Opening Up The House

"I Know Someday The Smoke Will All Burn Off"

…And we’re back. A draft of summer air into autumn.

“When the outside air is cooler than the temperature of the inside, you should open up the house.” my father informs me over the phone, after calling him over what feels like a fairly self-explainable process. This almost ritualistic chore has been with me since childhood, possibly everyone’s childhood, but has typically been done by someone with experience. As I’ve grown into adulthood, the torch has been passed down, and opening up the house has been done numerous times. Lately, the muscle memory feels atrophied, unfamiliar.

The house I’m currently subletting in the Sellwood neighborhood is empty, except for me. My father will be joining in a week's time. After an evening walk around the neighborhood, still apprehensive of my new surroundings, the early July night has cooled down enough to open things up.

I check the temperature outside against the thermometer inside near the kitchen. “Ok, let’s give this a shot”, I say aloud to an empty living room, letting out a sigh. Soon, the front and back doors are flung open, inviting the fresh, cool air, from the outside, in. The breeze flushes out any stagnant air, a draft following throughout the whole house, bringing a sense of chill to the summer nights.

I’ve returned to Portland, after almost a decade away, to open up the house; not just the one I’m subletting, but the house living within my own head. To cool things off from the humidity and noise and chaos, the leftover remnants which remain thrashing around recklessly. To let the cool summer nights blow through the open windows and doors, to feel the draft tickle my ankles. To follow a skeptical belief that grounding can be found in this city, after gallivanting the world for the last 15 years of my life. I’ve returned to a place where the freshwater rivers cool me down; where each second without their flow, I itch, as if within each plunge into their waters, I can wash away my past, all the pain, and the wrongdoing. Within the Portland summer breeze, a necessary reset feels within reach. 

I take a seat on the couch after opening up the house, wondering if this is what old age will feel like. Sitting within the silence, my task for the day will solely consist of opening the windows to cool down the house. I imagine myself using this chore as an excuse to leave a social gathering, or chit-chat with the cashier at the store. “Well, I should go, I need to open up the house.” I’m attempting to find meaning and solace within this activity, within this phrase, as if it longs to be a reminder of days past.

As I linger on the couch, the cool summer air blows in questions about the future. What tomorrow will bring or offer. The cool air whispers in my ears to walk outside, barefoot on the pavement, still radiating heat from the summer sun beating down on it throughout the day. The summer air is like a siren song for my tendency to always keep moving, whether physically, or mentally, as though I can outrun anything I should be dealing with instead. I find this tendency within my writing, within every fragment of my nature. If I burn everything behind me, then I can call it a restart.

Despite my father’s advice, opening up the house within my head is a different beast altogether. His instructions feel simple to grasp in nature, but my head has a blockage or wall, an inability to see further than a street block, if not a few feet in front of me. My thinking is muddy, thoughts awash in silt and debris. 

The house feels hard to open. The hinges are stiff, rusted over, the door warped from the previous years of inclement weather beating at the doorstep. The paint is peeling, and the siding is laden with moss. A broken window or two reveals where spiders and flies have found their way in and made a home, some dead and lined up against the sill of the window frames. The opening cannot be forced, as though the house has to answer when asked. Only time will only ever reveal its answer. 

I feel exiled to this five square block of neighborhood, even though Portland (and the rest of Oregon) offers such an expansive opportunity to explore. Being confined to this neighborhood is like an escape room puzzle; how it holds the key of opening up the house, of discovering myself and becoming acclimated back into this place. I know Portland, but not like this. The city has changed, like playing catch-up with an old friend with a complex history, each of you avoiding the elephant in the room.

July

My morning rooster is the dog next door at 6am. “Astro, knock it off!” I hear my temporary new neighbor mumble-shout. I stretch my limbs while sitting on the edge of the bed, and walk into the kitchen to start the kettle, the clicking of gas and spark of the ignition my morning soundtrack. My father is already awake, sitting at the black table in the adjacent room, silently reading, lit only by the stovetop light in the kitchen. My life is filled with dog barks, the rustling of leaves outside my window, the cawing of crows who I once denounced as a mortal enemy as a child, and the occasional yard service, with its oppressive gas powered tools. These are the sounds of the neighborhood, where I am now. Yet I still yearn for the ambulance, the bass filled car driving by at 7am, the inescapable unrelenting wall of sound found outside my Brooklyn apartment which still holds a grasp on my mind. The sounds are softer, less abrasive than New York, yet the moments of quiet are almost deafening.

