Once Removed
There is a cliche - you can never go home; which I think means you can never return to that complete utter innocence of home and childhood folded together. Now physically removed from home, having set myself facing another direction I wonder which thing about home is more resonant with me. Was home my mom and dad's house? Was it my ex-boyfriend? My old job? Sunny afternoons on the porch with beer and Jason? I have long felt that the uncomfortable and feeble severing of my friendship with Jason was the last snip of the apron string. Now home is a place again, just a city, but one that no longer has an emotional pull. My friends have scattered and my loves have all died away.
Why is puppy love and friendship so bound up in comfort? I think of the anger and fear that welled up inside of me between leaving Rich and Jason and I severing contact, and I realize that was the pivotal moment of growth. I was actually becoming - nothing Deleuzian here, more Oprah - (an adult). I was responsible for me and was painfully certain I wouldn't return to the bosom of home, where I knew as well as anyone, there was no one waiting. And even if there was, it would be bookended with misery, not a fete for the returning heroine.
There's that song - Prodigal Daughter - "look here comes the prodigal son, fetch him a tall drink of water, but there's none in the cup, cause he drank it all up, left for the prodigal daughter". I think both my sister and I have ejected ourselves - we know there is nothing waiting for us when we return, so we keep going. She astounds me with her steam, her perseverance. I feel on the other hand that mine has only picked up since that fateful winter. Now I have that perseverance, I have abandoned fear, but also feel a bit of an urge to taunt fate. Isn't it time to go again? If you can never go home, why turn a temporary sojourn into one?
What puzzles me now is the emotional, physical feeling of home. A peace that envelopes a person when in the presence of another. Is this a deja vu or just pattern behavior? You are like my sister, so I feel 'home' when I sit beside you. But at my age, how many personalities must feel familiar now? Are they still only ones reminiscent of mom and dad? I'm certain when I sat a few weeks ago on C's back patio drinking beer in the evening sun and talking nonsense with his landlord that it didn't feel like home because he or his friends bare any resemblance to my family. Instead it is frame. I have somewhere remembered an experience that was pleasurable - was it my age? my company? the air that night? - that has been encoded as 'perfection'. Perfection = peace = 'home'. So you can 'go home again', when you find those isolated moments of perfection: the perfect light, air, conversation.
My sense is that I could reexperience this emotion over and over, if everyone in the picture was unknowingly complicit. I remember very clearly what was pleasurable as a child: sitting on the back balcony on late summer nights with my parents. I had been allowed to stay up late, it was 11 o'clock. The patio lanterns are lit and I'm playing with some toys on the green plastic carpet and my parents are drinking beer. The air is warm and mosquitoes buzz around and I feel complete. This is conditioning: now whenever I sit at dusk or in darkness on a deck and drink a beer in the warm summer air I feel the same pleasure. An inner satisfaction that is essential: to relive the sensation of staying up late for the first time again and again. The sensation of seeing the part of the world that had so long been off limits. This is going home.
Why is puppy love and friendship so bound up in comfort? I think of the anger and fear that welled up inside of me between leaving Rich and Jason and I severing contact, and I realize that was the pivotal moment of growth. I was actually becoming - nothing Deleuzian here, more Oprah - (an adult). I was responsible for me and was painfully certain I wouldn't return to the bosom of home, where I knew as well as anyone, there was no one waiting. And even if there was, it would be bookended with misery, not a fete for the returning heroine.
There's that song - Prodigal Daughter - "look here comes the prodigal son, fetch him a tall drink of water, but there's none in the cup, cause he drank it all up, left for the prodigal daughter". I think both my sister and I have ejected ourselves - we know there is nothing waiting for us when we return, so we keep going. She astounds me with her steam, her perseverance. I feel on the other hand that mine has only picked up since that fateful winter. Now I have that perseverance, I have abandoned fear, but also feel a bit of an urge to taunt fate. Isn't it time to go again? If you can never go home, why turn a temporary sojourn into one?
What puzzles me now is the emotional, physical feeling of home. A peace that envelopes a person when in the presence of another. Is this a deja vu or just pattern behavior? You are like my sister, so I feel 'home' when I sit beside you. But at my age, how many personalities must feel familiar now? Are they still only ones reminiscent of mom and dad? I'm certain when I sat a few weeks ago on C's back patio drinking beer in the evening sun and talking nonsense with his landlord that it didn't feel like home because he or his friends bare any resemblance to my family. Instead it is frame. I have somewhere remembered an experience that was pleasurable - was it my age? my company? the air that night? - that has been encoded as 'perfection'. Perfection = peace = 'home'. So you can 'go home again', when you find those isolated moments of perfection: the perfect light, air, conversation.
My sense is that I could reexperience this emotion over and over, if everyone in the picture was unknowingly complicit. I remember very clearly what was pleasurable as a child: sitting on the back balcony on late summer nights with my parents. I had been allowed to stay up late, it was 11 o'clock. The patio lanterns are lit and I'm playing with some toys on the green plastic carpet and my parents are drinking beer. The air is warm and mosquitoes buzz around and I feel complete. This is conditioning: now whenever I sit at dusk or in darkness on a deck and drink a beer in the warm summer air I feel the same pleasure. An inner satisfaction that is essential: to relive the sensation of staying up late for the first time again and again. The sensation of seeing the part of the world that had so long been off limits. This is going home.
posted by Francine at 8:48 a.m.
1 Comments:
How funny a word like "home" is or further still the emotions that are exploded inside like a hurricane when you here it. Home, I have found is ME. There seems to be alot of who is with you when youre at home. Jason C Rich Dad so how about a beer on the patio tonight on your own. Yes there are still at least half the time a longing as well to feel at home in ones arms passes me by well ok about 90% of the time but well anyways Im working on it.
love kinder
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