A Good Enough Home

Writing through an obsession with houses I don't own

1.     I take walks every day now. During the pandemic, my daughter and I discovered walks. We’d drive all the way out to Marina Del Rey if there was time. If not there, then the section of the LA river in Frogtown, or else Echo Park, or The Silverlake Reservoir. We could have taken these walks in our own neighborhood. That certainly would have been easier, but we were looking for peace. Where we lived in South LA on Normandie and Adams was too honest. The corner there busy with the activity of the most divested—the truth of our times on full display.

2. Growing up in San Francisco, our parents used to take my brother and I for night drives. We’d journey out to neighborhoods on the other side of city like Marina or Seacliff where the houses were not squished together. These homes boasted full driveways and grand exterior staircases. As we passed them, my brother and I would call out, “That one’s mine!” Laying claim to houses we believed could be ours one day.

3.     Northeast Los Angeles, where I live now, is not like South LA. The streets are not gridded, they wind and twist through the hills amongst stretches of catci, succulents, and wildflowers—some untamed and some intentioned. Many of the houses here appear to be modest one-level homes from the front, but further down the road, as the street winds around the hillside you can see the same home from behind is actually a multi-floor gargantuan balancing on stilts piled into the hillside. I don’t live in one of these houses. I live at the bottom of the hill where my apartment is built solidly on the ground. The hum of traffic from the main drag wafts through my bedroom window which I keep open during these hot summer nights. It’s not as quiet as the top of the hill, but for now, this is good enough.

4.     Recently a neighbor left their front door open. It was once a wood-sided house, but now it is plastered smooth white with black trim. From the street I could see clear into the living room. I spied a light cream pug wearing a cone sitting atop shiny hardwood floors. There was scant furniture and no hint of clutter. A fig plant stood tall in the back corner. A man reclined on a brown leather sectional, one arm behind his head, remote in the other hand clicking toward a television I can’t see. I stood there long enough to look suspicious.

5.     When I was a kid, we’d move from one makeshift subterranean apartment to another. I doubt they were permitted or legal dwellings. These always had odd details like the bathroom being raised up a level higher than the ground. Or an exterior window between two bedrooms where a wall should be. These apartments were dark and dank. Sometimes smelling of mold. I once found a mushroom growing in my closet.

6.     There’s an empty lot for sale about five blocks away. The lot is large and it is also steep. An abandoned hot tub sits at the bottom of the lot on the small portion of the property that is not on a grade. Like Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane, I see an outline of the house I would build there.

7.     My first house in LA was on the corner of 17th and Rimpau. A few months after moving in, the place was ransacked. Burglars had crawled in through a window behind the washing machine I wasn’t even aware existed. They stole my laptop, my father’s camera, my grandmother’s earrings, and my parents’ wedding rings. When the cops showed up, they did nothing but to suggest I move. But I didn’t move. I stayed there for four years. I planted a garden with marigolds and I had a baby. She liked to eat plums while sitting outside on the steps.

8.     Down the street from me there is a house also built solidly on the ground like mine. They don’t have a fence for privacy like many of the new homeowners. I don’t know them, but they’ve probably been here for years. The evidence of small children is strewn about the yard. Dinosaurs, trucks, and scooters. An inflatable pool is laid out on the lawn exposing the plans for the day. On these summer nights, they are often sitting out on the porch or tossing around a ball. Mom, Dad, a toddler, a 10-year-old girl. Perhaps, a grandma too. As I pass by, I wonder if this was all that was needed. If I had these things—a house, a porch, an inflatable pool, a yard to play in—maybe my daughter would still be here. Maybe it would be enough to convince her we had a life together worth living.

9.     A pair of mourning doves chose to build a nest on top of the air-conditioning unit beside my living room window. After the two chicks hatched, I never expected they would stay though I tried. I hung up a bird feeder and filled it with seeds: safflower, red milo, white millet, and sunflower. They left the nest, but other birds came. Now there are sparrows, finches, eurasian doves, and on one occasion a peregrine falcon who came to hunt them. From my window, I sit and study them. Their patterns, their rituals. How they share, how they fight, how they sing. Today, the original pair of mourning doves came back. The remnants of their nest are still there on top of the air-conditioning unit. My house is a thoroughfare for birds of all kinds now. Probably not the best place for a nest, but still good enough to visit, to eat good seed, and to find some peace.

1. Cat in the window of the good enough home. 2. The mourning dove nest. 3. Me with the keys to the house built solidly on the ground.

I’m trying out this structure which is inspired by my dear friend, Taz Ahmed’s Substack, Wandering Ephemera where she writes into a structure she calls “stacked prose.” I read this piece recently at the book launch event for Taz’s new book of poetry, “Grasping at This Planet Just to Believe” (Writ Large Projects). There’s so much freedom in this structure. Without the hindrance of transition sentences, I can jump through time, recall memories, obsess about some random thing like a guy sitting on a couch in his own living room.

Also, buy Taz’s Book!