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- It's no wonder I grew up with a predilection for ghost stories and old houses. Predilection is too strong. Fascination. No, too strong. Interest. Okay. The house at the other corner of the block, they have three cars - an Impala, a Nova, one other - late '60s models, all of them - their heyday? The people who own the house, their adult son lives with them, always has, even when I was a kid. Then, he had a Playboy Bunny thing hanging from his rearviewmirror. Now, it's something more innocuous, an air freshener. I imagine he graduated from high school in the early '70s, and... and... and... Is he waiting for his parents to die so he can inherit the house? What are his days like? A block in the other direction, the gray house on the corner, it was a neat house, I always liked it. Whoever owned it, I don't know. Whoever lived there, I don't know. They never came out, but they had a red sports car parked on the lawn, its wheels deflated and sucked into the grass, moss growing on the hood. The house too. The paint peeled, the roof developed a hole, a large hole which stayed for a year or two until the roof was replaced. I walked by it today, I can't imagine anyone lives there anymore, the same dead plant is in the window that was there three years ago - but the icicles that were hanging off the roof! The house has to be heated to be leaking enough heat to create those icicles. I was going to move back home, I was reminded a couple weeks ago. "If only you'd moved back home," someone said to me. Oh yeah, I thought, I was going to move back home. I had started to make my exit, I started telling people I'd be leaving, and then... and then... and then... Next to the gray house is a house I've always admired, a little dark green house with big tall ponderosa pines next to it. I always imagined it as some sort of woodsy cabin in northern California, something out of a Disney live-action film or documentary, saturated colors, corny characters, pointy boobs. Next to the house, a nice old truck, and spraypainted on the back of the truck: No birth certificate, NObama! I would have been living here, this is where I'd be. It's lovely, the snow is high and getting higher, it's quiet and I sleep so well, but... but... but... I'm sick of waiting and I'm not going to wait anymore, and I feel like this is the last Christmas like this. Next year will be completely different. I don't know why, but I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be right now. (i.e., not here.) (I mean, once I get back to where I live I'll be where I'm supposed to be.) (For clarification, I am home for the holidays. I'm not supposed to be living here now, I'd be completely out of sorts.) (Oh never mind.)
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