Landing Spots

Trying something different with this one. Since moving to London 2.5 months ago, I’ve thought a lot about the times I tried to feel at home. Rather than pummel you with a lengthy diatribe, I’m splitting my thoughts into a few dispatches. Here’s the first bit.

I left my parent’s apartment at the beautifully advanced age of 20 for a square house with moldy walls and impressive levels of dog hair clogging the air vents. My roommates were artists, I was aspiring. My room was right off the kitchen, an old office with termite-eaten floorboards that I filled with resin and gold glitter. To celebrate my freedom/independence, I left my windows bare. That first solo morning, sunlight slapped my eyes with a non-negotiable wake up call. One of my roommates was shuffling in the kitchen. He went to bed much later than I, but he had an early shift at the art store.

Unprepared for a communal home interaction, I lay flat on my twin mattress, staring at the celling. A pink rug rested between the mattress and the porous floors, a heavy homey number I found in the alley. In the corner by my closet, I set a children’s school desk with a gunmetal lamp, a bare bulb cresting above the tulip top. This was me! My new life! wowowowowow !!!!!

Then something crawled under my door, luxurious and fat, rolling over my body in thick slow waves. It took me a moment to identify the presence…my new roommate was frying something with butter! Real full fat butter. I felt sick and giddy with the richness. Butter was a demonic force, banned from my childhood kitchens, replaced by giant yellow tubs of I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT BUTTER! Margarine was one of our many diet gods. Now I was in a house of butter worship. This realization was more jarring than my roommates lining up white powder on the coffee table or clutching giant bongs to their stomachs like teddy bears. That stuff was predictable for an “art house”, but who could’ve foreseen morning butter usage?

Termites swarmed my bedroom on the first weekend, hellbent on reclaiming the wood I drenched in resin. One of my roommates, also named James, came into my room to examine the winged orgy, his stoned eyes matching the hue of my alley rug. Dude…I don’t…know about all this….Boy James was a few years older than me, and much taller. If he couldn’t handle the termites, how could I?

We were asked to leave the house within two weeks of moving in. Turns out the roommate who secured the lease didn’t actually secure the lease. He didn’t even inform the landlord he was taking over for his mom, who moved to Oregon and thus became unreachable by any modern form of communication. The eviction found me crestfallen and relieved. No more pretending bravery in the face of termite swarms.

I dragged the pink rug back to the alley and moved trash bags of clothes to a house in Malibu. From there, I had one month to find a permanent home. The Malibu house belonged to a woman my mother befriended at yoga. Bryan Kest’s donation yoga studio drew a mixed socio-economic crowd. A lot of people were like me, young and creative, looking for a good work out with no real money to pay. Then there were people like the Malibu woman, reverent wealthy followers of Bryan and the serious teachers gracing the studio. If you were kooky and friendly like my mother, you could cross-pollinate with anyone in a post-yoga-haze.

The Malibu woman was silver-haired and naturally luminous. Divorced with a boyfriend in Norway, she worked around the world restoring art. One of her rooms was dedicated to her daily meditations.

She was quiet, so I was quiet. Every morning, she’d disappear into her Buddhist sanctuary for an hour. If we saw each other in the kitchen, she’d offer me juice. I wanted her to love me like a daughter. Instead, she gave me a healthy amount of space, leaving her corgis in my care for two weeks. It was strange, being both trusted and unknown by this very stable woman.

By the end of the month, I had another place to live. Another woman at the yoga studio was thinkingggg about vacating her one bedroom in Venice. My mother pursed the lead with fervor, telling the Venice Woman that change was good, moving was better, and what if the moment was NOW??

Relieved that I wouldn’t need to ask the Malibu Woman for an extension, I left without much ceremony, dropping a thank you letter on the kitchen counter.

As the years slipped on, my time in Malibu felt more and more like fiction. I’d pass the Getty Villa and think about the corgis bounding through the backyard, the small Rauschenberg painting above the washing machine. I’d imagine visiting the woman: driving up the hill, finding her smooth concrete stairs, the modest ranch roof. But even when I navigated the neighborhood with a key, I got pulled over by the sheriff, who’d run my license plate and question why I was so far from home. I’d explain that I was actually between homes, then advance slowly to the front door with the spotlight on my back, sliding my borrowed key into the lock. The woman and I lost touch after I stopped going on Facebook. Still, she remains in my mind. Ensconced in a world built by her own hand, deeply curious and kind.

The terrain shifts. I’ve lost my chance to test Mr. Sheriff, the Malibu house burned last year in the big fire. The whole neighborhood is no longer a neighborhood. Bryan Kest’s yoga studio never reopened after 2020. The financial model never complete sense, so it wasn’t a huge shock. Now it’s a foot massage center, another surprising tenant. It’s rumored Bryan moved to the mountains of Ojai, where I hope he’s perfected a constant, full-body tan.

Instead of grief filling the leveled space, I allow existence to warp. Every strand of past curls around the vacuum. There, in the nothingness, is me at 20, scooping corgi kibble, trying not to elbow a priceless sculpture on the dining table. There’s me at 22, slipping into the splits without blinking. Home lay within the perimeter of my red yoga mat. Gravity pouring down the back of my skull, eyes closed, forehead into ground, swaddled by the cycles of breath.