Elements That Make A House

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I've officially moved out last Saturday, November 19. The sound of it still resonates in my mind with much finality, stark and powerful like a last sentence. It's only been 3 days and 2 nights and I feel like a stranger in a new land. Nevermind that most of my material belongings already crossed over from the other side. In the silence of my new room, I begin yet another exodus in the desert of my thoughts.

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The room had been cleaned up and painfully waxed, the cabinets and walls meticulously purified with scented bleach and water, the folding bed steadily erect and ready to sleep with its new owner; the owner, lost in his own thoughts trying to decipher when to start unloading his burden and where he'll shelve new memories. Like always, the room itself had no unsolicited advice, no recreative words of comfort for a traveller who has settled into a new abode. Soul food would and always be scarce from now on.

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I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor. Christmas had invaded the house with its bells and snowflakes, the dark like a silent Santa secretly combing the naughty and the nice. I had been naughty that night and chose to spend it somewhere else. Again I am filled with ambivalence. Regret and exhilaration make an awful prancing pair, a dance of equals on a conflicted mind. I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor, for it had been daybreak the time I had set the alarms for work.

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Last night was different. I came home with my roommate still awake. He had been painting the eyes of Shiva with a saucerful of orange sandalwood paste. The plastic table bore witness to pagan accessories. I forget their names. In my mind, I'd always be a Christian however non-affiliated I claim to be. It takes much to believe in God, much more to believe in oneself.

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We started by him asking me why I had been avoiding him. I told him I hadn't been however truthful I claimed to be. After cleaning his brass lamps and incense burners, he started to tune his sitar. He told me sek-tar literally meant "3 strings" but the musical instrument he cradled on his shoulder had 21.

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It was a painful process tuning it. By the time I had closed my eyes in the middle of a classical Indian sonnet, he cut his finger with one of the tweaked wires. He said, "a sitar player is not allowed to lift his finger from the strings." He then asked me what instrument I played, to which I replied the piano. The lost pieces flooded my mind yet again. Feelings of regret, songs of exhilaration, listening to intuition, sound advice and all the other things I felt I wasn't patiently hearing. He cut his finger, then he proceeded to play again, as if the pain of starting over after 3 months meant nothing to him. A true musician is determined to perfect his art. My thoughts were lost in the dim yellow of the room. At least that's how I remember it.

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I got to finish my coffee and decided I've had enough cigarettes for the day. Daybreak had arrived and the tide of elements -- thoughts, music, coffee, stories -- that had come to make the house that night, quietly drifted with me to sleep.

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