Homo for the Holidays

     Being home for the holidays is always so humbling and familiar to me, a mixed bag of emotions really. Walking into my mom's blue country kitchen feels so right yet so wrong from my interior design stand point. In the living room a melange of crazy printed upholstery cushions kind of match the less than desirable floral couch of nightmares. Print on print on more print....  White doilies rest beneath every single picture, lampshade, and stack of decorative religious books.  Stuffed teddy bears wear little crosses around their necks and a single giant patchwork quilt hangs featured on the living room wall and completes the Little House on the Prairie countrified log cabin feel.  My claustrophobia sets in after about three days. When there are too many crosses and chachkis sitting in the window sills collecting dust I slowly start to mildly panic.  Over my holiday I woke up every morning in my old childhood bed (where I had my very first orgasm) yet there was not a single trace of me having lived there...none whatsoever.  It was strange that none of my pictures were hung, not even a photo of me to represent the life that had begun there and evolved between those four walls. They had been painted over and the holes from the push tacks filled in. There were no more maps of Paris haphazardly pieced together or dried flowers hanging upside down stinking up the room with that dead smell I now have come to hate. It was nothing but documentaries on Moses and the burning bush and more doilies. My old bed spread was made from all the flags from every country around the world. It was now gone and covered with super sized quilt surprisingly enough. I was a dreamer who's goal was to visit every country represented on my Walmart deuve. And for the most part, because of the business I'm in, I've had the opportunity to travel more than most people have by thirty-one years old. And for that I am truly and utterly grateful.
         The decor is actually very well done for the style my mom is going for but it's just not my style. The best part of my childhood home in Sevier county (no joke on the name!) is the huge dominating fire place anchoring the cathedral ceiling. It's the center and best part of my parent's space and me and Harley love to sit in the rocking chair....feet up.....and listen to old scratchy Ella Fitzgerald records on vinyl. The intense heat is perfect and my toes and heart are warm again.
                
           I coasted into town this time on fumes...an empty gas tank completely low on inspiration from a very unforgiving city. East Tennessee was my greatest escape and now it's so weird to love it as much as I do. How unfamiliar it is to crave the very thing I tried so hard to escape all those years ago. Hillbilly irony. I need to simplify my life and reduce some of the noise if I can. Moving home is not the answer nor is staying an swirling around in the same fucking negative depression I've been nurturing forever. That constant "glass is half empty" approach eventually turns into Cancer one day I'm convinced! My friend Joan says not to make any rash decisions that I might regret (like moving) considering how much I've built for myself in twelve years, but to simply change my frequency and vibration as to how I think about what is or is not going on in my life. Negativity manifests itself in ugly ways. Do people really find a calm space within the chaos of the urban storm? Isn't even the calmest yoga instructor occasionally stressed out beyond all composure? Don't they curse the same scarce trans and fare hikes that I do? I seem to have all the standing power of a fallen leaf in a tornado. I live in limbo and feel like New York could, at any moment, sweep in and knock my knees out from under me with one swift blow.
          The icy greeting from some of my uptown neighbors makes me want to run for the country hills and rent the first little secluded house I can find....just me and Harley and my blog. Sometimes room mates feel like strangers when you are living community style. I can write this confidently because I can't imagine any of them ever being interested enough or bothering to read any of my writing anyway. It surprises me how many of my closest friends haven't even read a single word of this blog. I love the "I haven't quite gotten around to it yet" excuse!  Chorus Boy Interrupted is like my little secret. It's my sanity. And even worse than not reading it at all is when someone tells me they "skimmed" it! Nothing makes me crazier than the word SKIM!
           There are many different definitions of what a home can be. My mother's is a country bed and breakfast-like home she and my dad own and built from the ground up. It sits on three acres of land that they also own. That land backs right up to a huge beautiful horse farm that would take your breath away if you looked out beyond our back porch. I rent. That's what I do. I might as well stuff nine hundred dollar bills into a pipe and smoke it! High rents and low inspiration make for an ugly pair in 2011 but I'm fully available for a spiritual and financial boost should the universe see fit. She has deemed me her humble servant.....ready and whipped into total submission. But I've got reserves New York. Don't fuck with TDos....people get results when they've got everything and nothing to loose!