home-home / ... A CASTLE

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As I wait for 1300 to roll around and the contractors passing judgement on the best way forward WRT replacing some windows and potentially a wall I'm asking myself, perhaps more than I have in a long time, what would help me feel like I'm "at home" in this place I've lived for the last 11 years?

It does feel like "a home" - the dogchildren, K (they are my home; perhaps it's more the people and less the place?) - but it doesn't feel like "home-home," not at all; I haven't felt at home in the "home-home" sense anywhere since 2004 – though it could be argued that I haven't felt at home-home anywhere since 1997, give or take. I catch myself, on more than one occasion, saying "I'm ready to go home now."

Anyhow, what would help me there? Acceptance? Resignation? Casting aside of lingering iterations of self that no longer serve a purpose?

Transitions of transitions (especially for those who've read it): Finished Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE and it is now a.) one of my favorite books of all time ever and b.) a gateway drug into ensuring that the rest of her work makes its way to the to-read pile pronto. So very, very good.

(Is that movie about her with Elizabeth Moss worth watching?)

Oh and speaking of 1997, I've got a thing that I'm whipping into shape, a piece cut from LAST CHRISTMAS IN JULY, coming later today – once I get it in order and grow enough of a pair to publish it in public.

Montaigne, On Solitude

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 "We should set aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establish there our true liberty, our principle solitude and asylum." 

Related to this morning’s post: at present, I’ve got the room at the back of the shop, even in a little corner, a bit of entirety, a dash of liberty, a generous heaping of solitude (save for the dogchildren) and, especially over the last couple days – though not in the sense Montaigne intended – I’ve definitely got the asylum part down. Pretty sure he said something about cracked windows and warped side doors in the shop too but I'm too tired to scan through 1600 pages - no matter how much I love them – right now sorry.

my car keys were on the roof of the car and other (paint shop window) shards

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One of those days, one of those weeks.

Unplanned and contracted construction job incoming: noticed a crack across the big window (6'x5') in the paint shop and have someone coming to fix not only that but to replace the side door and two of the basement windows. Decided it was time to get the latter items off my plate by having someone more than YouTube-competent do them.

Titular keys on the roof were directly related to the cracked window: as I had neglected to take the cardboard to recycling for a week, I had a ton of cardboard in my trunk which I recycled into a makeshift window covering held on with all-weather duct tape and, in the excitement, left the car keys on the roof all afternoon and evening noticing them only when I went to bed and saw, from the landing, a weird splotch on the top of the car which was determined, upon inspection, to indeed be said keys. They were cold. May have borked a fob. Oops.

Happy thing: I fixed the outdoor motion sensor light - pre-bedtime dogchild piss'n'shit will be illuminated once more: "Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination (cue Phantom overture)..."

circling

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Feeling unmoored and thinking these last few days of a line from Alan Watts's THE WISDOM OF SECURITY, something to the effect of that when you realize you're stuck in a circle the only choice is to stop circling, and, while I like his sentiment I can't help but wonder, especially now, what's the jumping-off point? Is it a total jump and then a hard look at everything in it? Every jump I've tried lands me back into the circle, the hamster wheel. Flummoxed. Whatever it is, something's not right and I'm feeling in a rut. Is my circle a dangling car on a stalled ferris wheel or a drain?