Friday, July 20, 2007

home?

good-bye-pope

With eleven days before I move on from the glorious town of Flip Flop, I am looking around this house and wondering exactly what it was I considered home.

I came home today after being over the hill for five solid days (when one way of my communte is consistently an hour and a half long, I opt to couch surf). The living room was tastefully redecorated (the usual piles of other people's stuff mysteriously vanished in my absence. Bravo, housemateys!) and the corners appointed with regal Costco houseplants. I had the odd sensation of going into someone else's house. Fortunately, the homey piles of dishes still held court in the sink and the linoleum was still curling up in front of the dishwasher. After a second, more penetrating glance, the house still had its familiar level of decay.

My perpetually messy room has become the vortex in my packing operation. Warehouse, abandoned studio, sty-- it wears many guises, but not that of "bed chamber." The floor is covered. I had a brief vision of it's potential in my mind- a peaceful, uncluttered space, where I could rest, surrounded by a few small art pieces. In some ways, it has ceased to be my room. In a few short days, the M*ster will be calling it hers. It is slowly morphing back into a space that is not my own.

Is it the comforting, familiar mess that says "home?" Or does "home" simply mean a place that I intend to stay at for more than 30 days into the future (assuming a month to month lease)? Are certain things or people necessary to a home? I am teetering on second base, at a figurative apogee, at once fleeing from and looking for home.

2 comments:

Molly said...

Oh dear Carmena. The ruddy glow of the kitchen. And now the living room so productive, a desk in the middle of the room? Plants flapping. Your room is a haven for everything. It is magic! Everytime I have needed something, like duct tape or a ruler, or charcoal, perhaps a stapler I have gone into your room, if the door is open of course, stood in the middle of all the little cascading piles glanced around and usually have found it under a pile of something. Your desk with its fabulous piles of remnants and clippings and books and cloth.

Ode to the smell of old books and unfinished projects and to the legacy of codes and submarines and comics. And to the lonely couple below deck.

But I am excited for your venture in a free space free of clutter where you can brim with ethereal creativity! --a place where you can makeshift new aircrafts and watertanks of wholly other ceilings and sink and range!

Oh boy, take me with you Carmen, please shove me in your pencil box!

Anonymous said...

as Dan says the church is the people, your home is anywhere you are (but without cats). I miss you already...
:(

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