note #29: housy house - بيت بيوت
One of the reasons I needed to leave San Francisco was the couch in the living room. I found myself frustrated with the fact that the queering (forced and/or embracing) did not extend itself to my domestic ways. Was I missing out on the adventure by being too keen on the comforts of home?
Like in the movies and the homes of families and friends, like in the catalogues and at furniture shops my living room was in the living room and it had a couch. I know many dream of playing house, and I hope everyone who wants it gets it, but I got to a point where I did not know if I was playing house or house was playing me.
So we gave up our couch-ways and took to the road. (True though cozy in the knowledge that there were houses that will open their doors to me when I want it or need it (thank you all). So, not straying too queerly or awfully far, but free definitely of a couch to call my own.
Over the past nine months, we have traveled north to south east to west and have found ourselves in motel rooms, furnished flats, borrowed bedrooms and on the couches of friends, we have spent one night to a whole month in any one of those stops and in every one of them we made house!
The move from car to new dwelling routine varies depending on what and where. The coffee set comes down first, icebox, main spices, favored herbs and bananas. We unfold the woolen blanket and put up a trinket, line up the toiletries and hang our clothes, line the slippers by the door, and what a fiesta if there was a bathtub down came the epsom salts. The books find themselves a spot with the notebooks and maps, computers, phones, chargers and such. Open the windows and establish a corner for the stretch routine.
Writing this from our home of fourteen days. This one is spacious and all our things came down from the car to rest. Had dinner with our friend and host. Did some work. Heard a coyote or a dog, it could have been a duck. Might brew some sage tea and drink it sitting on my couch-for-the-time-being and watch the fire burning in the heater before I go to bed.
It will take time. Or maybe I will always love me a bit of house.