An Ode To My House

Summer is fighting out its departure, it wakes up cold and weary, warms up fiercely raring for fight and fizzles out in defeat at the end of the day. Autumn is winning, the air is crisp, the wind is rearranging the leaves from the trees to the streets and the gutters. I have been trying to watch the seasons more closely, living in a sea of concrete the temperature informs me of the season rather than the tones and colours of nature.

I have lived in the inner city on a main arterial road now for 5 years, although I have painted my house all the colours of the world, I am currently writing in my watermelon pink bedroom, the grey of the city, and confines of living like an adult in an childs bedroom are starting to take their toll. Greg and I bought an investment rather than a house, we live with 4 other strangers to pay it off. It's a life on layby and I am desparate to finally realise the installments. After early days of losing treasured items and watching a newly renovated house gets its first nicks and bruises, I began to detach myself from my surroundings, our house is stranger proofed in the a way that new parents baby proof theirs. It is a communal space rather than a personal one.

For years I struggled with the transcient engeries that rushed in and out of the front door only to be displaced with the rush of cars. I wanted to create a home for Greg and I, a place where we could live our dreams rather than mark time. It resulted in a frustrated attempt to manufacture a community to tie down vagrant energies and in my frazzled disappointment that people didn't care about my house as much as I did. People often comment that they could not live with strangers and definitely not for the length of time that we have. The truth is that is has been hard and I have had to growth enormously to be the person that I am now with it.

There were years when I saw the worst and best of people and 1 year I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown, that year ended with me and all my housemate sitting at the kitchen table crying. I have found that living in this house is such a contradiction, there are 6 of us here, but I have never witnessed all 6 at the same time, in fact witnessing 4 in the same space is a miracle.

We breathe the same air, eat of the same plates, sleep in the same stillness, wash our clothes in the same machine, our lives cross paths in so many ways and yet we are essentially strangers to each other. The distance and yet proxsimity of these relationships is conflicting its like that endless elevator ride with someone you know but don't speak to. In the last year I have come to accept these relationships for what the are, embracing their intimacy and enjoying the distance. I can’t deny that I long for a home of my own, for plates that only I and those I love eat off, to know the clothes line is always free, and to be able to invest safety in my environment and objects. It’s amazing to me though the lives that we get used to and even comfortable in.

I once felt like this house shut down who I was that I had stopped trusting people because I had so many strangers in a circle that is normally reserved for lovers, husbands and families. I see now though that I trust more than ever that having people racing in and our of your closest boundaries creates a new flexibility and challenges the need for control.