No Place Like {This}

I don't have my name on a lease. I don't even have a room of one's own as Virgina Wolfe would put it. I am, for all intents and purposes, house-less. But I am not homeless.

All my things are lying on the floor of my room. These are the only things I was able to carry here, in a few fruit boxes I filched from Wholefoods. I don't have any of my stationary, or any furniture that isn't made of metal, or even a bed that is made for more than one person. But that is where I sleep every night; in a bed that is intended for a college dorm or for some toddlers first 'big-boy-bead.' The sheet is two sizes too large for the bed. I say "sheet" singularly because the bed has only a comforter and a fitted. This single sheet is flannel and snowflake print - which luckily becomes more seasonally appropriate as winter approaches (but was no where near that when I moved in in July.)

Luckily, I am able to pass this off as an utter lack of regard for material things, something I admire, and the rest of the household nuances usually fall under the heading of creative or liberating. The first time I unloaded the dish washer I had an anal-retentive-anurism when i realized we had no silverware organizer. I literally pulled out the rack and turned it upsidedown over a drawer that was a tangled mess of forks, spoons, and knives. Anytime you need something to eat soup with you are running the risk of becoming the next captain hook. Because, you see, the hard thing about finding silverware by sense of feel is that you don't know you have gone too far until you have - and your hand looks like it got caught in a weed-wacker.

My old, newly collegiate-self, would look at me sitting here writing this from a filthy floor in a hall (since we only get our bootlegged internet in a small corner of the house) and think to herself 'this girl is in hell'. And, believe me, sometimes, like when I get dog hair in my food or have to wade through waist-deep laundry to get to the laundry machine, I do think that.

But those moments are usually drowned out by the sound of my roommates recording vocals in their showers, or by the hum of a machine sewing a jaguar costume large enough to fit a 200 lb man. It's hard to hate being somewhere when you love the people you say goodnight to, and even harder when you love the person taking up 3/4's of your baby sized bed.

There are rare nights when I come home to a house that is dark and empty, and I walk through a door that is constantly unlocked, and up a creaky flight of wooden stairs. I don't wash my face, but credit that to the constant rain water, and crawl in to bed.

Sometimes I lay there, alone, in a strange house inhabited by relative stangers. I press my face into a pillow that smells like the sholder I'm used to sleeping on, and hear the kind of silence that comes between tracks on a cd.

And I only think one thing: I'm home.

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* image is from the 2003 Jane editorial 'No One's Home' photographed by Christophe Rihet. All too accurate! also, i'm really happy today for no real reason!