What is a home?
It was a curious concept I realized as I left my first one in ruins. Fingers curled around the very world I made, slowly crushing the life from it until no hope of rebuilding could occur. The next moment I once again outstretched my fingers I could then see the result of my frustration in my palm. Shattered windows and splintered wood, irreparable destruction that I could only inflict because I had created it in the first place. I had given no thought to the people I would displace or the lives I would end as I broke the only place I had allowed them. I only did what I needed for the closure I didn’t deserve.
But I need to move on from that. I’ve done enough lamenting.
I spent a while figuring out what I’d make as a new place to stay. Not just for me, but for you. It was a curious state of homelessness—after I’d dealt with the Starlite Cafe and its previous manager, there was a rather large vacuum of space left over. I needed a place to house friends and family who were along for the ride—a place for you to visit and see what I had done. I didn’t really understand the words I needed to describe what I was looking for. I suppose I was trying to make an attraction—a cafe or a museum or an aquarium that would function as a day trip to the average customer but could house myself and the people alongside me. A sort of refuge—not a home for the real me, but one for my creation and my identity that others could use if they wished to join me on my journey. I still don’t think I really know how to make it. I don’t even think I know why I need it
The Starlite Cafe was only made through a mistake. A joke that went just a moment too far and became a world as suddenly as I considered it. The interior remained unfinished—the walls were stretched and none of the furniture matched, but nobody but me would interact with it enough to have cared. It turned into a small, quaint place. People came and went knowing it was under construction, only really visiting to see me and chat with friends. It was an almost temporary place for small talk or simple performance that left me feeling trapped. I suppose some of that anger was why I crushed it so tightly in my palm when the time came. I needed more. I was disappointed in myself for not realizing the prison I’d made for myself. When all was said and done, I wanted to find a place with my own freedom as its center.
I found it a lot quicker than I expected.
—
A ruin. Vines that creep across cracked rubble with nature’s unrelenting hand gently clawing at the walls of a barely standing building just big enough to stand out amongst a forest of endless trees and foliage. The view wasn’t…unwelcome. After dreams of dying fields and endless prisons, I had sometimes learned to take the good with the bad. Instead, this dream showed me something new. While every night brought new nightmares or uncomfortable spaces, this was finally something tolerable. The place was broken and battered, but it was at least a sanctuary from the elements.
Sanctuary. The word rang out in my mind.
I hadn’t really been looking for a new place to stay at the time. Even the idea of four walls was making my eye twitch. I preferred the freedom of the endless expanses my visions and dreams had generated. Even if these worlds were desolate and empty, the open space was welcoming. But here, in this endless forest, I found a structure of sorts. I walked myself down the lightly beaten path, trampling foliage I barely recognized as my mind began to fill in the gaps. Stone structures that rose to the treeline and draped vines across the floor, and moss that stretched across from one end to the other. Atop the building was a rounded rooftop, caved in by time and gravity that opened up a sort of moonlight to shine on the desolate interior. The engraved stone block outside the entrance had been worn thin, with no sign of what was previously written. All that was before me was a dimly lit ruin that called to me.
Sanctuary. That would be nice.
I wandered deeper in. Feeling the crinkling leaves beneath me finally go quiet with the snap of one last twig as I stepped onto cold wooden tiles, the floor was cracked with creeping greenery, but the insides were much more free of the encroaching nature of the surrounding endless forest. Creeping into the moonlight beam stretching down from the roof’s collapse, my mind raced back to that fact. In an endless forest, why would a building appear like this? My mind was working in a way I didn’t understand. While I’d been wandering worlds it created through idle musings, I’d come to expect a pattern from it that wasn’t ever broken by surprises. When I came across the smaller details like specific trees or landmarks, I could identify where they came from and how my mind had manifested their physical form. This time I couldn’t place what brought this structure into being. I peered through the darkness, witnessing the decrepit opening of the main hall as I took slow, careful steps forwards. A soft dripping noise from the ceiling then inspired a thought: How high does this go?
I ran my hand across the wall until a crumbled stone corner led way to a staircase I could sense before I saw it through the dark. I stepped quietly, softly ascending the many floors of the building. In some way, I recognized the layout—every turn I took led me to the staircase I needed or the door I wanted to open. I didn’t realize it at the time, and in fact it’s only now I put it into writing that I find there’s very little filler time in which I hit dead ends. I continued climbing towards the cracked ceiling that cast its beam of dim light down into the unknown building, finding no lack of energy or weakness in my legs. The quiet stretched on only to be interrupted by my steps as I ascended the building and finally reached the ray of light.
I pulled myself up a broken off staircase and onto a cracked roof, a floor I could tell was just stable enough to support my weight. It was there that I found the source of the light—a large crescent moon reflecting a pale blue coating across the ruins and the forest surrounding it. Countless stars accompanied it, sparkling and adorning the sky in impossibly complex patterns. I found myself awestruck, staring up at the night for long enough that the rest of the forest faded away and I was left with tranquility. I think—or I hope—that I figured out what home meant to me that day. I sat down against the cold rooftop and relaxed for the first time, letting days and nights pass without a care. I felt my heart rate slow, the pounding in my ears subsiding as I no longer held my guard up against the world and instead let it envelop me. I stayed, motionless and unbothered, until a gentle light beyond the curtains of my room woke me from this dream.
I slowly rose from bed, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Even then, the pictures of starry nights and cloudy skies never left my mind. Better yet, the comfort that dream had given me stayed with me. The dream of a place I could lie down and watch the stars in. A place I could let time pass with my guard down as I just relaxed. I realized what this place was all too quickly, and by the time the day ended and I was back in bed I knew what I would be doing.
The next time I dreamed, I went back to the ruins and began cleaning off the vines and slowly repairing the structures. Combining my creations and inspirations, I began to restore the broken down building until it was something I could be proud of. A place to watch the skies together. A place to show my talents and creations to others. A place where everyone could be around for the journey as we relaxed and let time pass.
The Comet Observatory.