going home.
November 20, 2009
i’ve been passing my days this past week with a friend who first inspired in me, years ago, an elongated discourse on the experience of home…and here i am sitting in a friend’s home, after two weeks of traipsing through a variety of other spaces + homes, getting myself prepared to finally go home. to my home. to the space that every day gets me closer and closer to a new experience of me at home.
what is home?
what makes a home?
where is home?
where is my home?
during this time, things have shifted, changed, evolved. new ideas have entered in. static ideas have filtered out. questions have been answered yet still many remain in flux. i feel open and closed. watered and dry. clear and cluttered. certain and confused.
i wonder if leaving home is what brought me here. allowed me the space to let go and try on. to take the risks and ask the questions i have been too hesitant to throw out.
i am both excited and unsure about what it means to now go home. to (re)enter space that has held the fields of anxious grains that fueled my need to run away. to (re)claim space that nurtured a relocated heart that still trembles within a box of dreams.
alas, it is time to go.
home.
my home.
awaits.
first.night.
September 6, 2009
it is. the first night in my new space. once again sharing space with another person – a housemate, a friend i am hoping to know more. my cats are exploring, roaming in the nooks + crannies of the boxes piled in the living room downstairs, and i am being forced, once again, to let go.
their worlds have expanded as my dreaming begins anew.
today. as we drew closer and closer to this new home, i noticed a bubbling of excitement growing inside. that same giddy joy that washes over you, slowly, then turbulent, when finally indulging in a guilty, forbidden pleasure… los angeles just might be my guilty pleasure. i wonder at the joys she will unveil as i give myself more time, more permission, to indulge.
on this first night i am calm. i am the warm air sitting still in my room. i am the buzz of the helicopter overhead, refusing sleep at the promise of tomorrow.
i am here.
i am home.
…wondering still how + when the missing will begin.
tale spin.
July 21, 2009
i find myself here. on an island precariously close to the canadian border and i feel the excitement tingling on my skin, knowing that the magnificence of quebec is practically in reach. i can almost taste it…the lure of a country that is not mine, and yet, it feels surprisingly a lot like home.
the house my family has rented for this week boasts a plaque on the wall in one of the bedrooms that reads:
“home is where your story begins”
each time i read it, i pause. which story, i ask? which beginning? as a being full of stories, does this mean home is something less tangible than place, and perhaps, more akin to time?
home has always been a fairly elusive idea for me, as i have wandered around the globe seeking a sense of belonging – with space, with individual people, with broader community…and, as i am here now, i feel the pull of coming home that grabbed my heart that first time i laid eyes on montreal.
as i give in to the seduction of this nostalgia, i recall a story i wrote a few years ago, after a wintry visit there…one that revived a memory of friendship that i long for in a home.
“montroyal”
Everywhere I look the glare of frozen water gushes into view. The snow glistens, the ice crackles underneath the weight of my boots each time I take a step. I feel the sun, barely. The sting of the wind tickles my cheeks so I keep laughing, I keep talking, believing the longer I keep going the less I’ll notice the pain growing in my face.
It works – at least for a time.
We’re taking a walk, following a designated path though not caring where it leads. Reclaiming a friendship that has stumbled with time, reinvigorating a love between two people that is a fresh as a deep gulp of filtered water.
I walk into the snow, in defiance of the trail plowed and trampled neatly before us. I have boots to put to use in this land of negative Celsius and rosy cheeks. I trample the snow, disappointed that it really isn’t as deep as I had wanted…and then I seem to lose my balance, and his laughter surrounds me, breaking my fall. It takes me several attempts to evade his sly shoves and bumps to get back on my feet…kicking him just as slyly in the butt on my way back up.
I feel like a 10 year old again, the fun of playing with a friend who allows me to push back, to tease, to touch without the fear of getting hurt. He is that to me…and more. As we begin to walk back to the trail, I rush up, thrust my hand into one of his pockets and pull him to me. I smirk as I catch him on his unawares and then just as intimacy is breached, I step back and it’s now his turn to embrace the snow. Our laughter rings with familiarity through the naked trees.
Our promenade of the park continues, passing families on holiday, couples oblivious to our chatter, people shunning a day of work to enjoy a blissfully warm winter afternoon. Soon the insulation of laughter wears thin and we find ourselves racing back to the car, ready to slide into the next adventure awaiting for us this day.* 2/3/05
roots.
March 29, 2009
i sit here. on a porch. sipping coffee, breathing deeply, listening intently…to the unspoken words woven through the ages in the elements around me…to the soft whisper of ideas taking shape within me. there is a lot and nothing going on at the same time.
i miss this place. this feeling. this sense of having been here for centuries, and yet, having nowhere to go to distract me. things are old. there are roots here that precede us, these buildings, this current iteration of life. it is these roots that compel me, that lure me in through a sweet siren’s song.
i am craving roots. feeling mine growing deeper and deeper and still, they haven’t yet found their roots. as i have been growing, expanding, becoming…i now realize that this is what i have been looking for all this time: i am seeking the soil i need that will allow my roots, the tendrils of my soul, to connect with something deeper, something older…something that holds me, grounds me, supports me through time.
this is what i feel standing on the ground in taiwan, where my ancestors breathed…this is what i feel here, in new orleans, here. this is what i want. this is what i need.
yet the question remains…do i need to live here or there in order to get what i want?
anyone? i could so use some guidance. please. 
where is home?
March 29, 2009
i’ve been tossing around words and images in my head – ideas bubbling through my brain like a soda bottle that’s been shaken a few too many times…and i’m not sure i can keep the lid on any longer.
i am here. in new orleans and i am swelling once again with longing, contradiction and burning questions that always accompany this space for me — wanting to know what it is i really do feel here. what does it mean?
i am so at home here. i always have been. this place grounds me in a way that no other place has. being here is like coming home to safety of a loving mother’s hug. i need this. i need to find my footing again and i know that i can find it here. the first time i came here, 15 years ago, i stayed for 2 years…and then again for another 6 months. i found my footing then in a deeply profound way…i am hoping this place will again spin her magic for me and (re)connect my feet with the ancient roots that fed me then.
the first time i came back after katrina, was a year after the storm…and i was not prepared for the devastation that was still so real, so palpable in the physical and psychic spaces of the this town. it broke me to my core…and i knew it would be a long while until i returned.
18 months later, i am back. this time to celebrate a friend’s 40th…and i enter the space with more caution, with less expectation….and all the while, entirely full of hope.
my heart pounds as it hears the sounds of the streets and breathes in the scents that construct this world…it expands to its fullness with a longing to be back here. to throw down my roots here once again. to be able to say definitively, that yes, this is my home.
yet what does that mean? is it nostalgia that tickles my nose and clouds my vision through an idealized lens?
something always keeps me from coming back and staying here…i thought i had reached a space of clarity in knowing that san francisco was my home, the place i am called to be right now – and yet. being here. breathing this air. standing on this ground…i am once again flirting at the cusp of knowing that this is where i belong.
or is it?
what is home?
i write this as a friend’s cat climbs all over me, across my keyboard – demanding attention in the same ways that my little blue does at my home – my other home — the one where i live day to day…and it makes me wonder even more, what is it that makes up a home…better yet, how does a home get built?
i am tired. worn out. for so many many reasons, so i must leave the question here – splayed open on the table, wanting so much to be dissected and understood…yet this body must first sleep…this is the question i have come here with…the question that teases me each moment i am here…and i will coerce this space, this blog, to keep peeling back the layers of this question as the days progress.
i am here for 5 days. i hope this will be ample time to find my footing. to (re)discover me. to understand my home. to (re)claim the tools i need to (re)build my home.