I sit on the back porch at night, silhouetted by a motion-sensored storm light, as it casts my shadow across the dying lawn. I watch rabbits race back and forth through the hole in the nearby fence, barreling into the yard in front of me, blissfully unaware of my presence. I slightly shift my posture, and they immediately recognize my presence, watching me, watching them. We watch each other. Who will make the first move, if there’s a move to be made at all. I can’t tell them I mean no harm, only to observe, but they see me as a threat. Hence, I stay still. Staying still, doing nothing, is easy, yet simultaneously, a choice.

My night walks consist of passing the mausoleum towards the end of the street. The structure is beautiful, a silent giant, a reflection of old Portland architecture, though it’s in need of some desperate rehabilitation. Sometimes I’ll stand and peer into the bright illuminated windows of its empty halls, drawn to the endless marble slab and fake flowers attached to the wall-in graves, expecting to see someone or something move. Not even an apparition, but a groundskeeper or janitor, some presence signifying this place is alive, to some degree. I feel like a voyeur, watching the dead sleep, thinking how they have one of the best views of the city. I imagine developers chomping at the bit to tear this place down, disrespecting the dead, just to shove a few more cheap beige-ified luxury apartment buildings to fill their pockets.

The wildfire begins early this year, and the smoke creeps its way in through the windows of the house. I have no way of stopping the smoke from entering through the cracks and crevices, and soon the whole house in my mind is in a haze. I am exposed, I am vulnerable, as though my soul is stuck in limbo, unable to free itself from the gates of a past life. I feel no connection to where I am now, even though I believed I knew Portland well. I know the streets and I know the rivers and where the rivers lead but the air is somehow different in this town. Acclimation feels impossible, or non-existent. I call out to the tower lights on the West Hills for an answer like the hundreds of times before, but I hear nothing but dead air. Everything has changed, yet at a surface glance, is the same. The experiences are abundant, yet those experiences feel empty, no nutritional value. How can I open up the house, if I am scared of the outside world, of letting everything in. The connections have all dried up, the nerve ending dead from overexposure to the elements, and lack of care.

August

The beginning of the end of summer beckons with the smell of fermenting fruit from the pears dispersed and broken amongst the sidewalk of the sublet. The branches of the pear trees were never trimmed the season prior, now weighed down from immense sugar, overindulgence of growth, of excess, snapping from each complete formation of fruit. The thud of pears hitting concrete and car roofs echoes like sugar rain at night through the open front door. Droves of deer venture from Oaks Bottom, climbing the hill at the end of the dead end street, finding a plentiful feast. They devour the floor fruit, each one soon drunk from the alcohol and excitement of this new eden found outside the house. In the morning, the bees and various pollinators buzz around the fallen fruit, now pierced open, revealing sticky pear guts from the impact on the concrete. The insects swarm the cascading sugar, confusing its sweet elixir for pollen, cheap thrills for sustenance. I find beauty with this small ecosystem existing within this small parcel of our street, providing for those who can make the journey.

Through the open front door, I see the cycle for Southern magnolia blooms in my neighbor’s yard is ending. The leaves are burnt, crinkling to ash within a clasped palm. The dust scatters the soil beneath the tree, returning soon to the earth from which it came. The once vibrant white flowers are browning, like bruises on an apple. The sight of these dying magnolias transport my daydreams, suddenly to the front seat of my Prius, the headlights beaming on the massive Southern magnolia tree blooming outside my house in Raleigh, North Carolina during the pandemic. Afterwards, the magnolias carry me to the only living landmark in New York City, a Southern magnolia in Bedstuy, where I was living after my mother passed. I often think about getting a tattoo of this flower, a representation of grief, hardships, and the cycle of renewal in my life. 

After a midnight rain, the sun breaks the cloud formation by mid-morning, revealing the webs of spiders once hidden and camouflaged in between the crevices of bushes.The droplets adhere to their weaving homes, the spider's traps now exposed. I wonder if the weight of the rain disturbs their peace. I’m impressed by the structural integrity, their webs holding the weight of all the water. Does this overnight exposure make catching food harder? Do they even notice, existing with an undying patience within the insect world? Patience has never been my strong suit.

The smell of cat treats begins to permeate my shoulder bag, carrying them as I’ve begun to befriend the various outdoor cats in the surrounding blocks. Together we’re creatures of the summer nights; wandering the asphalt, dodging car headlights, enraptured by the wild and reckless breeze. Their connection to their immediate surroundings is unparalleled; the memorization of the nooks and crannies and corners of each square inch of street block like it’s second nature. There’s something to learn within their aloofness, their carefree nature; a reciprocity to keep in mind while I offer handfuls of treats from the palm of my hand, while they wind in between my ankles.

A mental map of the various fig trees in the neighborhood exists within my mind, as I check underneath and behind their biblical leaves once a week for signs of fruiting. The intense weeks of summer heat have slowed their growth. Their progress is the calendar I use to determine the stages of seasons, and where I am in my own time and space. My anticipation of their arrival consumes me, as though this is the final piece of my grounding within Portland. As though there is a quick and easy trick to feeling reconnected. 

