a suggestion of permanence
it's a strange phenomena to live in someone's home. when guest-hood takes on a more permanent life, and it isn't long before you find yourself cleaning hard-to-reach places and organzing the tupperware drawer.
i write this as i am comfortably enjoying breakfast at someone else's table in someone's else's house. i am babysitting the house, the 2 dogs and the 2 goats for the week, and am marvelling at the sense of ownership i feel over the pile of clean dishes in the sink and the coffee mug with little airplanes on it that i have used every day. the cluttered master bedroom is now my domain, my smell on the sheets, my toiletries lined up next to the sink, my books piled at the top of the stack.
what's even stranger about this whole thing is that when i go "home" at the end of the week i am going back to someone else's home. a home in which i have lived for 7 months, and one where "comfort" has gone out the window. (the irony is killing me) there's awkward-guest-mode, then there's comfortable guest mode, then there's just comfortable, then there's part-of-the-family. i have achieved this upper-eschelon of live-in-hood, but i am still cleaning unrest out of my fingernails.
as i lay in someone else's bed last night and listened to someone else's crickets chirping outside someone else's window, I went back in time. i remembered how the locusts sounded at my house growing up, through my open window. the surge and lull of their song was so soothing, and i was so imaginative then. that was my home.
the only thing retaining permanence is memories. they are always there, always packaged with a certain feeling. they don't go away, you can't change them, and no one can take them from you. my memories can never be someone else's.
i write this as i am comfortably enjoying breakfast at someone else's table in someone's else's house. i am babysitting the house, the 2 dogs and the 2 goats for the week, and am marvelling at the sense of ownership i feel over the pile of clean dishes in the sink and the coffee mug with little airplanes on it that i have used every day. the cluttered master bedroom is now my domain, my smell on the sheets, my toiletries lined up next to the sink, my books piled at the top of the stack.
what's even stranger about this whole thing is that when i go "home" at the end of the week i am going back to someone else's home. a home in which i have lived for 7 months, and one where "comfort" has gone out the window. (the irony is killing me) there's awkward-guest-mode, then there's comfortable guest mode, then there's just comfortable, then there's part-of-the-family. i have achieved this upper-eschelon of live-in-hood, but i am still cleaning unrest out of my fingernails.
as i lay in someone else's bed last night and listened to someone else's crickets chirping outside someone else's window, I went back in time. i remembered how the locusts sounded at my house growing up, through my open window. the surge and lull of their song was so soothing, and i was so imaginative then. that was my home.
the only thing retaining permanence is memories. they are always there, always packaged with a certain feeling. they don't go away, you can't change them, and no one can take them from you. my memories can never be someone else's.
posted by Sarah G at 7:28 AM
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