At a halfway house, halfway down Dominion Road
Thoughts are a bit like knots and writing is the best way to unpick them.
We’re saying goodbye to the halfway this week.
I lived at the halfway for a month, and only kind-of, in the sense that I lived in Matt and Alanah’s motorhome next to the halfway where the internet couldn’t quite reach me and I scampered in and out of the driveway in my full body rain suit to use the kitchen and bathroom.
It was during a very dark and awful time, both literally (it rained for an entire month), and metaphorically (in terms of what was happening in my life). I’m very grateful that the halfway was there for me.
There with its’ sprawling hallways and rooms that meant when anyone asked how many people lived there, I said “no clue”.
There with its’ colorful graffiti, the back door that swelled so much it seemed locked but never was, the rat infested hot water cupboard, and the chooks that would find their way into your car or laundry or the kitchen if you weren’t careful.
There with a 10-year junk pile, and a fire pit, and a stage, and a bike shed that says “no stealy”.
The first time I was there, I didn’t get it.
I suppose I was intimidated by hippies then in the same way a lot of people might be intimidated by me now. Intimidated by a lifestyle that seemed very intense and unknowable. Intimidated by the freely available familiarity. Intimidated by my own impostor syndrome telling me that I might be revealed to be a square living a normal house and a normal job.
(turns out I was in denial, I’m the furthest shape from square you could find)
Then slowly you realise that while you’re not poly, you’ve never lived in a van and you’ll never let someone tattoo your butthole in the lounge, you’ve got more in common with the hippies than the punks.
Because you like things like making a community, making it safe, living your truth and having an epic meal liberated entirely from the trash out of rich person food you can barely pronounce. Things like dancing while doing the dishes and always writing in the guestbook.
Like bringing help and food not because it’s the obligation, but because you’re a filthy communist trying to make a world where everybody’s a giver and nobody’s a taker.
Like making the place where you’re always welcome, but not in that heteronormative white kinda way where you’re always welcome but implicitly only within the allotted hours of 6-8pm and not on a school night.
And then you realise you were probably always a just a hippie in black clothes because you always listened to folk punk and knew how to talk about feelings.
So the council said this place is unliveable, and free love won’t protect you from a fire or black mould, out you go. Go into that big bad housing crisis world and try to find a place to rent that doesn’t take more than half your income every week.
But not before one last party where you can dress up like apocalypse communists and warboys and hit each other with flaming bike sticks in this particular location just one more time.
It might be a eulogy, but it’s a good kind of eulogy. The sort of eulogy we all could aspire to have one day.
The eulogy where we say that we’ll miss you but you’re not really gone, we’ll carry you with us because you made us better.
Haere rā, halfway!