home or an approximation there of…
When i think of all the things that i connect to without any apparent reason. When i listen to music that kills me. When i am reading and i start inhabiting the book. When i daydream and imagine. When i look out into the distance of my future. When i hear a friend speak of the magic that they are living. What else am i feeling but the ache for homecoming, for a return, a place where i can live from.
I tend to make quick decisions regarding likes and dislikes, this unfortunately includes people. But mostly i am referring to art, literature, film or another intangible that lingers and dangles and latches on to me. And i am beginning to understand that these things find their root so fast and so deep because of a quality in me that yearns for what i think that they represent and embody. I am looking to connect with something outside me that will become part of me, make me like this thing.
I listen to Tom Waits and i want to be the kind of soul that wears an old suit and sings about pirates and hobos with the same intensity as lost love. I read Paul Auster and i imagine my life stripped of trappings, restarted and forced to find out what part of me is really me. Brian Wood’s DMZ makes me crazy for New York and a life infinitely harder and easier than mine own. Never let me tell you about my morbid love of the underlying romance of zombie movie tropes, all that beautiful life in the face of absolute horror.
So what is it that i am after? What is it me that all of this resonates with? It will sound lame i promise. All of these things, i am coming to understand that these are all examples of what i want from home. Mystery, danger, challenge, intensity, love, and purpose. I want my home to have all these things. And by home i don’t mean merely a house or a hearth. A place for kith and kin. When i say home i mean the place were i make the most sense. The place were i am able, enabled even to be safe in the midst of everything even pirates, hobos, urban civil warfare, loss of my loved ones and zombie infestation.
At the end of it all i don’t want a peace that is peace and quiet. I want a peace that comes from knowing where i am coming from and where i am going. A self that is weathered but is open still. Ready to accept what is coming. With blessing and mercy for all. Even myself.
Jeff, I can relate 112% with this whole entire statement. I think that we (maybe especially folks like you and me, but most people) can find our primary source of conflict in life from this “pursuit of happiness.” If someone belittles me, OR EVEN something which I truly enjoy, something which has been an important part of my development/awakening…some story or idea that helped me become the man that I am today…if someone speaks lowly of these kinds of things, I feel murdered. You’re not just making fun of “Bob Dylan” or “The Chronicles of Narnia” or “Michele Gondry”…you’re stipping me of my clothes, shaming me for being the man that I’ve become (often in the context of some trivial “snarky” comment).
Heh, it’s easy for me to forget all of this when I am rudely trampling over something that someone else enjoys (regardless of how silly it might seem to my own aesthetic). hmmmmm
Jesse said this on September 18, 2008 at 7:46 pm