The House

We call it The House; the capitalization is audible. From my post about the common kitchen, you might have gotten the impression I don’t like living here, but that would be a mistake. And since there will be more posts that find their background in this place, I’d like to give you a brief tour.

It’s a divinity house and all that that implies. It harbors fledgling ministers who wander the halls in a state of divine doubt or evasive drunkenness, with a few Ph.D. and masters of theological studies students (who aren’t sure how they landed here) avoiding the confusion by holing up in their single rooms or their apartments, which are much better equipped for this purpose, seeing that they have a kitchen and common room all their own. It has four floors, the lowest a basement that resembles the McCallisters’ in Home Alone to a tee. It took me two months to take the plunge and wash my clothes. In order to reach the basement’s laundry room, you have to take a flight of stairs down into the ground, pass years of stored items that are no longer stored but lost (their owners now different people than the ones who cherished a broken bookshelf or a set of dusty albums), take two right-turning halls (one short and one long), until finally you find the washers and dryers where they hum and rattle, surrounded by exposed pipe and cinderblock. The next three floors are not so cavelike and call to mind a dorm, small and quirky, where none of the rooms are exactly the same, absorbing tiny bits of the personalities of their occupants over the years. Mine is a fourth floor corner room, facing north and a little east. The large windows made me believe for the first time that I was living in a city, the surrounding high-rise apartments expensive and chic; the stairs made me believe for the first time that I knew too little profanity.

I’ll describe the residents of The House later, because each of them – all twenty-one – deserves their* own post. Each of them is now a part of me.

The outside is nothing if not anticlimactic, and that’s generous. Being surrounded (as I mentioned) by high-rise apartments and over-priced, destination restaurants, you would most likely miss it on your first visit. You’d pass it a couple of times in your car, and finally, shaking your head, pull into the gravel parking lot behind the house and wonder how it got there. My guess is that it was here before the rest and held its grip. Have you ever seen Howl’s Moving Castle? This one doesn’t move, but you’ve got the right idea. A plain, beige brick building with a large concrete porch and a home to weeds is what we have to offer, but we offer it with all our hearts. There’s a single light that illuminates half of the porch at night, whatever season, and it does it on purpose. Much of why I love this place is encompassed by that light. We recognize that you are a fellow traveler, and because we recognize that, the light stays on.

And here I sit. The weather is perfect, in that it is impossible to tell where my skin ends and the air begins. I’ve dragged out one of the many lounge chairs that stay folded up by the door in the lobby, and on the table beside me on the porch sits a chilled bottle of wine, half full, with a glass of wine, half full. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter, an empty cookie bag from Panera, and my backpack form a protective circle on the ground. Already the Friday night crowd has passed by and in front of me, some who are close calling out that I look comfortable, and some who are not as bold whispering to their partners as they saunter by, “That’s a good set up,” waiting until I can hear them, barely. Yes, this is a good set up. I’m glad you agree.

* If you are a grammar nazi – and being one myself, I do not consider this a pejorative term – you are welcome to email me, and we can talk about pronoun-verb agreement via message. But I promise you: I will win.