Home

I'm in this place, unmoving. I'm being in my friend's basement in Madison, WI. The floor crumbles with the eroding mortar of the wall; the air is cooler down here; the floor is grey and so are the walls; the windows are slits, covered in red cloth; surrounding me are a washer and dryer, boxes stacked to the ceiling, a weed wacker, paint cans, a fan, old computers, a lamp, a hot water heater, various musical instruments and amps. My bed is crusted with a years worth of storage crud and lies incongruently on the floor, below various pipes and pieces of insulation. My clothes: five shirts, three pants, thermals, fleece, socks, underwear, are dumped on the floor in a long pile, wrinkled and sucking in musty basement smell. Next to my bed: a table with my computer, camera, wallet, phone, CD player, diary, and all my food (over-ripened bananna, jar of strawberry jelly, mostly empty jar of peanut butter). That is what I own and that is how I own it. Here I am being.
First thing I did when I got back into town: break up with the girlfriend whom had been waiting 7 months for me in Madison. Second thing thing I did when I got back into town: run to my cabin for a week of solitude and joyful homelyness. Third thing I did when I got back into town: humor my father with a short visit. Fourth thing I did when I got back into town: set up my digs in this open, cool, grey, foster home basement.
Here I am being. Its 2 am, I 'm in my boxers. My 'roommates' are all graduating and becoming solid, unmovable things. I'm in my boxers, listening to the shins. My face is bearded and gnarled, my armpits stink, but my boxers are clean and my nails are clipped. A cockroach looking bug crawls up my leg and tickles my thigh hair.
I have no job. I have no home. I left my lover.
In the last two weeks since I've returned from the most joyful traveling I ever done, I've found home to be a most peculiar place. In my last month of travel, I made a strong and confident and important resolution to to BE at home, in my parents and in my lover. It took me 36 hrs to abandon the ladder, 48 hours to abandon the former. Here I am being, in my boxers, in an adopted basement.
Home was always foreign to me, but I never knew it to be so suffocating. Maybe the ice has changed me, maybe New Zealand has changed me, maybe I'm simply more aware of my emotions, my habits, my hang-ups.
Either way, here I am, and I'm learning that home is a VERY difficult place to be. I'm learning how McMurdo becomes the only place that you know.
I sleep in, I drink, I party, party, party, and MOVE VERY LITTLE.
So here I am being, compulsively dreaming of the road . . . hmmmmmm . . . my god . . . the road. I'll see you this summer, in all my bearded and smelly glory, cycling down the west coast, loving lovers that I don't have to love (shout out conor), pressing my body against beautiful, light bodies, and being moving through beauty.
Thank you lovers, for making McMurdo, for at least a brief time, become home.