(no subject)
I spent the weekend at the home of another not quite ex, my friend Emily, and now I am thinking about houses. I am thinking about the houses of people I miss. And I am thinking about fall. There was just enough rusty edges in the light today to make me realize that this summer isn't as motionless as it appears.
I always get nostalgic when the seasons change but autumn hits me more directly. All day I have been trying to dig up why that would be. I remember my mother being so tickled and attentive every first day of school, taking pictures of me in the driveway at 7:15 am. I remember the sense of promise in never-worn sweaters and backpacks without notebook fringe in the bottom. I want to feel something starting with that kind of bite and sharpness. And I want to feel that crescendo of being welcomed back into the world the way I did every year at school. I always felt at home at school.
Which brings me to houses. In the same way I have loved schools, offices, empty lots, even certain doctor's offices, the houses I loved the most in my life were never houses where I lived. They were always transitional spaces, spaces I remember entering and exiting with all of the bodily excitement of seasons changing. My best friend Kate's house in adolescence was at the end of a bumpy dirt road, on the grounds of an old campsite that had been in her family for fifty years. It was full of things I didn't have at home, family pictures, wineglasses mixed up with the tumblers, a woodstove and a piano. In all my memories of that house it is just getting dark and I am pretending I live there.
I feel similarly about Emily's house. It never stops being novel to me in its ordinariness and it's safety.
She is small and pale and scrubbed to a shine and I think of her house the same way. Unobtrusive, graceful. There is plenty of clutter but it seems to speak of an art of living, a balance of necessity and luxury. I took a shower in her big bright bathroom and dried myself off under the skylight and I felt at once so at home and so mystified by what it would take to feel that way in my own house. Likewise, what would it take for the thrill and familiarity of this fall to feel like mine, as if that sense of possibility were meant for me?
This entry is partly about loneliness and partly about depression I guess. But loneliness and depression as real lived experiences that are attached to my five senses and space and time. That's a start.
I always get nostalgic when the seasons change but autumn hits me more directly. All day I have been trying to dig up why that would be. I remember my mother being so tickled and attentive every first day of school, taking pictures of me in the driveway at 7:15 am. I remember the sense of promise in never-worn sweaters and backpacks without notebook fringe in the bottom. I want to feel something starting with that kind of bite and sharpness. And I want to feel that crescendo of being welcomed back into the world the way I did every year at school. I always felt at home at school.
Which brings me to houses. In the same way I have loved schools, offices, empty lots, even certain doctor's offices, the houses I loved the most in my life were never houses where I lived. They were always transitional spaces, spaces I remember entering and exiting with all of the bodily excitement of seasons changing. My best friend Kate's house in adolescence was at the end of a bumpy dirt road, on the grounds of an old campsite that had been in her family for fifty years. It was full of things I didn't have at home, family pictures, wineglasses mixed up with the tumblers, a woodstove and a piano. In all my memories of that house it is just getting dark and I am pretending I live there.
I feel similarly about Emily's house. It never stops being novel to me in its ordinariness and it's safety.
She is small and pale and scrubbed to a shine and I think of her house the same way. Unobtrusive, graceful. There is plenty of clutter but it seems to speak of an art of living, a balance of necessity and luxury. I took a shower in her big bright bathroom and dried myself off under the skylight and I felt at once so at home and so mystified by what it would take to feel that way in my own house. Likewise, what would it take for the thrill and familiarity of this fall to feel like mine, as if that sense of possibility were meant for me?
This entry is partly about loneliness and partly about depression I guess. But loneliness and depression as real lived experiences that are attached to my five senses and space and time. That's a start.