the living spirit of our home

how our interactions with objects and physical spaces fundamentally change us as humans

I moved into a new apartment and still don’t have a rug but it’ll come. I will warm my perpetually cold toes soon and in the meantime the vintage heater in the wall will do. The one that makes loud bangs in the middle of the night that used to make me jump and now are just becoming white noise.

To learn the white noise of a new environment is a bonding exercise. It’s like learning the idiosyncrasies of a lover and deciding that, yes, that shit is a little weird, but I do still love them.

The fridge softly buzzes and the neighbor opens up her door to walk her dog at 8:30 AM. The white camellia tree sprinkled with rogue pink variations rustles in the wind outside of my window and houses many tiny loud birds that I say hello to every morning. Mangool the cat starts meowing at ~11:00 AM and tries to sneak into my apartment once a week. Folks in the alley shuffle the glass bottles around in recycling at ungodly hours alongside the daily beach helicopter that makes me sigh as I realize my tax dollars are probably going towards it.

If it isn’t clear that I’m enjoying myself in this new space, I am. I am zooming in and to zoom in on something is always an act of love, even with the not so fun parts. To notice and sit with something’s intricacies is a generous act of saying ‘here is my attention.’

The sun falls in my bedroom window through the light prism I hung there and scatters tiny rainbows everywhere, which my friend Page calls her little ‘pet rainbows.’ The old dresser that my mom used when my brother and I were babies sits in the corner with a small vase of flowers, and a tray of earrings, barrettes, necklaces, beeswax candles, and perfume. (I love being a girl). My parents always said the dangling dresser knobs were the best earthquake alarm system you could get in California.

Who am I now and who will I be once I leave this place that has become my home? How will it change me? How will these freshly painted walls and old windows that get stuck and built in shelves with so much character and pink bathroom tiles and yellow kitchen tiles––how will they all transform me?

I read somewhere that as we live in a place we shape it and it shapes us. We begin to tweak it here and there to suit us better, and little do we realize, it’s doing the same to us. (It’s why it’s so important to live in a place for a bit before completely furnishing it. You two are still just getting to know each other.)

Our interactions with objects and physical spaces fundamentally affect us. To acknowledge that our homes change us is to see our homes as so much more than inanimate spaces. It is to see them as the living breathing entities that they are.

It is why we must leave a loaf of bread out the first night of moving into a new place to serve as an offering. We cleanse her with the smoke from our smudging and palo santo, and we satiate her with the aromas of our home-cooked meals. We tickle her with our giggles and fill her with joy through our dance moves that shake her floor. We awaken her when we excitedly greet her by saying ‘hi home!’ each day we walk through the door, and ‘see you soon!’ on our way out.

We infuse life into the things we touch. Our interactions hold so much more power than we think, underestimated simply because the affect is felt but invisible.

The energy of those interactions, all compiled over the years, is what makes home feel like home. It’s more than a smell, it’s an energetic charge that holds the memory of these moments.

Where does that energy go when we move out of our home? Does it reabsorb into our objects and hibernate until we’ve moved into our new spot and then start to expand once again as we unpack?

What about when our childhood home burns down and the objects that held this energy are ash? Where does it go then? (Please, please, tell me).

To have something so utterly tangible––poof––be gone overnight. How something so crystal clear in your mind’s eye, still so memorable to your physical senses, become completely non-existent in the 3D world.

Your experience of the physical and reality has no choice but to completely turn itself on its head. The human mind turns to abstraction and metaphor and the invisible and spirit when the 3D world feels unable, or too painful, to grasp.

The little hole on top of our outdoor cushion on the back patio. The wood stain that was accidentally removed by the tape that held down the carpet on the stairs that we had for our dog who began slipping in her old age. The 2008 iPod touch in the wall that was once peak technology but, over the years, became a funny slew of ancient selfies that loaded at a glacial pace.

When the objects and spaces that were the container for this feeling of home are no longer, your home too shifts into the invisible. Don’t mistake the lack of 3D proof to mean that she is gone. She has just taken on a new form and is waiting for you to slow down enough to notice her hand on your shoulder.

The energy of our home is in the ether for now, dipping into our Airbnbs and our new apartments, eagerly awaiting our rebuild. Ready to take on whatever new form we need her to as we bop around rentals or settle into a new spot or go to the flea market to begin to replace what was lost, reminding us that she never did leave us, she’s just spread out a bit now, tending to each Goldberg as needed.

They say home is in the rituals we create for ourselves and it’s true. But I cherish a curation of a physical space way too much for that to carry me much farther than the first few survival weeks after the fires. I cherish the beauty of objects and our relationship to them and how that interaction changes us fundamentally far too much for that to work for me long term.

I love the physical not because of my ego being attached to worldly desires, but because I can sense the spirit within the objects around us, waiting to have life breathed into them through our touch and loving interactions.

I don’t need you to try to understand what it is like to have your childhood home burn down. Please don’t say how you can’t imagine what it’s like. I know you can’t, and I hope you never have to.

All that I ask is that you hug your doorframe every now and then. And wave goodbye to your home when you leave each day. And pat your counter tops after you’ve cooked dinner. And caress the curves of your built in shelving when you pull a book out. And give the wall in your living room a kiss before you go to sleep each night.

Cherish your home as if they were a loved one (for they are). Acknowledge their beautiful presence and your shared relationship because one day you might ache to wrap your arms around the column of your front porch just one last time.

Love you,

Kris <3 xo