Home is where...

The physical places of a home at best can only serve as meager placeholders for physical relationships. A collection of locations merely show where and sometimes when events happened- events between and for people, created by humans. They act like snapshots that relay a general sense of situated-ness, but leave out the motivation and cohesion of time developed relationships. Coming home to an empty city means not coming home at all.

This poses its own question of when a home becomes such. Determining that a city is ‘empty’ requires knowing when it is ‘full’ – somehow we know when we began to think of a place as our home, and what conditions were met to form that idea. For me, that time came when most of every day was filled with interactions with other people. When talking, living and being with other people occupied more time than that spent alone. Alone meant more than ‘solitariness,’ it meant the level of self-interest others retained in their interactions with you. At times, I was able to deal with others, but only on terms that benefited them in an abstract way- as a member of a class, an organization, etc. These instances never produced a feeling of home because I was interchangeable, the only motivation for my being there was an exchange towards another end. Only when I find a self contained or interpersonally motivated exchange can I find my home.

Duncan