Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
by savannah | tags: , , | 0 comments
It's so strange when a room is reduced to four white walls.

After spending a good portion of my day cleaning out dried soy sauce from a refrigerator (thanks, worthless pad thai eating hydra-for-roommate), driving a moving van that could comfortably carry approximately three African elephants, and feeding boys jelly donuts in exchange for their brawn, it's finally over. I'm out of my first home outside of home. And it was a good one, a great one, a scary one, and a sad one. Sometimes I saw it as a sanctuary, others, a witch's tower. I can't say for certain how I've changed since moving into that house one year ago, mainly because I don't think we ever truly recognize it in ourselves, even in hindsight. But that could just be because I may be made of granite. Who knows.

The point remains that, regardless of if the leasing agents see the wad of now black spearmint gum in the corner of the living room that I tried to conceal with white-out, or the lingering odor of kitty litter from the fireplace, my presence in that house is gone. Reduced to nothing, not even a whisper. After picking up the last bits of trash from my room that my vacuum missed, (an oyster cracker and a turquoise sequin, respectively) there was nary a trace of life. Just eggshell. I wanted to cry. And for whatever reason, I felt like I was made of evaporated milk. Did this past year actually happen? Where was it?

(To be honest, I did cry. To be even more honest, I cried a lot.)

As I was busy spewing a salty cocktail of oils, mucin, and water onto my freshly cleaned carpet and lamenting a year I had so fatally declared "lost," I could hear the grunts of those downstairs lugging my mattress to the truck. Some of them were familiar, others were new. Some, like my cousin Cooper, I had accidentally dropped on a coffee table when I was ten, others I had just recently met. And it struck me then, I guess, that my instrument for gauging a year was wrong. I'll always remember floor plans (as I toted Architectural Digest as much as I did Highlights when I was younger), but those don't really make a life or a memory. Like Shakespeare said, at best, the world is a stage. Place isn't definitive of memory, but rather people. At least that's how I see it. It's the grunts of those downstairs who help you move from A to B (and unfortunately also those that keep you too long in A and make you late for B) that act as place markers. The nights you spend putting foam rubber stickers on your forehead just because, the days you spend tripping on takeout boxes and musical instruments, or the morning you spend picking up used tissues and bottles of wine. Those, to me, are more permanent than any room could ever be.

In short, I'm still going to miss this house nestled among a retirement home, a middle school, and a university, but walls are everywhere. I'll miss its front porch, I won't miss its tacky italian chef plates that were glued to the walls, yet surprisingly enough, I will miss the confetti-colored walls of the basement. But that's it. The rest I'm taking with me.

Musing: Eskimos, Igloos, & Independence Day

by savannah | tags: , , | 1 comments

Why, why, why is it that on Independence Day I'm thinking about love? Perhaps it's the dreary weather, reminding me of, oh, I don't know, anything the Bronte sisters would write. Bad weather brings out the romantic in me, what can I say. All I know is that I'm not thinking of how happy I am to be American.

Last night, I dreamed about Eskimos and their homes made of ice. In my dream, I built one, and then in Spring, when I heard the first drop drop drops of the melting ice tap my dark suede boots, I cried. Not necessarily because my boots would soon become completely madefied, but because the walls in which I had lived and loved for so long would soon melt away into a blinding and bloodless snow. There would be no mark of where I had stayed, and no tangible memories. Years later, I would not be able to return to my home, look at a particularly shiny pane of a window and say, "Ah yes, that's from the time when a baseball went through the window." My memories of that home would be about as solid and permanent as its foundation come summertime, slowly being evaporated by the frigid sun.

I recall being frightened in my dream, but I realized soon that this was just something I simply had to accept. The notion of "home" and its effect on the individual has been prominent throughout man's existence, therefore its opposite, the lack of a home, has been protuberant as well. Yet, for thousands of years, the Eskimos continued to build their homes made of frozen water only to be left drenched and cold in its wraith like remnants come springtime.

End of the dream. It left me wondering, then, why? Why spend hours upon hours building something so finite? Why risk the hypothermia, the runny noses, the red cheeks and numb fingertips on something that just won't last? It all seemed rather futile to me.

And then it occurred to me, they do it just because. Because that's what their parents have done, that's what their parents before them have done, and so on and so forth. Because that's who they are. The Eskimos are fully aware of the fact that their beloved homes will turn to a transparent puddle, and eventually return to the sky, but they do it anyway.

I feel like that's a lot like love, really. We know that it doesn't last in its most ideal form, obviously, but we get so caught up in its eventual disintegration that we lose sight of it in its most solid state, no matter how transparent it may appear. Some are so weary of seeing their sad reflection in those cold and inevitable pools that they don't bother with love to begin with. No one wants to be left feeling numb.

But for me, I'm more afraid of forgetting, and of having my warm memories snatched into the sky, leaving me shivering without a sign of shelter. I begin to resent time and how it melts away at everything I treasure. And then I realize that it's all elemental and cyclical. Love may melt, condense, and evaporate, becoming indiscernible amongst the world around us, but that's only because it is all around us, and always will be. The Eskimos continue to make their homes made of ice without fear, because they know they can never truly lose them, for water cannot be destroyed. Funny how we view them as silly, even though their homes are made of material that transcends a definite shape and form.

They build, block by block, until they are absolutely numb. They build some more until their diamond is complete. It stands strong for some time, shining brilliantly, but eventually begins to lose its lustre, fading slowly into the snowy earth. But they are not afraid, for the puddle still sparkles as brightly as the house once did. And at night, when the puddle no longer remains, they look to the sky, and see the stars shining like jewels in the inky night, much like the puddle did, and much like their home, though faint, once did. And then the snow begins to trickle down like a string of broken pearls from the starry sky, and they are ready to build a home once more.
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