Guesthood & Dominion

// Rick Beerhorst //

I haven't been literally sleeping on a couch, but figuratively I don't quite fit into my accomodations.

Being a guest at someone else's house involves a certain amount of frustrated impulses. I can wash the dishes, but I don't know where to put them afterward. The shower will give me a scalding trickle or a freezing blast, not the sweet Goldilocks level in between.

As I've mentioned, homefeel requires a sense of sameness. In addition to that incorporeal feeling of continuity, homefeel needs confident familiarity. Actually, familiarity is a prerequisite to sameness: how can you know whether something's changed if you're not acquainted with its former state?

The familiarity can't be a shallow kind. After all, you could say that I'm familiar with the place where I'm staying now. I've known my hosts longer than I can remember, since I was toddling around the preschool playground, and I've slept in this specific house countless times (albeit in various rooms). This is definitely a place that I know. But I don't know it enough for it to feel like home.

I can't fully relax here. Maybe that's partially the guest mentality: I don't want to be burdensome or annoying. I can't arrange things just how I like them, because then my presence would be disruptive. I can't decide which drawer ought to hold the silverware.

What's funny is that I might feel more able to flop around and assert my character in a hotel room. Although that's a rented domain, it is MY kingdom for a night. I don't mean that I'd drag the furniture around, switching the desk and the bed, or trash the bland wall-hanging. A hotel is too temporary for me to care enough. Rather than an active impulse, occupying a hotel room confers a tacit feeling of ownership, of personal power.

Anyway, that's enough musing. Here's the perspective of the host rather than the guest...

// Dan4th Nicholas //

// $3.50 on Etsy //