8: Living in the Future

according to an analog calendar.

It might strike you as a disservice to Chloé Zhao’s film, “Nomadland,” to describe my current situation in the same way Frances McDormand’s character describes hers — houseless. Her rejection of the word, “homeless,” telegraphs her identification in widowhood with the millions of people who move from one temporary job to another, sleep in campgrounds and cars and rely on food banks. McDormand’s Fern repudiates the misguided social assumptions embedded in “homeless” and asserts with ruthless accuracy the truth of “houseless.” In so doing, the film feeds the audience’s longing for connection and community in a world atomized by technology and income disparities.

The fact alone that I am the owner of a condo in northern California for at least another couple of months should disqualify me from deploying “houseless” to describe my situation. But I will not have a fixed abode for at least a year. Indeed, I will not live in one place for more than four months at a time. Like Fern, I feel liberated, a little nervous, and ready for a modicum of comfortable adventure appropriate for someone turning seventy later this year.

A long, complicated history with the word, “home,” makes it relatively easy for me to adapt to this new state of houselessness. Looking back, I don’t feel an attachment to any house or household in which I grew up. There is nowhere that feels like it was once home. I have nowhere to go back to. I grew up feeling like I lived in someone else’s habitat, intruded upon someone else’s territory, and never occupied my own ground. The homes I’ve made throughout my adult life didn’t acquire a permanency that rooted me to a place. I’ve moved back and forth across the country more than once.

And yet, I’m a champion nester, albeit one whose eye is always cocked towards the next move. It’s the central paradox of my life. Fifteen years there, ten years here, five years there, I always assumed I would eventually move on, in spite of dreaming I’d find a home with a garden from which I would never move and to which all my friends would come. The paradox explains why “Nomadland” resonated deeply with me, but also why I’m rather pleased with how things have recently turned out.

In practical terms, the French Visa Debacle, as I now refer to my short-lived gambit to emigrate to France, has led to my “houseless” condition. After I landed at JFK on Dec 28th, my 2025 calendar imploded. Denied private health care and, as a consequence, the right to remain in Paris for a year, I have spent most of every day since I arrived immersed in reconstructing my upcoming year, working out the details of where I will live. I have spent hours searching for flights, rental car prices, AirBnBs, VRBOs, B&Bs, dog sitters, vets, blood work, video consultations with my doctors. There will be no question of settling into a home somewhere. Home remains as ephemeral as it has always been. My home is in the things I carry or send on that allow me to perpetuate the rituals of my comfort — a Zojirushi rice cooker, a corkscrew, a tea thermos, a chef’s knife.

The places where I will spend time are now inscribed in the notebook you see pictured above. I’ve returned to paper, my first love. The frustrations of accessing an online calendar, tickets, and confirmation numbers, untethered to wi-fi, drove me mad over the past few months. Now, I have entered my plans in pencil, starting with my upcoming 5-day trip to New Orleans for the première of Edmond Dédé’s opera in the St. Louis Cathedral.¹ On the February page, I have noted the confirmation and flight numbers of my return to Paris to close up the apartment I rented. The March page reveals I am back in Hudson until April 4, when I will drive a rental car to New Orleans. I will live there until the end of July. The August grid shows I’ll drive back to Hudson for two weeks and then fly to Paris, where I will switch to the Eurotunnel and cross to the UK. After visiting friends in Somerset, I will spend nearly four months in Bridport, a town one mile from the walking paths on the Dorset coast. Then back to Hudson in early December.

After that? Wherever I land, my peregrinations are an exciting consolation prize for failing to obtain a French visa.

1. “Homecoming. Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane: A World Première,”, January 23rd. Self-promotion alert. The Exile’s Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World.