A House of My Own--Sandra Cisneros

Those of us who live in San Antonio know that Sandra Cisneros ( author of House on Mango Street and other books) angered the Powers-That-Be by painting her house in the historical King William District purple.  Purple, they said, was not historically accurate.

She writes about that in this most recent of her books: A House of My Own/Stories From My Life--a collection of previously published essays with recent commentaries.

I loved her purple house, and also the newly painted Casa Rosa version of it--pink with a green door, pictured on page 176.  It's not a timid pink, as mine recently was; it's a bold candy pink.

"Color is a story.  An inheritance....Nobody wants to live like they're poor, not even the poor.  The poor prefer to live like kings.  That's why they paint their houses with the only wealth they have--spirit."

She writes:

A house for me has been a lifelong dream.  Owning one, having one, retreating to a space one can call one's own, where a radio or TV isn't blaring, and someone isn't knocking on the other side of the door saying, "Come on out of there!" A house for me is the space to decide whether I want to be sad and not turn on the lights, to sleep until noon or beyond, read a book propped up by fringed pillows, shut off the ringer on the phone, wear my pajamas all day, and not venture farther than the backyard fence if I feel like it.  A house is the right to leave my hair uncombed, walk around barefoot, be rude.  I don't want to be quasar bien, that terrible syndrome of las mujeres. I like the civility of incivility.  If someone rings the doorbell, does that mean I have to answer it? If someone says hello, do I have to grin like a geisha?  I like the military chin flick of the men.  I see you, you see me. A house for me is the freedom to be. To go back to bed after breakfast.  Peruse mail order catalogs while in the tub.  Eat pancakes for dinner.  Study the New York Times while ironing.  A house is about safety and privacy of doing what others might think odd, or eccentric, or wrong, and if I live alone there is no one to tell me "You can't do that!" It's the richest indulgence I know next to writing.  

Sandra likes to write, smoke her cigar, collect art and travel.  She writes about the moment of sadness, though, when she leaves her house--and the moment of joy when she returns.  I feel that way about my little house.  I also relate, when I'm feeling sad, to this sentiment:

Sometimes my house is lonely, but I mostly enjoy the aloneness.  Aloneness is a luxury, like grief.  Sometimes society tries to kill.  "Don't be sad."  "Why is the door locked?  What are you doing in there?" For a writer, both loneliness and grief serve their purpose of allowing one the heart dialogues.