THE HOUSE OF DAVID

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I am a house.   

I don’t mean as in “big as a house.”   I mean literally, I am a house.

Obviously not on the outside.   But on the inside, trust me, I am 100% very real estate.

I am not usually aware of this fact during normal business hours, not consciously anyway.

But as I try to disengage myself from the long holiday season (which is like trying to scrape a generous wad of well-chewed Hubba-Bubba off the sole of my shoe), as the comet trail scents of gingerbread and pine sail further and further upwind, I find myself painfully conscious of my own inner construction.

Like anyone else, I am a house divided.

I live for the most part, in my belly which is the living room/dining room/kitchen area of me. It’s where I can gut-activate the impulses that trigger grazing, reading and listening.

It’s where my invisible roommates, The Beatles, Mozart, Beethoven, the latest author in residence or any one of the parades of pixelated TV characters make their entrances or exits.

It’s where I can instruct myself to gauge the weather that I can see thru my window or take hibernation quality naps, while I listen to the gentle towel and sheet acrobats tumble in the circus of my dryer.

And it’s where I can feel the magnetic pull of tenderly rendered family photos and meaningful movie posters which send me flying back to moments in time which linger like corsage-wearing prom dates, who sit like enchanted, saucer-eyed Cinderellas, waiting to be picked up by their tuxedoed princes.

For all intents and purposes, the belly section of my house is as close to the womb as I will ever get.  

This is my safe place.  

My Vault Disney.  

It’s where I can regard a vase embraced bouquet of flowers, with its Crayola splash of color, with the deep, meditating powers of a mountain top monk.  

And it’s where I can play the guessing game: what the hell are my galumphing neighbors doing to make that indefinable jungle sound?

My brain is the attic of my body house where all my pasterdays have been randomly boxed and do little more than wear fine coats of memory dust.

When life simply becomes too much to bear, which lately has been often, that’s when I lower the invisible ladder and crawl up to commune with the elder ghosts of my life tribe, whose stories and songs still retain the full impact of their wisdom. 

Their affectionate authenticity has the kind of impact on me that my long gone, affable dad once had, especially when, in lieu of words, he would telegraph a wink of endorsement my way whose clearly received message was, “I’m so proud of you.”

The basement of me is where all my fears have been banished to, kept chained to the wall and underfed by a sadistic warden who enjoys the tools of medieval torture and knows just when to twist the knife or turn the wheels of the rack.

I go to the basement when repudiation feels just.   

When punishment feels like the only way out.

Some people call this room the den of inequity.

It is where bitterness flows like holy wine.

When I was a child I was scared to death of my bike’s locking station: a pipe in the basement which sat like a waiting black monster beneath our apartment building.  

To retrieve my wheels, I would RACE in there, while my heart bongo pounded as I FUMBLE UNLOCKED my chain and RAN out of there before I was killed.

Sunlight never felt more resuscitating.

I’m decades past those days now and yet I find especially of late, that my escape route has become far more difficult to master.

I have to wander aimlessly for what feels like forever through the catacombs of the basement until I can find the strength or wisdom to crawl my way out.

Sometimes it feels insurmountable and all I feel is disrepair.

But the fact is my house has weathered all kinds of storms from financial ruin to divorce from depression to death and there have been vital lessons learned in the wake of each and every one of them.

Those lessons have become the poured concrete of my foundation.

Add to the mix an ever-widening capacity for compassion, kindness, and empathy all in the pursuit of honesty, authenticity and full transparency and what you have is the house where I proudly reside whose mat says, with great purpose and meaning,

Welcome.

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