Some days it’s writing a few times. Feel like there’s more to say. More moments to say the things. And I leave the house where words sometimes stall out and I feel without some going I cannot change gears.
Been thinking a lot lately on our life in the current house. It always feels like a stretch to call it home. Home has this meaning over and above rooms and yards and food. Often when I was gone in Hanoi I would come back to my little room. It was home. It felt like this place to come to. To find. Not to lose. Sometimes my friend Van would message me welcoming me back. Asking if I wanted them to come over on the weekend for food. She would bring food from Hue. I would buy her son a burger. Good tradeoff. Somehow the feelings coming home meant something more than some small room. The room size never mattered. What did was the feeling of it all. The being in Hanoi again. It would always dazzle me. Make me feel sad and happy.
Now I find myself in a place i would never stay by choice. It’s lost out on some intersection of two dirt roads that lead nowhere. I told my wife there’s nothing there for me. I find nothing that makes me glad to be there. To exult and exalt it. Most of all I feel it cannot be home. It misses the basic feeling even the small room in Hanoi had. That feeling?
Belonging
Yeah. That’s the one. I don’t feel I belong in the house. The small little room in Hanoi gave me it’s all. This house has no all to give. So I often find myself between gears. Like lost when I want more and finding so little.
I once had this house in California. 5 bedrooms with an ex wife and kids and pets. It too ceased being home. I moved to yet another room there which did. The room was small but when I was in it it seemed large beyond compare. Like the room in Hanoi.
So unlike what we have now. My wife is puzzled. She wants everyone to be happy. To just enjoy the life. Well no. It’s not enough. I will live there but it never can become home. I cannot find the gears. Cannot change them.
Perhaps our result is some disagreement on what I do. How I do it. It’s ok. I don’t live to make the landlords happy. My expectation with them is to take the money and be thankful. It’s so not worth it. But for my wife who had little for 10 years and suffered it’s what she wants. What she sees as being this place to stop and start. I get it. I live it. But I tell her it’s not mine. She seems to want what she thinks will make me happy. But we won’t change gears and find something else. That’s not a thing.
I’ve puzzled over why. She lost friends and gained some. Found her social networks. Important things to Khmer people. I don’t have social networks like her. Nor do I want them. I think down deep she fears having no one to talk to. Life is made for talking with her and her circles.
I just go on. Create my gears. Want what they offer. Mostly being away from a house I’m not interested or involved with. Maybe I’m wrong. Would not be the first time. Or the last. What I do know is I won’t change either. We both get what we want.
And those gears do not change.
