2007-10-15
Being
I'm homesick today, ,but for the weirdest things.
Like, this one day in the first house we lived in when we moved to Springfield. We were waiting for my mom to be ready to take us to the beach.
We were probably playing on the floor or something and I just can't stop feeling the way the light came into her room and made the light that was on in her bathroom seem really yellow and almost like it was too dark.
I could only see my mom in shadow because of the natural light taking over the artificial light.
It was a good day - I'd never been to a beach that was like, a real beach, with a deck and lifeguard chairs in the water.
I still love lake Springfield, not just for that day but yeah... that day is on the list.
And I still love that little house, too. My mom makes every house she has feel like home, like HOME, home.
I'm homesick for clove cigarettes.
I had this neighbor here who smoked them and I could always smell her when she went outside to smoke.
It was in my shitty apartment and yeah, that place sucked, it did.
But it was also very, very comforting at times.
And there were times when it was cold outside and I was warm from the stove burning and from the thick light blue sweats I wore and I was on the phone with real friends and I could smell clove cigarettes burning outside of my window.
I do miss that, a little.
I also can't shake out the way it felt to sit in a different shitty apartment, one in Springfield.
I'd sit in the living room and listen to the noises happening in the darkened bedroom.
I'd be maybe like, 5:30 or 6 but in Illinois during plenty of the year, it's dark by 5:30 or 6.
And I'd listen to the ranting - it wasn't directed at me, it was just this crazy rambling, drunken noise, you know?
And I'd look at the fish in the large aquarium for awhile and I'd think they looked really beautiful
I never wished to be one of them or thought that they had it easier or anything that escapist.
I knew I could walk out the door.
But I'd look to my right and I'd see the filthy kitchen, full of pots and pans and juicer-bitten nubs of compost.
And I'd look to my left and think that the curtain might look better if it was pulled back to let in the view.
And I'd listen for that break in the moaning, the one that meant he was giving up and either getting up or no longer interested in whether I stayed or left, as long as I answered the apology in the morning.
I don't long for these things, so maybe homesick is the wring word.
But they're sitting there, bubbling under my surface the way sleep does if you haven't done it in awhile or the way dreams do if you haven't dreamed in awhile.
They flutter and breathe and sort of palpitate right there in your air until you've been quietly sitting long enough for them to spread their wings and fill your space with their memories of being.
Being.
Be
arizonasarah at 3:56 p.m.