How many cities can you conquer in a lifetime, and by conquest I do not mean the list of must-sees and must-dos that every city has to offer to its visitors.
How long does it take to get to know a city?
To get to know it so well, that you can walk its streets with your eyes closed, when you know its neighborhoods like the back of your hand, when even a slight change, like a relocation of a shop or a demolition of a building gives you that painful pang, and feels like a tooth missing? How long does it take – a matter of months? A year? Two years? A lifetime? Do you have to be born there to claim a certain ownership, to have that insider’s feel? Or by merely living there long enough have your life intervene with that of the city? How many cities can you get to know in a lifetime? How many can you claim as home? How many homes can you have scattered all over the world?
6 comments:
All good questions. I've lived in 13 cities, and only one for more than 5 years. I spent the first 13 years of my life in various cities in Florida. My adolescence/formative years were in Los Angeles. The last miserable years of high school were in Dallas. College in Florida. More roaming back and forth and finally I found home in New York, but that's not without a two year break in LA for work.
After all this roaming, I've learned that home is very much where you hang your hat (or heart, as somone once sang).
That said, I find that Florida is very much in my blood and genes; my connection to it is elemental. Florida as home, as I know to be the case now, is a no-go. I can look back on all these places wistfully, wow'd by how they've changed or stayed the same, and still feel their sites, smells and sounds in my bones.
While there are qualitative aspects to what makes a home - community, work, apprecation for what it has to offer, lifestyle, and so on - home is ultimately something you choose. That is to say, for someone who has never had a permanent physical address for more than a few years. I expect that someone who was raised in one place their whole life would have a totally different response. And yes, maybe for a lucky few, a home chooses you, but that only bolsters my theory that home is ultimately a choice. While it may feel like a city chooses you, it ultimately means you were ready to be chosen, you were open and ready. Make sense? Maybe not...I'm still not entirely sure I know what home is...
You say that home is where you hang your hat, or your heart... but the question still remains as to what it is that makes you want to pick that place, where you can hang your hat, or your heart...
You further say that home is a choice - but what is it that determines your choice?
It's interesting that only yesterday i was asked, if i had the choice, where it would be that i'd like to live... and instead of the obvious "but Yerevan, of course" i had to stop for a moment, and think... and i'm still stuck in this loop - hopefully something to come out of it soon.
For now, the lines from one of my most favorite songs related to the topic that does not quite answer my own questions will have to do:
Here is a song from the wrong side of town
Where i'm bound to the ground by the loneliest sound
And it pounds from within and is pinning me down
Here is a page from the emptiest stage
A cage or the heaviest cross ever made
A gauge of the deadliest trap ever laid
The heat and the sickliest sweet smelling sheets
That cling to the backs of my knees and my feet
Well i'm drowning in time to a desperate beat
And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home
For singing these tears
Finally i've found that I belong here
What it is that makes you want to pick that place, where you can hang your hat, or your heart...
You further say that home is a choice - but what is it that determines your choice?
....Well that's the journey, then, isn't it? The paradox, or reality anyway, is that for those without a traditional home, as was the case with me, it took as long as it did for me to be able to answer those questions. That's a bit of a non-answer, I realize, but I can't think of it any other way.
I will add that I while I can list the wonderful physical aspects of my home, what lately means more to me is my decision to make this home. That decision is not simply "here is where I want to live." It's also wrapped up in this is what I want to do, this is what I want from life, this is what i'm doing to make of life. In fact, it's less about the place then it is about what I want from life. That's what I've learned from moving around my whole life. Place is important but place invades the soul, too.
I doubt there's any real advice in what I have said. I'm merely responding because you've tapped into something that's near and dear, certainly something I've thought about for a long, long time.
Or I meant to say...soul invades the place...
Soul invades the place... i like the sound of it :)
As someone who has also lived in many, many cities, moved far too many times, often feels "homeless" despite having a roof over my head . . . well, I've tussled with these questions too.
Yes, trite though it may seem, home seems far more a state of mind to me than an address. (The former has been, for me, far less easily attainable than the former, suffice to say.) It's easier for me to ascribe 'home' to being with certain people or to a sense within myself than it is to being in a certain physical location.
If home is belonging, how do you make yourself belong?
So, I'll just defer to DP here too. Often not a bad course to take.
Post a Comment