night is a river bridging the speaking and the listening banks

Discrepencies, Happy and Sad

We’ve moved into a bigger house.
Now our voices wander among the rooms
calling, Where are you?

And what we can’t forget
of other houses confounds us
as we answer back and forth, Over here!

It’s a little like returning to the village
where you were born, the sad bewilderment
of discrepencies between
what you remember and what’s there.

No. It’s more like a memory of heaven.
Voices coming closer, voices moving away,

and what we thought we knew
about life on earth confounding us.

And then that question
from which all the other questions begin.

-Li-Young Lee, Book of My Nights
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for various reasons involving doctor’s appointments, a broken down front end loader, and a 3 year old’s birthday party that lasted later than i expected, combined with what has become my weekly migratory routine, this is the first night in 12 that i’ve been home in the cabin on the hill. somewhere around day 8 i broke down in tears because i missed the sound of the river as you drop down the bluff away from the soundscape ruled by the highway and the airstrip, the pots on the woodstove, every little scrap of paper taped to the log walls and loaded with significance, and that here, when the power goes out, it doesn’t really make much difference. a few weeks ago, i was talking to one of this cabin’s many former renters at a bluegrass festival. he may have been flirting with me, and i may have been enjoying it, and he said “yeah, i wasn’t too into that place, it was kind of a pain in the ass living there,” and i stiffened, said “it was nice talking to you,” and quickly moved on.
i’m asserting myself at the other place too, in subtle and not subtle ways, but what i’m getting at is that choices are hard. there are so many ways of feeling “at home” and i’m finding that it’s impossible to have them all at once. “houses confound us.”