The First Night
The First Night
Exactly two years ago tonight, I spent my first night in my first home.
On the eve of my first night, I spoke to my mother. What she said to me was markedly different from our normal conversations, instructional substance she had left untouched since I was very little. So little, perhaps when she spoke it she hadn’t thought I’d remember nor understand. She told me I was entering a gateway moment. A first upon firsts, the beginning of ends upon endings. This night would be the moment in which the spirit of the house would speak most clearly, telling me of her story and the imprints that had been left before me. Of what once was and what might come to be. She might only speak in whispers and tones, she said. This is an introduction you will only make once. Listen to her closely. Ask her what she needs. Tell her why you’re there.
I went alone and spent the next few days and nights in silence. I still didn’t know why I was there, at least not on any conscious level at least. And so I chose to bring very little, intuitive symbols of intent. A stone from the family cabin in Michigan I found as a child. A small pillow and a woolen blanket gifted by a dear friend who was moving away. A sheep’s pelt from gifted by a former neighbor. A bell gifted by my sister from a distant travel. A journal for capturing my inner voice and for giving voice to the voiceless. And a stack of books filled with the words I wished to invoke. Wabi-Sabi Welcome. The Hidden Life of Trees. The Shadow Of The Moon. A Gift From The Sea. The Children’s Life Of The Bee.
By contrast, my tiny home in the city had been filled with beauty that strangely did not feel like my own. Perhaps it started out that way, or something I was trying on for size. But by the end, I thought of it as borrowed beauty. Osmosis or adaptation, my home was now filled with objects, memories, and emotional residue that no longer felt mine. Now, I felt most attuned to the dappled light that flickered in past the privet tree outside my window. The sound of the children playing in the schoolyard I lived next door to. The smells of the tamale lady as she pushed her cart beneath my window. But my small apartment was borrowed past its time, rented from a soft spoken police detective who let me stay because he liked how I spoke to children. My only closet was filled to the brim with objects I no longer needed but couldn’t yet let go of. My closet of pain, I came to think of it. I never spoke of it. No one saw photos of it. Mostly I chose to ignore it until I’d enter it in sleep.
On this first night in my new home, I listened to my new home very closely. It was completely empty and yet carried a visceral fullness. The structure itself was small for a house, but so much larger than what I was used to. I moved from room to room, sitting silently and listening with my whole body. Sensing. Noticing. Witnessing. And the house spoke. She said different things in different rooms. And as the light shifted from gold to indigo, I felt more come forth. Her voice softened and I felt other voices begin to speak. Some understanding came easily, others remaining only in palpable awareness. A history layered upon history layered upon history. Whispers of the home, the land, and the beings within it.
Sleep did not find me easily. The time shifted and the house shifted with it. As the moon rose, the voices and the structure of the house grew louder. I was unnerved, but I willed myself to unclench and let myself be studied by that which my eyes could not see. And some things that I could. Large mirrored eyes peered in at me through the glass door, and as I leaned in for a closer look I came face to face with a large raccoon. In seeing my own face emerge from the dark, it screamed and ran straight into the forest. I screamed too. I fell in and out of sleep, my awareness rising and falling with each noise. I heard distinct jumps and scurrying along the roof, beyond the walls, and far beneath the floor. And then the sun rose, shifting the house once again. Large birds I did not yet know by name studied me through the open windows and skylights, casting flashes of bright blue, black, and red as they moved. I smelled the green of the plants and the faint smoke of a neighbor’s wood fire. I heard music drifting from somewhere beyond the trees. I found myself surrounded by life and the vibrant currant beyond. I felt wholly awake.
It took me another year to let go of my home in the city and fully step into my life in the forest. I would oscillate between city and forest, feeling increasingly more at home in the forest but returning home to the city with the heavy sense of rational duty. It took me a year to open that closet. Release the objects. To grieve the things I had wished for that had not come to pass. To embody the things I wished to carry forward. To let go of the life I had spent over a decade cultivating in it. To trust the inner voice that told me it was time to let go, that I already had everything I needed. And to embrace the mystery of what might come to be. For I was already home in the unknown. That velvet dark, the brilliant white, and the prismatic infinite of in between.