On Houses

I've listed my house with a realtor, but I don't think it knows that it's for sale. And I'm not telling it yet.

I keep re-examining the situation. It reminds me of times I've decided I was going to break up with someone but we hadn't had The Conversation. I watch the house, waiting for something to happen to make me to decide not to sell it.

I don't know what that something would be. Perhaps the house, sensing that I've never truly been in love with it, will make a last-ditch frantic effort to win my affections, by -- I don't know, miraculously self-painting rooms I never got around to. Perhaps if I walked in my bedroom and discovered that the walls were the delicate robin's egg blue of the paint sample sheet that's been sitting on my jewelry box for nearly a year-- perhaps then I would say, "Yes! I shall call the contractor and have him knock down this wall, expanding the room as I have often thought of doing! I will put in the french doors in the living room! I shall stay here! Together, we will make it work! And to think I nearly gave you up!"

And my house and I would fall madly in love with each other and whisper endearments in the dark, as I would fall asleep in its embrace, glad to be there rather than wishing I was somewhere else.

I keep waiting for something like that to happen.

There's no good time to break up. I'll wait til the first potential buyers come for a look-see. No point in playing the "It's over" card til it's necessary, til you're sure, ready to move out. It just makes for tense days, and those awkward nights where lying in the same bed, you jolt awake with horror if your foot accidentally brushes against the other's foot. (In this case, I guess that would be the wall my bed is pushed against.)

There I go, anthropomorphizing again.

Gibran wrote:
Then a mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses."

And he answered and said:...Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?

I have another house, in Vermont. My house there is indeed both grove and hilltop-- or more precisely, in forest and on mountain. I think of that house constantly. It's my favorite place on the planet. But I don't get there very often.

I've tried living in Vermont full time. It doesn't work. At first, the quiet calms me. I feel at peace. I sink into the quiet, decompressing. But then the sinking into it begins to feel like free-falling through space. In a matter of weeks, the quiet roars in soul's ears, a deafening stillness. But then the howling erupts to break that stillness-- It is the fierce dogs in the cellar of my dark side, who begin with whining, then snarl and bark and emit such howling that even the Baskervilles would quake with terror.

And the next thing I know, I'm pacing through the night, chain-smoking, listening to Sarah McLaughlin, writing really bad poetry and self-absorbed entries in my journal, and weeping while I read Sylvia Plath aloud to myself.

I can deal with depression. But I do so hate indulging in cliches.

So I only go to Vermont for small pieces of time. Like this coming week, I think I am going. But I think about Vermont, and my house there almost hourly, wishing I were there.

It's like the chocolate pudding, which I never eat though it's my favorite dessert.

Just the Knowing that it's there, somewhere in the world--- often, that is enough.

Not always. But often. And often is pretty darn good.