September

I’m alone, again.

My father leaves the sublet in the middle of September, returning to Phoenix as the Southwest city returns to a habitable state from the brutal summer heat. I peer around the house for signs of him, but his presence was never defined in the first place, keeping his belongings and his own use of the space to a minimum. I see nothing but my trinkets, my knickknacks, my belongings. There’s a multitude of shoes covering the doorway entrance, each one serving an intended purpose, but my father would crack jokes about the shoes multiplying like the rabbits outside.

My time on this secluded street is expiring, the lease ending at the end of the month. I’m stuck between two worlds; the transitional limbo of this sublet, and the possibility of staying in Portland indefinitely. The path to restoration feels foggy, yet there is grounding to be found within myself navigating these streets again. Maybe this is what settling into a place feels like. Comfortable, yet foreign. Like a face you recognize, but can’t place or name. Coming back feels like there is so much to do, yet it’s not as easy as the times I’ve returned before. As a friend would tell me, “Maybe that’s ok?”.

The cold of autumn creeps into the night, and yet I resist the urge to close the screen doors and windows. I fear being stagnant, I fear complacency, and I fear the mundane. I’ve added an extra blanket to my bed to keep me warm. If I close everything up, I’ve made a decision. I have to make a choice, but my avoidance of the future is holding hands with my pattern of resisting discomfort. I live in the future; rushing to find comfort, rushing time, fast forwarding to where everything is balanced. Finding signs in the framework to lean on; to make sense of this whole idea of settling.

I read somewhere that fig trees never blossom until they’re rooted, and I hold this knowledge close to my heart when I think about settling down. The figs in the neighborhood are finally beginning to ripen, as I spend my mornings and late nights sneaking around plucking them from their heightened branches. My mind races against time, attempting to save and capture as many as these decadent fruits as I can. With their lifespan so short and tenuous, developing to mush within a few days' time, I eat them with fevered abandon. As though each bite into their fleshy insides will somehow settle the chaos churning within my head, and plant seeds within the concrete ground I walk with fevered abandon. The figs are elusive, never picked right at peak, but always slightly before or after. I’m caught picking Mission figs from a neighbor’s tree, after a long run. I ask the neighbor if it's ok to take a few, and the neighbor replies “Yes, but not all of them!”. I laugh, knowing this is impossible, as they are never ready all at once.

The parade of pear drops has slowed, almost to a halt. Though with each erratic drop, I am slowly becoming more comfortable, acclimating and flirting with this idea of “settling”. Something, everything, just for now. The deer are seldom in the front yard when I arrive home at the end of the day from a wine harvest job, my headlights typically illuminating their dilated pupils. Their source of sustenance has dried up, and the deer must carry on somewhere else, foraging for fruit. Maybe shriveled figs will supply what they deserve for the oncoming cold and shorter days ahead. Maybe they can do the same for me.

The end of the month has come. Time to close up the house; though the house in my mind still has a draft running through it. I sit on the couch again on my last night, breathing in the draft one last time. My exposure to this draft over the summer has shifted towards something pleasant, more benevolent. Offering acceptance of this draft as a friend, rather than an ominous stranger looming behind, critiquing my every move. There’s a reciprocity to be found in knowing this draft can help with spontaneity and keeping things fresh. When an act of deviance is necessary to shake things up.

October

I say goodbye to the sublet, though I remain in Portland. My future is a bit unknown, but there’s grace, patience, and nuance to be found within this mystery. Maybe, it can all just be for now.

Throughout these months, I have a recurring dream where I’m in the middle of a sun drenched living room, completely furnished with light cherry-stained hardwoods. A dusty desaturation encompasses the whole scene, turning what would be a colorful room, fairly gray. Everything is slightly contrasted out from the sunlight, enhancing the grays, almost blinding to the eye. A thin-veiled curtain moves delicately from the breeze coming through the furthest window, its movement like a snake slithering sideways. The house is foreign, yet my body feels an overwhelming sense of deja vu, as though I’ve lived here in another life. I don’t try to move, instead fixing my gaze upon the curtain and its movement, as though the curtain's flow is a form of communication. The longer I focus, the closer I come to understanding the curtains' language, and what it might be trying to tell me. The vantage point suddenly shifts to a position almost parallel with the floor. All I see is the flutter of the curtain tail almost touching the nearby cloth couch, and dust bunnies encircling and layering the hardwood floor. 

After what feels like an eternity of staring at the curtain, the dust dancing and twirling tornadoes within the curtains movement, I wake up.