I feel like this place — the house, this town, the countryside — is undoing me. Moving always undoes, anyway, because you have to fit yourself into a domicile of foreign proportions, a series of rooms vacant so far of feeling and association, marked by a profound emptiness that feels like a challenge to the part of the self that yearns to belong somewhere. To inhabit a place requires duration—a steady accrual of intermeshed hours, habits, and sensations. I think once you start daydreaming in a place, it becomes homely. You feel less like an accident in time and space, and more collected, no longer dispersed but reoriented: all the parts of you are now focused, gathering its community in intimate communion. This usually happens in a newly favored part of the house, such as beside a hot radiator under a large window with a view of the mercurial sky. Attention roams between the view and the interior weather of the self, with the glass of the window as mediator and medium. As night approaches, your reflection attains more clarity in shadow. You feel protected, yet expanded. At home. Like a cat that feels safe enough to stretch out, unfurl its belly.

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