the home without a house
Home is the open water, the open globe, like the crab in the ocean, it knows everything as home.
Its mere existence is reason enough for having a home and we are all living in it.
Left: Childhood house with pool in back, I lived in the pool. I was able to live freely swimming in water. Middle and Far Right: Adolescent house on river in back. My thoughts about home lived in the river. The house sheltered my thoughts.
i hold my spoon and i look into my bowl of food, my forearms resting against the edge of a butcher-block table above four metal cast iron legs. i try to put my weight on it - in total. The table does not move, resting on a floor two stories above street noises. The exterior is stacked brick and the surface crumbles when i run my hands across the surface but the core is strong and it is solid. My feet meet the ground next to the brick wall, there confronted with a stair point me into a way inside, in a stride, it’s one foot up and another, i do it four times. i stand in the shadow of an entrance door, held inside a dark shade. i need to step to be inside. i place my hand on the handle: it is only the physical part of where home begins. My hand activates the handle and the rest of what this construction means. - What is the life of home saying? Can i listen or can i speak to it? What do my walls do to me? i think about my walls. Are they present to me all the time - or do they materialize when i want shelter to sleep, run from a storm, looking for a quiet space. Are they the reason my paintings can be hung or have i made a hole and the nail is the champion of this connection. Maybe the wall is the champion of the nail that is making me think of that champion painting. When I have a conversation or when I am quiet - Do my walls listen to me and absorb the sound or do they protect me from hearing something outside or is it just in my “ free mind ” that those walls are not really there. i have traveled past the door - and i am turning the corner. my soul goes from dark to light… cause i see the person i was looking for. Sitting in that upholstered orange chair. This is one chair out of four other different chairs that leans back at a 60 degree angle while resting low to the wood floor. The wood tongue-and-kissed detail that is resting above a wood frame structure spanning across the main pier member of a group. Those that carry the load, the baggage, the stress and ultimately sitting on the living breathing foundation life. Your life, their life, my life. It serves its structure so that its inner workings below grade are always silent, never to disturb laughter in the home, so that life can flourish -
above mud -
above dirt.