A new home

Home is a funny word to a nomad or wanderer. It isn't a place necessarily and doesn't always come with a monthly bill. It's both broader and more specific than that - it's the place you feel like you belong, or at least you feel completely comfortable. It's a reality that can elude a person entirely, the carrot on the string you keep chasing but can never bite into.

My definition of home is similarly hard to pin down. When I was in college my mom used to mail me packages with the return address labeled, quite clearly, "Home" - as if it was a statement of fact that she needed or wanted to remind me of. Five apartments in ten years when I was in NYC meant that the space wasn't really my home either - it was more likely to be the place where I got coffee or routinely met friends than it was an overpriced box. Following, there was Bulgaria and now Chicago - Chicago being about 350 sq feet of tightly-packed, space-maximizing-demanding smallness.

My Chicago Box is in a "good" neighborhood, but it's a neighborhood I don't really relate to much. I don't care about $500 purses and miniature dogs and diamond rings. What I care about is the ability to walk wherever I go and, presently, I walk everywhere - to work, to the store, to friends, to restaurants, to boutique shops, to the movies, to the farmer's market. All of it is on foot, and that I value. What that means is that I spend my day passing people that I don't care about - women with freshly-applied makeup and pressed hair chatting on the cell about, like, you know, how embarrassing it was to totally just puke at the bar in front of Him. O. Mi. Gawd.

The apartment itself has its own problems and limitations on homeyness - doors that open the wrong way, ridiculously heavy windows, a tiny kitchen... so many things. I stay for what it has though - location, great natural light, semi-affordability and the fact that it's a self-imposed limit on my ability to accumulate crap. Americans accumulate a lot of crap. I've been acquiring furniture to fit the space - something that maximizes it while also fitting my life. It's exhausting. I did, however, manage to find a desk of the right size for a corner of the room. So much mind-numbing online shopping. As Americans we are accustomed to being so particular and precise - I never did more introspection than I did when I was in a country where I couldn't express my 'personality' and whim in ever single fucking purchase. Oy.

Post-$150 and a good deal of futzing with Allen wrenches and wooden pellets, I have a place to call my own - a 36"x19" home. Ah.