I am, or have become, a homebody, meaning that even though I stay at home just about as much as I used to, now I do it more comfortably. I like being at home. I am frequently miserable at home, but not because I'm at home. That part I'm fine with. (It's the "I" part that causes trouble, not the "home" part.) Being at home forces me to be alone with myself, which is problematic, but I can handle it, usually, and on balance it's still better, for me, than being out. Being at home is better than being out, and being out alone is better than being out with people, and both situations are better than being at home with people. My home. Being at their home is not so bad, because although there is the risk that I will break something or spill something or clog something or cause something expensive to shatter into hundreds of glittering fragments there is also the fact that I can leave whenever I want, but if they're here I cannot make them leave whenever I want, not without being a prick, and I always want to make them leave, every time. Nobody wants to visit me for seven, eight, nine minutes. If they come all the way over here they want to set a spell, and who can blame them? Going somewhere is an ordeal, always. Which is one reason I am a homebody, but not the main reason. Someone said "homebody" to me the other day and I've become attached to the word. So much better than darker, uglier words. Hermit. Shut-in. Recluse.

One reason I am comfortable being a homebody is that I wasn't always one. In the past I was not a homebody, I was a social animal. In the past, at times, I was a partygoer and someone who ran around, here and there. I hailed cabs, I checked bus schedules, I patted myself down with both hands, I made sure I had what I needed before hitting the streets. When I finally got home, hours and hours later, the particular atmosphere of my home hit me in the face, which it never does if you never leave it. (This is especially noticeable if you live in a small apartment.) So I know what I'm missing. The sudden smell of cat litter, the lingering aroma of microwave popcorn from yesterday, the knowledge that in being out you once again weren't able to give yourself the slip. I can fail to elude myself just as easily without leaving my home, and I also won't notice the cat smell so much.

Going somewhere is an ordeal, but so is going nowhere. It's one ordeal or the other, basically. I am comfortable with going nowhere, the special brand of misery associated with going nowhere is interesting to experience if you have the temperament for it. That misery is really more like a set of anxieties and it's only a thin layer, like a humus made of rotting personal crap. Underneath it there's something less boringly personal, more richly anonymous. Anyway, I was thinking this without being very sure what I meant by it, and then I came across this from Kafka, from The Blue Octavo Notebooks:

There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.

I'm not sure about the writhing part though. I often think about someone writhing before me in raptures but it's usually not the world.