I am in my house and my house is in me. It is the only place on the planet where I feel completely at home. It is an expression of me. I feel safe and can be completely me. My true colors are in my house, Marsala and Tudor cream on the outside, on the inside mustard yellow, greenery green, ultraviolet purple and many paintings rich in the colors I like. The wind blows through it, bringing new things. I dust and cleanse. I eat, sleep, dream, wake up and awaken right here. It is in this house I mature and occasionally go back to revisit my childhood.

It is because I feel about my place the way I do, that I always, in some way, feel homesick. I always want to go home, be home, even when I am somewhere else… It may be a really nice and cozy place, but still, at some point, I want to go home. I try not to let it get a hold on me because I need to be in many places for various reasons, but at the end of the day, I just want to be home, sit on my back porch maybe, having dinner. The same place I want to sit in the morning to have my coffee, and the dogs their breakfast, and the birds the seeds I get from abroad, seeds for tropical wild birds.

I love that I can keep my stuff the way I want it and sometimes change everything. Rearrange things and still feel at home, like in a new home, and I myself feel new in a way with all my stuff rearranged. I pick new colors, purple, and blue, red perhaps, sometimes I let the paint drip and have a mural. A few weeks ago I had a colleague, a mural artist, come over and paint a Blenchi on my wall. I love that I can do that and I love the fact that he could do it for me.

I am having chocolate and wine, by the way, leftovers from a Valentine dinner I had last night, the celebration I have every year, because it is also a housewarming, I moved into my house 23 years ago on a Valentine’s day. I gave gifts and got some. The rose is still on the dining table. I walk around in a pajama (read: old T-shirt), 2 space buns in my hair. And I have coconut almond milk on my upper lip.

Friends and family stop by sometimes and I remain. It is in this house that I manifest my lifestyle, worldview and the way I feel. So you will understand the homesickness I experience most of the time and always. Homesickness smells like something you miss, is sometimes orange or blue, but I don’t associate it with a color. It is more of a feeling, a longing, a want, a need, a home. An attachment.

In a way my home is my Art journal, it holds my stories and memoir. I write, feel, live and recharge in it every day. I share it with 3 beautiful creatures, my family and friends and every now and then a passersby. My heart pumps blood through all the rooms and spaces and back to my cocoon. It is here that I daydream, fantasize, write, paint, craft, photograph, and reflect on the things of the day and the ways of the world. I was built to construct this house, my powerhouse.