Homes as Sites of Creative Expression: A Love Story

The dream mind creates the world out of it's desires. And so it was that we met - from the need to create a space to be, and be loved, and to touch, and to hold - and to be surrounded by a place that was ours, a nest of sorts, where projects could be begun and completed, only to pave way for new ones, enthused over in mutual joy and togetherness. As time passes, all that is left of some ventures are blurred photographs - but the lasting project of us endures, and the desire to create our little nests together persists, somehow, despite the failures and difficulties - or perhaps because of them.

Our first conversations were about place - sharing a joint and pouring over a box of photographs of his life, getting to know this man whose scent had intoxicated me (faintly, of fennel and celery seeds, and beer) and then his bookshelf, his skin, his hands that fixed and repaired and created in buzzing, energetic bursts. We opened a book on wildcrafting and creating your own food sovereignity in rural England. 'I've always wanted to...' from one was finished by the other 'have a place like that....' - and hours later, after a cold and frosty walk through the woods to a pub in Sussex, light splintering through ice crystal prisms, a whisky mac - a quivering inside - and then:

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oh, we could get married and move to country England
we can't
recall
who
said it first - but the plan
was hatched - perhaps it was the drugs
or the red wine
or the beating of our magic hearts
anyway, it was done

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Money is not a barrier when you are in love, not time nor space. Whilst six months was the estimate, I made it back to him in four, with little posessions but a heart full of love. He lived in a truck - I loved the romanticism of the mobile library that it once was. We moved out fast, into a beautiful hamlet in Dorset, made it our own. Hung paintings found in charity shops, dug vegetable gardens, made a courtyard with found stone, hung windchimes crafted of flinty stones found at Weymouth, sat ammonites on windowsills, crystals cut from old chandeliers gathering rainbows scattering round the kitchen where we taught each other our recipes: his, hearty English stews, mine, Asian fusion stir fries, salads and ayuvedic lentil stews.

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all those words
circling
i love you i love you i love you
the wood fire tick tick ticking
a stolen red tshirt
to hold, to smell, to feel his arms around me
even ten thousand miles away in the antipodes
reggae, sound connections
texted longings

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And then, the dream to move again - together. We found a horsebox, walked past the damn thing every day til we plucked up the courage to ask if she'd sell it - turned out she'd dreamt she had sold it the night before. We cleaned it of cat shit and bird droppings and horse hair and made it our own. The plastic lining was stripped from the walls, revealing the wallpaper beneath - a found bamboo blind became a feature, the rubber ripped up, the floor sanded, the wood stove fitted. A tree painted on the doorway. The space was vast on nights of field collected magic mushrooms - stairways and hidden doors. One night he fell drinking hard cider, ripped his ear open on an exposed hook. Still has the scar. We lived in that truck for a year before we moved back to Australia. Bought a bus, started again with nothing. Bought a house

our bodies carry scars
from hidden nails
thousands of screws in ply, memories
of creating and holding space for each other
The cresent white moon on my wrist
from the black handled screwdriver slipping
muscles tight from building
massaged out in warm beds, spooned
talking our our dreams
i love you i love you i love you

Our lived spaces have become the creative expresssion of who we uniquely are, all we have been. All those longings, made manifest - mosaiced splashbacks from memories of home forests, blooded from the cuts and nicks that sharp tiles draw, mandalas of charcoaled ash on the back concrete slab washed away in the rain, shelves and threshholds formed from discarded wood, grey with age, sanded so the red shines through, scrapped wood that tells stories of other projects made into facades, artwork from travels, bands we've seen, flyers from his club nights long ago in cheap op shop frames a reminder of another time sans each other. We make shelters. Hang flags, gongs brought from Burma, plant trees. Make a clay oven with a dragon atop. It's wings crumble in the rain. There is a red painted moon on the letterbox. We build homes within homes - two vans, two caravans, a bus, two trucks. The second one is always better than the first - lessons learnt.

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time separates
the shed is yours now
the garden, mine
you come in with the smell of grease and either
I can't fucking do it or
look what I have done!
and often, we meet in the space between
cook together
wonder what colour blinds to get
if at all
the front door wants painting yellow
you arrange railway sleepers like standing stones in the front garden bed
I twist wire around rocks, make a sculpture from rust
hang shells on fishing wire
you are building another boat
i mix balms of herbs and beeswax
I rub my fingers over the callouses on your hands
i love you i love you i love you i love you

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