some may live in the fireplace

Posted August 3rd, 2006 by Michelle

Ian’s blogs often tempt me to write blogs of my own, but I rarely have the wherewithal or the time to actually make it happen. The last few days, his blog about missing alcohol has been buzzing around my brain, making me miss all kinds of unmentionables. Well. Who am I kidding- I mention everything. But then his blog today, with little Lucy quite literally buttering her own toes, made me laugh so hard at work that my colleagues came in to check on me. I think I like the sound of Ian and Tessa laughing really hard as much as I like the sight of La Luce methodically slathering her own toes with butter.

But I digress.

I used to actively misspend my youth; or, at least, I actively tried to misspend it, killing brain cells for want of a third tequila shot, leaving the house with plans of how, and with whom (vaguely) I would return, having yet another beer even though I had to work in less than six hours. I’ll be honest. I cherish those times. Say what you will, but I never laughed more freely, never felt the weight of the world that I do now. And it’s not about getting older- it’s about actually accepting responsibility. And the hangovers are much worse than they used to be, but they’ve always been bad for me and don’t actually act as a deterrent. (If anyone still believes that jail time or the death penalty is enough to keep would-be criminals off the street, think again. It just doesn’t work that way.) I’ve been missing some of the friendships I’ve had that were built on mutal wants and needs and a fair piece of booze. Those were good times. And now I live in a community so small that anonymity is impossible, and cutting loose – in even the smallest sense of the words – is fodder for gossip for the whole community.

But ah, do I long, for a week, or even just a weekend, without a care. Just a few days to do what I want, when I want, without the approval of a committee or the commentary of anyone. I often think I’ll drive to the coast for a day, but the world is so quiet there and often I just feel lonely when I attempt those kinds of trips. So instead, I immerse myself in work, and in the sweet circles I’ve created, and dream of a time when I could walk out my door in the East Village and go find whatever I happened to be looking for. I long for change, for adventure, for things to be hard in a way that makes sense. I also long for a life that is more physically challenging, not one that causes whispers of carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrists or tweaks in my lower back from sitting too long. This is not from whence I come, and there will be a point when I break and simply must do whatever it is I’m called to do. I do not know what it will be, but something tells me that one year from now, on August 3, 2007, I will not be sitting where I am now. I will be somewhere different, where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress.

Ah, me, looks like I have to quote the whole thing. Good Thoreau is always there when I need him:

I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in agolden 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 king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see theroof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; 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; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thin, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; 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 therein 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. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man’s premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men’s houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.