treasure: home

firstly, set this song to playing.

i would not claim myself to be anything so glamorous as a gypsy of life, an eternal traveller, nothin' like that. i've not seen a lot of the places i would like to see, but i prefer to sit back and expect in a calm fashion that i shall visit them some day.

there's no rush, no panic, no fear of missing out.

with so many places to visit, the one thing i wonder about from time to time is where i call home. and honestly i couldn't say. the house i first remember living in has since been reclaimed and reorganized by a chaos of cousin's children. that house, if i'd inherited it, i would have loved for its balcony, its view, and its sentimental value: the photos i always looked over as a child from before i was born (because that time is so foreign, especially as a child... the time before me? couldn't be), when my parents were together and just starting out at marriage and adult life. there is a photo i will beg from my mum to take and make myself a precious copy of: my parents, younger than i am now, standing in front of the recently built (and not-quite finished) house. mum is in red gumboots (i think- in my memory they're red) and dad stands behind her with his arms around her. knowing what i know now about the world and relationships and reality, i can see the excitement and apprehension in the photo. a young couple in love on the family farm with plans of kids and chaos of their own.

perhaps it is fitting that my cousin bought the house to build his own young family, after all.

in that house i shared a bedroom with my brother stu- dad, or maybe my grandfather (i never thought to wonder til now) built a unique twist on bunkbeds- and i remember the green curtains and the pattern on them from the hours i guess i spent as a young child staring at them when i was meant to be napping or reflecting upon my bad door-slamming behavior. i remember how the hallway seemed so long and dark, even though mum and dad's room was just next door. i remember our blue bathroom, and how we took all the balloons blown up for one of our birthdays and put them all in the bathtub, then insisted on taking a bath in there.

i'm certain i have romanticized that time, but it truly seems in my memory that that house was the time we were closest and maybe happiest. us kids anyway, oblivious to the havoc we were creating daily for our beloved mother to clear up behind us. i think those years are the reason that me, stu and hugh love each other. in my mind, that house is pure childhood goodness.

we moved into the bigger house when i was maybe 10. we all had our own rooms, spare rooms besides those. the homestead houses a lot more for me. it soaked up my teenage angst, depression and artistic woe. holy crap, the bad poetry i wrote in that house. that house tied me to my dad's teenage years, my aunts, uncles, grandfather and beyond, all the way back down the line. there is history that i didn't appreciate at the time, and now i simply wonder about the sort of people my family have been, so many generations back. i don't think so much of their quiet, well-mannered adult years of wisdom. i think of all the times they felt like yelling and slamming doors and all the times they didn't.

because that house was always cold i always felt the ghosts. it's not to say i didn't continue with my joyous existence of oblivious childhood and teenagehood. i lived a blessed life as a daughter in my parents house, and i realize the treasure of that as an adult; that which my parents worked so hard to give us, doing the very best they could.

since i left the safety of a house with parents in and went out into the world (not for a second pretending they weren't there right behind me if and when i needed them), that family homestead has been host to more angst and doorslamming, and i am glad to know (in a way that ignores the trouble this causes parents) that my newer family have kept on with my legacy. i am always welcome in that house when i'm home, and i love to be there. i love the new pieces added on to the house and the changes. they feel right to me. but that's not to say the ghosts aren't still there. the house is too old not to have ghosts.

a newer place for me to stay is the warm mudbrick house that jon and louise built. this is a little oasis and a refuge for me, finding peace in the sun, on the armchair closest to the fire, at the dinnertable with candles and red wine, soaking up in the deep bathtub with the water luxuriously up to my chin. it's a place to hide and a place to gather my thoughts, which always serves me well.

since leaving new england, my houses have been in melbourne and in whistler. between one thing and another, i don't have a house i call home.

edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros offer up their sweet sentiment that home is the person you love. i love the idea of that certainty and aspire to feel that way about somebody. i would love to travel with home in my heart and holding the hand of the person who made me feel that way.

Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma & Pa
Not the way that I do love you
Holy Moley, Me-oh-My, you're the apple of my eye
Girl, I’ve never loved one til you.
Man, oh man, you’re my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness
There ain’t nothin’ that I need
Well, hot & heavy, pumpkin pie,
chocolate candy, Jesus Christ
There ain’t nothin’ please me more than you

Ahh, Home
  Yes we are Home
Home is wherever I’m with you (2x)

I’ll follow you into the park,
through the jungle, through the dark
Girl, I’ve never loved one til you
Moats & boats & waterfalls,
alley ways & pay phone calls
I’ve been everywhere with you
That’s true

We laugh until we think we’ll die,
barefoot on a summer night
Nothin’ new is sweeter than with you.
And in the streets we're running
free like there's only you and me
Geez, you’re somethin' to see.

“Jade?”
“Alexander?”
“Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?”
“I sure do, you came jumping out after me.”
“Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your ass
and you were bleeding all over the place and I rushed you off to the hospital.
Do you remember that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, there’s something I never told you about that night.”
“What didn’t you tell me?”
“While you were sitting in the backseat smoking a cigarette you thought
was going to be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you
and I never told you ‘til just now.”
“Now I know.”
Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever there is you
Ahh, Home
Yes, I am Home
Home you are me and I am you.

Home, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros