Home

So commences the arduous task of finding a home. All those tawdry clichés seem to float away, not enough weight to hold them to the ground. Home is where the heart is. Home is wherever I lay my hat. Blah, blah, blah. Home is the place where my bed is, where all my stuff is, where I stack old journals in a bookshelf and dust piles up from time to time. Home isn’t some abstract place of comfort and serenity, it’s a place, preferably on a sloping hill that rises to a beautiful little hovel and falls to a boat dock on the bay or some inviting body of water. I suppose it could be on a park where children play on weekends and dogs run around like pinwheels.

Home has changed over the years. At one point it was a box on the wrong side of (and way too close to) the tracks. The commuter train would thunder by and the walls would shake as the whistle blew and the clanking sounds of the crossing bell would pierce the air on the hour, all night long. The pea-green carpets were terminally stained and the cocaine dealer who lived next door would beat his girlfriend and target practice in the backyard when he wasn’t drinking beer and throwing the empty cans out his front door to an ever-growing pile of aluminum on the lawn.

For a spell it was the back seat of a 1967 Dodge Dart, complete with built-in roommates, torso and full mannequins that would be rearranged at night such that we all could sleep, the largest with her foot out an open window. When it rained there was simply no way to keep the sky out and accommodate all of us comfortably. The trunk was my armoire into which many things fell irretrievable. This did not last long.

Then home was a small room on a windy hill in a house on a caldesac. Later it was in a room on a windy hill surrounded by trees in a Mormon household. Then home was little box in the sky, a dorm room built on prison specs, little single beds that pulled out from a bolster such that the bed could pretend to be a sofa during the day, two to a room.

Then home was a beautiful room in a big Victorian House, filled with college kids and dreams, a big pantry and sweet little fixtures from an era gone by, the wedding date of residents of years ago engraved on a broken pulley that one day opened the door from the top of the steps. The overhead electric rails strung out in front of my street-side window, sparking as the bus’ rabbit ear antennas scrolled over junctions in the line. Watermarks on the ceiling and roaches scurrying across the kitchen floor were just a few of the features of this aging beauty in the heart of the Western Addition. The demise of this fine paradise was the culmination of a summer sublet to a punk band from Wellesley. The once new carpets were beer-stained and haggard, the built-in cabinets filled with months of trips to the recycle center. It never regained it’s charm.

Home became a basement studio sublet in the heart of Pacific Heights, caring for cats who’d drag in mice from the backyard and taunt them, squealing, into the small hours of the morning. The dark subterranean haunt was hidden from the world and marked a moment of going inward. It was all very temporary.

I had a dream about the madwoman in the attack and by serendipity home became a small, very small, one bedroom let on the top floor of an old Victorian. The greatest feature of this miniature living space was a seemingly centuries old stained glass window that withstood earthquakes, fires and explosions to filter the light in colors across the living room floor. When the building exploded nearly a decade back, the sturdy room resisted the momentum and stood unmoved while the plaster and glass shattered throughout the entire building. The window remained unmoved. But not me, I moved a little back in the building to a far less hearty, but slightly more spacious nitch in the world. A nitch we’ve I’ve grown, admittedly, to despise most of the time, but it’s home nonetheless.

I wonder where home will be next. What little place exists for me that will grow as comfortable as a habit? Where will I raise my toes to point toward the ceiling and fall into fitful sleep at the day’s end? On what wall will this photograph rest that inspires me throughout the day and will my neighbors sit for a spell and watch the world go by on our front stoop? Will I occasionally smell aromatic wafture of briquettes in a grill and hear the far away echoes of children playing? One thing is decidedly clear, where home is next doesn’t have the roar of engines up a hill, the sound of sirens throughout the day and the ever present noise of car alarms and mayhem. It’s going to be a quieter place with trees and grass and perhaps water. I simply cannot continue to live where the only place of serenity is a place I cultivate on the inside.