Home

My fingers touch the keys and instantly I am connected to self, to soul, to that part of my being that has remained silent for nearly a year.  I have fasted from writing, journaling, and blogging.
I used to say that I write to process what I'm feeling. It follows, then, that my abstinence from writing may also have been an escape from feeling. It therefore is not coincidental that my return to a writing  practice coincides with my return home.

As my odyssey continued for nearly three years, I became stubbornly determined to make my way back home - fiercely fighting to hold on tight to my dream - refusing to let go.
I don't know yet whether that fight will have been worth the cost of my labor.
I just know that I have been home sick for a very long time.

The other day, I was getting on to the freeway and I saw a homeless man in his makeshift campsite underneath the overpass.  He was clearly visible, isolated on a desolate island of concrete and rock, surrounded by speeding cars and exhaust fumes. I found myself wondering what it was that drew him to that particular place. He was laying on a sleeping bag. Next to him was a grocery cart filled with stuff. He was so alone and yet so public.

I felt ashamed and guilty.

I have never in my life slept under a freeway overpass.
Hardship comes in a variety of forms.
My yearning for home has been with me constantly and now that I am almost there, I am questioning what it all has meant.

 My shame and guilt swelled within me as I passed the homeless man under the freeway.  All of a sudden, I was faced with an existential crisis. All I could think of was what the philosopher and theologian,  Paul Tillich referred to as "Ground of Being."
 I began to weep.

 Has this sojourn been a spiritual exile disguised in the physical notion of home?  The mystery of our very existence dwells within the invisible walls of our human psyche.  Isn't the home for which we yearn  really our union with the Divine?

That homeless man forced me to look at something far deeper in my experience.
Home is a physical place but it is also a mental and spiritual place.
The essence of home is the "Ground of Being. "

My fast has provided an empty dwelling where my spiritual self may now take root.
At home,
I am.

The Cuckoo's Nest

If a house breathes with the life of its inhabitants then mine just exhaled.  The occupation is over.  My exile has come to an end.

For six months, my house was rented to a woman whose pent up nesting urges filled my home with so much stuff that not a single surface was visible in any room of the house.
She invaded my cupboards, cabinets, and closets and co-mingled our belongings into a jumble of treasure and junk that looked like a packrat's paradise. Christmas decorations, religious shrines, seashells, and candles everywhere.  An air of lunacy and woo woo hung throughout the house. She violated boundaries that any reasonable short term renter would find irrational.  She replaced shelves of my books with her own. She moved or  re- hung pictures and artwork on the walls,  moved furniture into the garage, and lined the threshold of the front door with dead flowers.

In the front of our house, red, white, and blue bunting hung from the windows along with a Christmas flag. The yard was cluttered with angels, a gazing ball, and sea glass. Holiday confusion in the month of April. The neighbors were happy to see us.

I might have found within me the slightest bit of compassion had it not been for the fact that she had so violated my privacy.  Now I realize that renting a house furnished leaves one vulnerable and I should have locked away every personal belonging - lesson learned. However, I had rented the house for months without incident. When I confronted her she responded quite matter of factly,
"I told you I was a decorator."
Silly me.
So this gave her the license to pull out my personal possessions and re-purpose them in unimaginable ways? In her mind it did.

It was both fascinating and disturbing - like looking into one of those warped mirrors in the fun house.
A wacky way of seeing the world.

It was my housekeeper, though, who said it best in a text message to me:
"Your house need you."

I realized it really wasn't the things that bothered me. It was her presumption and invasion of my space that got to me. When I suggested I go through the house to separate my things from hers so as not to have my things unintentionally packed up with hers when she moved out, she said she did not want her house dismantled.

Her house?
She, who had already dismantled my house?

Wars are fought over territory.  These were fighting words and any shred of compassion on my part went out the  bunting-draped window.  I had reached my limit. I was at the end of my patience.

All of a sudden, the crystal heart given to me by a friend, that had been carried from the dining room side-board drawer up the stairs to the back of the house and placed in the little marble box from a bookshelf in the office and then moved into the back bedroom to be displayed on a dresser with her rosary beads became a symbol for the whole mess.
She had touched, searched, foraged, and moved nearly every single item in my house and it flat out made me mad.
She had to go.
And I needed to come home.

All's well that ends well.  I have reclaimed my house and my table tops.  My rooms have been put back in order. The bunting is down and probably won't see the light of day for another year.  The neighbors have seen enough of it.
As for the crystal heart -
it will always be a  reminder that
Home is where the heart is!

Home is Where the Pumpkin Is

  I bought a miniature pumpkin the other day at Trader Joe's. Nesting urges. It is fall and normally I would be decorating my house with various Halloween themed stuff.  My impulse to buy the mini pumpkin and to pick out a bouquet of sunflowers for my dining room table felt like home.
I have been splitting myself between two residences. Not living in either.  Staying in both.

Temporary though it may be, time is after all, all we have.  Why can't I settle in?  The question has been plaguing me.  As if settling in might mean it's not so temporary.

I haven't really cooked in a long time.  I've defrosted meat and put it on the grill to barbecue.  I've tossed salads and packed my lunch. I've opened containers of yogurt and poured granola into a bowl. I've brewed coffee and boiled eggs.

There's virtually nothing on the walls.  I have no place to set a glass when I sit on the couch.  I watch DVD's on a 12 inch TV we bought years ago for our boat.

Mostly I manage the liter boxes - one on the balcony and one in the laundry room.  I've gone through three versions and considered for about ten minutes buying an automatic one. I settled on a covered style with a filter but I'm spending more money on liter than anything else these days - I've tried pine bark and walnut shells, clumping and non-clumping. I obsess on sweeping up and spraying fabreeze.  The cats have definitely settled in even if I haven't.

Friday, I got a call from my bank telling me someone had hacked my account and was on a spending spree in Brooklyn. This, on the same day that the garbage disposal went out and the garage door wouldn't open.  Home repairs never seem to go away no matter where you live. And money seems to escape the bank account one way or the other.

As one of my favorite songs by Mary Chapin Carpenter says, "Sometimes your the windshield. Sometimes your the bug." Guess which one I've been feeling like lately.

The good news is, I am very adaptable.
 Down right unflappable.
I'm asking myself different questions.
Having a  completely new conversation.
Although, my story does seems to have a thematic thread that continues to run through every chapter.
 Letting go.
 I'm quite practiced at it and getting more skilled at it  with each passing day.
I'm just not sure what to hold on to anymore.  What is worth holding onto?

When we were young and starting out, building our home for our family was the driving force.  Putting down roots was never a question I had to ask. It was a natural outgrowth of our lives.  We lived close to my mother in the neighborhood I grew up in. I knew where home was. I'd lived there all my life.

Right now, I think I'm a little lost.
I think, I'm a little homesick.

 I think I'm going to go into the kitchen and cook some soup.
 Not out of the can.
Homemade.

Time to settle in.