Posted October 14th, 2003 by Michelle

Geeze, I get a little belligerent when I’m drunk, don’t I? Actually, I don’t, I just get mad when the situation calls for getting mad. But last night was also great fun. I’m just so tired of being disappointed, and tired of disappointing myself. But enough of that. For now.

My apartment is finally rented; the sweetest woman ever named Jessica called me this afternoon beside herself with excitement. She had just signed the lease and wanted to stop by for another look around. I’m selling her my futon and butcher block for a song. I figure it’s easier than moving everything, and I have no idea what my next home will be, or where it will be, so I might as well simplify as much as possible. 90% of my stuff is already up at the farmhouse, and the few boxes left are far overshadowed by the mass of what goes to California. I’m not even sure anymore what is in these boxes, but there are five of them labeled and ready to go. I know much of it is clothes I don’t usually wear, as in they 1) don’t wick or 2) are actually nice.

So 90% of my stuff is gone and strangely, sadly, I miss none of it. I’ve realized that all I need are two mugs, two bowls, two spoons and forks, a coffee grinder and press, one pot and one pan. This is most likely all I’ve ever used since I’ve lived here, and the twos of everything come in handy only when I’m too lazy to wash the one. Everything else- the complete set of my Grandmother’s china, the pot and pan housewarming gift from my father- I’ve used these things but they have yet to cook dinner for eight, as they are designed to do. It’s largely a problem of space. I don’t even have a table in this studio apartment of mine. And so my next place, my next place beyond my Dad’s and any other camping I do, will be one that beckons.

In the words of good ‘ol Thoreau:

I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread-work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one’s head–useful to keep off rain and snow…

…where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping, where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg that a man should use;

…where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there,–in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

…the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop.