Upon arriving at my new house in Soledad, I want to take a moment to reflect on the many places I’ve lived in my life. Where you live matters! At least it does to me.
Family houses: Imnim St, Leonard Ave, Nashawena Pk and Sparks St. A child gets to know a house differently than a grown-up. With the exception of Sparks St., I knew all of these houses as a child, and took full advantage of them. I can remember the smell of the stuffed corners of the closets of Leonard Ave and the feel of the edges of the staircase steps better than I can remember what the living room looked like. Imnim St. was mom and dad’s cavernous brick room with the fish tank glowing next to the bed, and Nashawena Park...I know that house intimately, even down to what the insides of the backyard pebbles look like.
On Commonwealth Ave, by Washington St., I shared my first apartment (dirty, cramped) with 5-8 people. Sometimes I would wake up to the aftermath of a party I didn’t even know had happened!
Alan Place, where I lived the summer after college, was good for spying on “Big Red”, the androgynous drug dealer who hid his/her goods in a quickly decaying car outside of the kitchen window. My pet plant, Delicate, fell off of the second floor balcony (which was filled with old, beer and rain stained couches), but is flourishing now in Cambridge, 5 years and 4 cross-country trips later.
I lived for 2 months in a 5x5 ft. tin cabana in the outback of Belize. It was once cleaned by a colony of ants who were relocating and ate everything in their path as they moved.
In Baton Rouge, I lived with 50 City Year volunteers in a weird gated apartment complex with a swimming pool. At 6pm every day, we could enjoy the YMCA’s broadcast of their circuit training excersize class two buildings down. One building down, Anderson’s dumpster emitted rotting meat oders. Across Government street were abandonded buildings and broken glass, but beyond them was a quite, green neighborhood and a golf course where I went running and sometimes hung out by this tree I found. Once, I went beyond the golf course and found myself surrounded by horses.
The dorm I lived in at the University of the West Indies required its inhabitants to suffer an initiation. Because of this process, I went by the name “Butch” during my two semesters on hall. My neighbors were called things like “Poom Poom” and “Hookah”. I also lived up on the hill in San Juan with Mrs. Sutton and her son Charles on Campo St. I could walk to my band Pamberi in 5 minutes. Mrs. Sutton left me a breakfast every morning, varying from delicious bake and accra to a crust of dried bread. At night, we sometimes had a dinner of just watercest leaves, and we couldn’t eat the stems because Mrs. Sutton thought they were bad for you. I helped out around the house by cutting the lawn with a machette, and I became familiar with the neighbors, including Crazy the soca singer and a homeless man who hung out in an empty field nearby. I used to run down the hill at the San Juan savanna, and on the way, there was a man who stood outside of a certain house, all day every day. The story I heard was that his wife had replaced him with another man long ago, and ever since then he stood outside of her house. One day he was gone, though.
Later, I lived with Nellie and her daughter’s family in Diego Martin. When Sarah and Jamie were visiting me, we did yoga in the dog-poopy yard. Once, when I was taking a nap, all of the flying insects in my room lost their wings and I woke up covered in them, and later found the little wormy wingless insects under my mattress.
In Oakland, I lived in a wonderful house on Opal street with two girls from California. We had a huge back yard with an avocado and two plum trees, as well as an abandoned water tower. We had BBQs weekly with the things grown in that yard, and we biked to the lake on Saturdays to enjoy the farmer’s market. Most days, we sat on the front porch, drinking coffee and watching the guys at the lumber yard and in November, we voted across the street at the blind person center.
Then I moved to E 28th St, where I had a big square apartment all to myself. The place was defined by its windows, which covered many of my walls. I never really moved in there, so I always felt like every noise I made echoed very loudly. My downstairs neighbor played djembe and had a BBQ pit, which smoked into my window as I watched the sun setting over the Oakland skyline. I could still walk to the farmer’s market by the lake, and I lived near to Uma’s family, so I often went over there for Bhutanese food.
I think I've spent enough time in my car and hostels and buses and a tent to put them in here. In El Bolsón, I was very careful to keep the zipper of my tent closed and not to bring food inside. Still, there were always earwigs everywhere. Even though I never moved, my neigborhood always changed. Nevertheless, I because friends with all of them, from the water polo team to the four girls from La plata to the 9 boys from that other Argentine town that I can't remember right now. We often ate dinner together. After the tent, I moved into a beautiful apartment on Riohacha in Buenos Aires. Cira was the widow of an Argentine diplomat. Everyday there I would wake up to toast and marmalade, and then walk outside to Santa Fe, where I eventually developed my useful strategy for walking quickly on crowded Latin American streets.
Li lou, I don't think you ever see my comments, so I'll send you this per email as well. I loved reading your reminiscences, and I think your litany of living arrangements could become a prose-poem of sorts. Also, it was nice to remember most of those places with you, since I had been to many of them and many of them hold invaluable memories for me as well.
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