Nina was thrilled to move into Whitney's stylish Greenwich Village apartment, a commodity he had had so long he was able to rent it for a song. She loved his book-shelves of signed originals and his walls of African masks. The African artworks you find in the Manhattan shops are bogus, he liked to tell her. The masks and other pieces he had acquired in his travels through the subcontinent, on the other hand, were marvelously real. |
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Before long, however, Nina felt stifled. There was no room on these shelves, after all, for her paperback novels; little tolerance for her music by Genesis and R.E.M. Even her Man Ray poster, a favorite from college, was relegated to the closet. How can you think of removing the African art, Whitney sputtered, to hang this cliché? |
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Nina loved rock n roll; Whitney preferred opera. She loved eating at Drake's Drum, a local Manhattan pub; he dined at the finest French restaurantsand never went anywhere without a comment about the chef. |
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In short, life for Nina had become insufferable. |
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When she moved out, after the longest 18 months of her life, she had no desire to take what she had collected during this short unionthe precious antiques, the original paintings, even the $5,000 stereo system. Instead, she was thrilled to escape with her boxes of paperbacks, her cases of rock CDs, and her poster by Man Ray. Her new apartment, a small studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, contained no original art, but to Nina, it represented real life, at last. |
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For some people, of course, divesting the accumulation of a marriage may be a bit more difficult. As long as you are legally entitled, take what you want. But remember, you don't want everything. Symbolically and emotionally, acquiring new accessories, from shower curtains to tablecloths to artwork, can be cleansing, indeed. |
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Whether you embark upon the next leg of life's journey in your former marital home or a new apartment of your own, it is time to differentiate the present from what has come before. Now is the time to decorate your habitat in your own style. Now is the time to purchase art, music, and furniture that says something about you. |
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After her divorce, one woman we know hired an interior decorator to redo her Malibu condo in the Santa Fe motif. Another friend furnished his new apartment in contemporary style entirely from Ikea, the reasonably priced home furniture and accessory store. |
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