Kirstiecat | Blog

(Title by PJ Harvey)

In my last life, I was a photographer for a real estate company and I traveled all around different neighborhoods taking pictures of homes for brochures. I miss it. No, seriously, often houses and homes are the very first thing I notice even when on vacation. I have several pictures in each city I have been to of just homes. I’m not a home owner myself and may never be but that’s okay. We can all enjoy just looking. It’s interesting to see the way people live and where they dwell I think. It’s interesting because in some ways architecture and the places we live say a great deal about us. It’s also important to appreciate what we have.

Don’t worry…for those of you not interested in houses and homes, I threw in enough music references to hopefully keep you satisfied.

(warning: it may take a bit to load but please do look. Just, you know, get up and put on a cd or turn your vinyl over. I would recommend putting on your favorite album as a child, whatever that is.)

Can I talk about home? This is my first home on Nichols Street:

It’s an old picture. I grew up in Rochester, NY and lived in the city until 13 when I moved out to the country. I’m not a famer, wood cutter, cow tipper, or republican so needless to say I didn’t really fit in. I went back when I had graduated from high school just to see what had become of it. They’d put up ugly curtains. And also, a basketball hoop. I wouldn’t be happy with any change anyways.

This is the closest picture I have to a sense of home and yet I’ve never really completely felt like home is anywhere, which is why I’ve always felt that I must belong in Canada.

I moved away from Rochester, NY and then I moved away from Buffalo. I live in Chicago now on Magnolia Avenue.

When people think of Chicago, they usually tend to think of the high rises and skyscrapers. Because, when you visit and stay downtown, that is all you see. But there’s another side of Chicago and that is it’s neighborhoods. I’ve posted a few pictures of neighborhoods already: Andersonville (the Swedish area of the city that is only a couple of miles away), and Wicker Park and here’s truly what I see when I walk around the few blocks of my own neighborhood-north,south, and west. If I go East, I see skyscrapers because I live close to the lake and the beach.

Some would say it’s the perfect time of year. The leaves are starting to turn and there’s a crispness but there are still some healthy flowers around just hanging on to life. It’s the time for cider and scarves. It’s the time to switch from ice cream to hot chocolate and salad to soup. But before things got too cold and the trees barren, I started taking pictures.

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.

With two cats in the yard, Life used to be so hard, Now everything is easy ‘cause of you.

-CSNY

Oh no, what am I doing here, in the house Jack Kerouac built.

-The Go Betweens

And I think this house is not my home
I think that I’d rather be alone tonight

-Blur

This old house of ours is built on dreams
And a businessman don’t know what that means.
There’s a garden outside she works in every day
And tomorrow morning a man from the bank’s
Gonna come and take it all away.

-CSNY

Always dreamed that one day i’d leave home
And now i do it again and again
And here i go looking for my new home
Or shall i say looking for a best friend

-The Eels

There rose before me a little house
With all hope and dreams kept within
A woman`s voice close to my ear
Said, “Why don`t you come in here?”
“You looked soaked to the skin”
Soaked to the skin Soaked to the skin
Soaked to the skin

Hallelujah Hallelujah
Hallelujah Hallelujah

-Nick Cave

It’s so hard for even me to believe so many different kinds of houses were all built on the same street. Mainly, the neighborhood I live in consists of small families and three level brownstones but there are so many unique places inbetween.

I will hide what you want hidden and I’ll
roam if you say roam but I’d just as soon you didn’t because you’re my only
home

-The Magnetic Fields

I’ve always been partial to ivy. I can see this building laying low deep in the forest or nearby a swamp. It would be even easier to imagine this if the other houses around it weren’t so close and if it wasn’t near the road where cars pass too frequently (for a swamp anyways.)

There are maybe five homes with American flags draped. And then there’s also this one:

It used to have many peace banners on it too but there was a fire a couple of months ago.

This house is across the street from Senn, the neighborhood high school who recently turned into a military academy despite numerous community efforts to stop that from taking place.

Can you hear and do you care and

Can you see we
Must be free to Teach the children To believe and Make a world that We can live in

-Graham Nash

We ankled up the garbage sound, but they were busy in the rows
We fell up, not to see the sun, gardening at night just didn’t grow

-REM

Honey, please deliver me
From all that hangs upon the asking tree

-Robyn Hitchcock

See that reddish tree in front? My old house used to have a tree like that too and it was so nice when it bloomed.

She’s leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye

- the Beatles

As much as Magnolia is a street in Chicago, it’s also a street in a neighborhood where people ride bikes.

there’s a lot of lanes and stuff around here, around the house – although it’s right in the middle of the city it seems quite like the country, it’s dead hidden.

-Belle and Sebastian

When we first moved into this neighborhood, we had been living in a high rise even closer to the lake and we were stunned by the huge houses and homes. You mean just one family lives in that entire house? How soon we forget we grew up in houses that size in smaller cities.

We have one small problem in my hood-instead of the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man, we have the attack of the 50 foot tree. You’ll be seeing other pictures like this so stay on the edge of your seat…hey you, wake up at least!

I love Halloween and I love giving out candy to the kids who come to the neighborhood from elsewhere or live in this neighborhood. The Halloween displays are much simpler than you’d find in the suburbs but very much appreciated all the same.

Such a pretty house, such a pretty garden. No alarms and no surprises

-Radiohead

Rosie won’t you please come home?
Mama don’t know where you’ve been.
Rosie won’t you please come home?
Your room’s clean and no one’s in it.

-the Kinks

I’d ask my friends to come and see
An octopus’s garden with me
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’s garden in the shade

-the Beatles

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought’s escaping
Home, where my music’s playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me

-Simon & Garfunkel

I dream at night
of going home someday
somewhere so far away

So dream alright
I know it’s gonna take some time
I’m going home someday

-Grandaddy

when I got home, I was alone
and I fell in love with that feeling
when I got home, I was alone
and I counted stars on the ceiling

-the Stars

I’m growing old and I wanna go home
I’m growing old and I don’t wanna know
I’m growing old and I wanna go home.

-Nick Drake

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 8:08 pm and is filed under art, music, rambles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.