home life

"check your pulse it's proof that you're not listening to
the call your life's been issuing you
the rhythm of a line of idle days"
-john mayer

the only way i can remember how to spell 'rhythm' is from the pnemonic i learned in high school music class from one c. samuels : "Robin Hood Yelled To His Men." bam. it works, try it.

anyways, i'm home for the summer now. with no job yet. it's really awesome. i spend my days catching up on tv shows and reading cookbooks. and pretending that all my shit from my dorm room is unpacked/stored away.

so sitting all on my lonesome all day has given me a lot of time to think, mostly about home. there are certain sounds that always remind me of home, usually lawn mowers. i don't really know why, but whenever i hear a lawn mower, or any similar buzzing/motor noise (aka airplane, dull roar of traffic, insects...whatever) i think of my house. weird, right?

i feel like half the memories i have of home take place in the summer. today, i was outside watering some plants for my mom, and i walked through our side yard where our swing set used to be. we gave it away to our little cousins a few years ago, because my brother and i older now, and i guess i got a little bit nostalgic. i can remember playing on that swingset with my neighbors til it was dark, sometimes we'd play outside in our pajamas. one time i twisted my ankle from jumping off the swing when it was too high. i was wearing purple hercules pajamas, i remember that.

it's just really weird thinking that in a few year (two) i will be graduated from college (FUCK) and i don't know if this will still be my home, or "the house where i grew up." my family has lived here for 15 years, and most of my childhood memories were formed at this house or around this town. it's really bizarre to think that it will all be totally in the past in a few years. it's not to say that i won't be able to call this house 'home,' but i'll probably have another 'home.' this will be 'my parents house,' not 'my house.'

being here sometimes i feel like a transient. i have used the phrase "i only live here 3 months out of the year" before...and its starting to feel more and more true everyday. i don't know where anything belongs anymore. anytime i notice that something is different in the house, someone will scoff and say that it was been like that for a while; it is new to me.

i always feel weird bringing my college friends here. my "home" as they know it is my dorm room, and that is more me than this house is. this house is my mother's house through and through. it's always strange bringing my college friends through a colonial home up to my clean, empty-walls bedroom when they're used to seeing the squalor i live in at school. it feels like bringing them to a bland hotel room- a space that isn't mine.

i don't really know what i'm trying to get at here, but i've just been thinking about the future alot, and what is going to fade and what will grow. will this house stay how it is? or will it too fade with time? i don't think it will, but what happens if my parents sell it once my brother goes off to college? what if new people live here? will my memories still be here? will they scrape off the paint in my room and see my handprint my dad traced when i was 5 years old? will it mean anything to them? i doubt it. they're probably just paint over it again. used houses are kinda weird to me too.

summer's only 5 days in and i'm already wanting to go back to school. i'll have to find something cool to do around here... there was always something to do when i was younger.