Tuesday, September 29, 2009

happy new year...?

I'm a total secret Jew. this time of year always feels like a time for new beginnings. I don't know why, given the fact that the world is dying and retreating into itself in anticipation of winter -- and here in the midwest the death of fall is dramatic and the winter we are headed towards will be bitter. Maybe it's because someone decided the school year should start at this time of year and i was programmed for 16 years (about half my life) to start anew around now, when the frenetic summertime is over, when harvesting is rampant and the work of putting away food for the winter (whether by canning and preserving or by fattening up for hibernation) is immanent, that now is the time for beginning the real work that will occupy me for the winter.
Too bad i only have the skecthiest idea of what to do with myself for the next 6 months. I usually have a better plan by this time of year. 4 years ago it was to tie up loose ends and prepare to move to seattle. 3 years ago it was to take classes (actual classes) in acting and ASL, 2 years ago it was to research Kurt Cobain and gender identity (mine and his), 1 year ago it was to get Hollow Earth Radio non-profit status and start a story to imagine a life for myself in the future.
This year...
traveling to collect others' stories about how they live their lives and to accumulate experiences of ways and places to live in order to figure out what my next life will look like. Cuz I'm secretly a homebody. when I visit people I want to cook dinner with them and do the dishes. When I don't have a place to sleep (aside from a patch of ground somewhere) I get very focused on the meals of the day, using them as an anchor, a way of having a home without a place. Sharing a meal is where the heart is. for me. Eating alone is when I feel the most homeless and hard-up.
I guess I'm really just out to learn the many definitions of home. And to share 'home' with as many people I love as possible. Maybe I need to start asking everyone I stay with the question: what is home to you?

3 comments:

Ellen G said...

it's such a cliche but so true: home is where the heart is. my home is where my loved ones are and where we can curl up and laugh and play and snuggle.

that said, when i say home i tend to mean the home/apartment i share with my partner and/or the home/house i grew up in. both of these places fit the criteria above though.

love to you,
ln

Unknown said...

I suppose "home" for me is with my loved ones, more specifically friends over family.

We haven't spoken too much about this, for good reason, but I was raised in a very abusive atmosphere so this tended to affect my first perceptions of home. My first idea of "home" was a place where you were always ugly and wrong and hungry. A place where if you made a wrong move and Mike would beat the shit out of you, or a place where you just might find your mother dead like she promised for so long. Home was a terrifying place where you couldn't be safe or happy. It also wasn't directly tied to a particular location-- throughout my life I have been evicted about 20 times, shipped from the West coast to the East coast and back, changed parents, been a ward of the state for a brief while, so I have never really felt like a place was "home". The closest I came to that, many years later, was my father's house in Connecticut; it was the only thing that stayed the same for a long time and where times were mostly good.

I guess I do not tie the concept of home to a location but rather the people. As when I was a child I tended to associate "home" with the people I could not escape, I now feel home is the people I don't wish to leave. People like John, Shayna, Andi, yourself, and others come to feel like home to me. It wouldn't matter if I was with those wonderful people in my apartment, Oakland California, Boise Idaho, on the space station, or Providence; I would still feel the sort of comfort that I feel has been displaced from the original concept of "home".

That's probably it right there. While I do not directly correlate the comfort of "home" to a building or location, I tie it to those closest to my heart.

Man... I sound like such a weenie don't I?

I really enjoyed reading this post Ray; when you come back I'll whip you up a delicious meal. : )

michelle! said...

home is heather.