I’m home. Or something that is called that. I am back in NYC
for about two weeks and also New Jersey to my other home-home where I grew up
and my parents still live. I have done the ‘going home’ thing many times for
many reasons, mostly holidays and other life moment events but this time around
it feels different, much different.
Living somewhere for a bit and having that place take up a
place in your head (and heart) that feels closer to a ‘home’ vibe shifts the
other homes and creates shadows and spotlights onto things that were once
unnoticed or vague. I am having this feeling intensely at the moment. All this ‘being
home’ and then being more home and then thinking about this other new home is a
bit of a mind melt. Also it’s hot in NY/NJ so it really feels like one is
melting a bit.
What makes a place home? I think it’s a feeling. A place can
feel like home, a room can feel like home, a person can feel like home. It’s a
feeling of peace, calm and belonging that is like a key-turn that allows you to
feel safe and utterly comfortable. The switch of performing life goes off at
home. You can be yourself. You can be private. You can be the you that you just
are.
It is also the people. It’s the sharing of space, time,
memories, meals, rhythms of movement that bind and tie and also synchronizes
things and makes all this living a bit more bearable.
Home is transient and fixed depending on what it is you need
from it. This is another thing about home. You can adjust and make it what you
need and want it to be. There are limitations of course but there is so much
power in how one conditions their environment via objects, space as well as the
people we invest our habitation and habits with.
Why all this blah-de-blah about home? I am currently stuck
in the thought of it because I am on this tiered cake of home on home on home.
I am not sure what feels like home. None do but all do. This feeling is a bit
nervous because it makes me feel like a balloon with a loose knot. It’s all
fine but the process is a new one so a bit distorting.
Is it human nature to settle down and make a nest and be a
part of a community and stabilize and grow roots? Is it human nature to explore
and seek and be nomads of roving tribes that spread and expand and disappear? I
think both are our natures but it depends on what type of human you are.
Balance. Home is balance, movement is balance, living is
balance. Balance.
I don’t know what, where my home is at the moment. It’s all
in the air, in a good way, it will come down soon and things will be as they
should or need to be and in that there will be a sculpting of a new home vibe.
But in this intermediate, suspended in the air state, I feel oddly lucky to be
able to feel tenderness to so many places and to so many people yet still feel
like the itch I have to move is valued and necessary.
That phrase, that cheesy god damn awful phrase of ‘Home is
where the heart is’ is so damn true.
