Personality of my Home

I do not mean to say that I am under the thumb of my forks, any more than I am honestly afraid of the meat grinder’s threats, or the bullying of the coffeepot. It is simply that one cannot live a day in the middle of so many personalities without occasionally treading on some fork’s toes, or sideswiping the fundamental makeup of a dishtowel. - Shirley Jackson, Here I Am, Washing Dishes Again Home is many things, but we usually associate it with comfort, safety, the place we care about and that cares about us in return. The safe place. In 2020 many of us were forced to spend much more time at home, and we all started discovering new things about the place. What I want to explore is the home’s personality. If we follow the trail of Shirley Jackson and divorce ourselves from the confines of the ‘real’ to roam the broader concept of the world, what is home then? Is it just what we make it? Or does it have a ‘mind of its own’? Is home really as safe as we’d like it to be? When the safe place becomes its opposite we usually enter the realm of horror. But I think my home also has an uncanny sense of humor. Yes, it can be scary, but it can also pull pranks, stage surprises and have some fun. It is a sum of what I inherited, what I brought to it and the new feeling the clash of the two creates. It has its own personality, it is an individual. When I think of my home as a person I think it must have seen way too many early Almodovar movies, it then read Shirley Jackson before going to sleep, but it also has a bit of snobbery and is aspiring to the library from The Name of the Rose. Despite all those dark associations, it loves sunlight, but it twists its meaning from warmth and safety to a joke. It’s not that it doesn’t care about me, it does, for I am its only audience. So it welcomes me into its warm embrace, but it will also poke my side with a finger when it gets bored. This series is about the power of imagination to elevate us, to take us beyond sheer experiencing into the realm of creation. Because we can experience life, but our imagination has the power to create entire worlds even within the confines of home. Now look carefully around you...what kind of person is your home?