Night Walking Part Two: Houses

(Note to self: no more two part posts. The is a blog for fuck sake, not an essay. Get it all out in one go or get what you can get and get out. Move on. New days.)

When my head gets quiet enough its just my feet hitting the pavement, soft wind, traffic in the distance and a far off train whistle blowing out my favorite sound. The lonesome possibility of motion.

It's the pull to keep going and the pull to turn home and every now and then a the little nudge of Daisy's nose against my leg. The blissful absence of direction against the realization I know exactly where my legs are leading me. Past the neighborhood houses and the big church and down the hill across Sandy and the downtown buildings all lit up against the sky, back through the brickers and manicured gardens of my old apartment complex. Circles of yellow light on the lawn. The place I landed the first time I left.

I've been doing this lately. Revisiting old places I've lived. Or driving near but not driving by. A few days ago I got half way down the block that dead ends into the first place Scott and I lived together  in Portland, a little wood heated two bedroom down in the trees beneath the Halsey bridge. Turned the car around though. I didn't need to see it again. But tonight I keep going, past the fountain with it's lion heads spiting a constant steady stream into the bowl below. Same fountain I circled, toddler at my knees, hot August day of a different lifetime. Tonight is Daisy at me knees, nose to the ground.

Sometimes when I'm walking it's totally confounding how all these people can have houses to put their lives in. It's such a simple thing. Houses and houses and houses. Still, in this moment its all so far from me, how they get them. But that's not the truth either. If your counting, I've lived 22 places since the day I left my parents house for college 25 years ago. That's only tracking places I stayed more than a month or paid rent or held a job. I know exactly how you get a place. I'm a fucking expert on rentals and house hunting and camping on beaches. Getting a place is not the issue. It's how you keep a home that blows me to pieces.

All the lights are on in my apartment tonight, shades down so I can't see in and I'm glad for that. In my head it still looks like mine inside. No time has passed. All the air tight in my chest. Every breath I feel it. The the big, old grandma oaks lined up along the side walk. This was my view. All the nights I smoked cigarettes out my bathroom window while the girls slept in the bedroom. I want to know what I knew when I lived here.

I don't want to leave amd I can't stay. I want to walk further into the night, but I have to turn home. It's getting colder and I have to pee and sometimes that's all life is. Meet the simple needs of our bodies and keep going.