WRITERS’ BLOC JOURNAL
HOME
Editor’s Note Dear Reader,
Welcome to the first journal of the year!
This has been the first submission for a lot of the writers in this term’s journal, and I have to say the standard is extremely high. I loved reading everyone’s interpretations of the theme, and seeing the vast variety of writing you all had to offer. I really enjoyed the first editing session of the year and hope to continue doing them each month.
I look forward to creating more journals and working with such amazing writers if this is the standard Writers’ Bloc is producing.
Emily
Contents Domus by Clara Jeggo-Morate
Home(sickness) by Alicia Johnson-Husbands
Nazm by Mehar Anaokar
Home of Memories by Lucy Burgess
Chloe by Lauren Fry
Feels like home by Amy Larsen
Migrations by Elri Vaughan
Come Home by Daniella Southin
Snapshots of la vie quotidienne by Anna Walthew
Home Town by Merel Waeyaert
The view from Marton Moss by Rob Haslem
Autumn at Home by Emily Sumpter
The Scenic Route by Emma Fletcher
to Remes by Alice Doig
Home by Ahmad al-Satati
In Which Everyone’s Holiday Was Fine, Thank You by Mikey Barnes
Cromer by Frankie Rhodes
What does it mean to feel at home? - Some thoughts by Hannes Boos
Domus by Clara Jeggo-Morate I close my eyes,
to your feet falling towards me,
On toasted leaves and warm earth.
Your letters warm my naked skin like the September sun.
What was once yours, became mine when the sun left us behind,
I miss you like the trees miss their emeralds.
All of you wrapped in the veil of summer,
Wearing your cloak of morning mist,
You seeped into my breath like fall from summer.
Loss has taught us stoicism and longing for love,
I am a univira and I have found my Marc Antony,
Come the snow, may you fall into my heart.
Home(sickness) by Alicia Johnson-Husbands This sudden fog
envelops my mind,
clouds my vision,
removes my thoughts from my head. I can
see my feet moving,
hear my voice speaking,
but my eyes are craving a different image,
my lungs desperate for a different air.
The shiny summer haze
has lifted,
and now I see nothing
except these ugly flats from my window,
framed by curtains that aren’t my own
inside four walls that don’t feel like home,
with a bed on the wrong
side of the room.
Soap of the wrong scent runs across
my palms, scattered by
a foreign tasting water,
in a rented bathroom, in a rented flat,
absent of the smiles I’ve known
for the past nineteen years.
Steam fills the room, and I cry
to the beating of the water
against the shower tray.
In the kitchen,
there’s no mum cooking dinner,
there’s no sister baking cakes,
there’s no dad trekking mud all over the floor.
I eat at the breakfast bar,
alone,
pushing the worms in my stomach down,
back into the soil from whence they came.
My neighbours’ faces are replaced with
countless strangers,
many of whom I never see twice.
Early morning cat cries
are replaced with late night drunken whooping.
Even my own voice
fades away
in this lonely place.
Sadness makes my bones heavy;
illness makes my head weary.
I let the water
drip, drip, drip, from my eyes.
I let the ink
blur on the page,
knowing that one day,
I will go home.
Nazm by Mehar Anaokar It’s the crack of dawn, an early knock,
the door left agape at the knock
of a Dream. The threshold, a single step, the block
of wood, a statement. Declaration-
the land past this border is my home.
I see my guests coming in. They take their shoes off
out of respect as they enter. Their feet
are washed, their hands are clean, they take
the seats near me. I say nothing.
There are rotis burning for us on the coal grills.
They have brought sugar
from this past harvest, an offer,
a gift wrapped in muslin.
The house was empty
when I opened my eyes. The embers were burning
when I held my hand to the coal. My lips still sticky
sweet from the sugar, the treat, the token
of peace. Perhaps the memory
was a wish, a reverie. It could be
a Dream. A Dream,
perhaps. I have heard
there were gunshots at the threshold
last night. I have heard Dreams
were murdered at the border
last night.
Home of Memories by Lucy Burgess Peter popped the kettle on again, before returning to his armchair where he plonked down and rested his eyes on the wall of the living room. Photos of his smiling grandchildren stared down at him. The only sounds that had broken the silence today were the bubbling kettle and his own blubbering; preferring the sound of the former, he’d kept getting up to go to the kitchen to refill the kettle over and over.
They say home is where the heart is; in which case his new home was the care facility that his wife, Nancy, had been in for several days now. They’d been married for over sixty years, and in all that time they had rarely spent a night apart. Until now. That said, nights with his wife had been terrible recently: Nancy hadn’t showered in weeks and she’d been having accidents in the bed. He was too old and weak to be stripping the covers and scrubbing away at the carpet, whilst his wife stood there asking ‘What are you doing?’ every ten minutes.
‘I’m bloody cleaning up after you, aren’t I,’ he would yell at her, red-faced and teary-eyed.
His anger had drained away when they drove his wife off to the home. He couldn’t hide it any longer: he had sat in his chair and wept. ‘She’ll be back before you know it, don’t worry,’ one of the nurses had said, with a smile as sweet as tinned peaches. But he did know it, and his upset stomach knew it, and his insomnia knew it. That’s the thing about not having dementia: you felt the full weight of every second ticking by, without the relief of forgetting.
Dementia means gradually losing your loved one, while still having to watch her body lumber around the house. It means spending your days haunted by a fleshy ghost made of unwashed hair and sagging skin, who has forgotten how to eat, and how to read, and how to manage their own untameable body. In Nancy’s case, it began with her repeating herself enough that it was noticeable to others. Gradually she started struggling to remember much of what she had done last week, and wouldn’t do well on a quiz about yesterday either. The worryingly vacant expression that occasionally crept onto her face became more and more familiar to
her family, until they’d almost forgotten what she’d looked like when there was a healthy mind behind those pale eyes. The state of her teeth began to put everyone else’s on edge, and she became so unkempt that you’d question whether you could even bring yourself to pay someone else to wash her.
The kettle finished boiling, the sound fading into a silence that flooded the room and left Peter drowning. He was about to go to the kettle again when his phone started buzzing violently on the little oak table next to him. His son was calling, so he answered.
‘Hello, George.’
‘Hi, Dad. How’s it going?’
‘Yeah well, you know,’ he said, trying not to get choked up, ‘I just miss her. I just want her at home with me, like.’
‘Of course, Dad. But she needs some care at the moment, and you’re really not coping.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re not controlling your anger; you keep shouting at her, and it’s not helping her at the moment, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘She’ll be back soon, and then you need to make more effort to look after her without getting cross with her.’
‘I know.’
‘Good. So, how’s your new scooter been? Is the speed all right? And the control?’
Once he’d reassured George that he was doing just fine, and George had hung up the phone to ‘get back to cooking the Sunday Roast’, Peter shuffled into the kitchen and chucked some sliced bread in the toaster. He zapped a bowl of tomato soup in the microwave until it came out steaming and starting to bubble. He rescued the toast, spread butter on it, and sliced it up into soldiers. Having smothered their heads in the blood-red soup, the soldiers were soggy by the time they reached his mouth. He managed several mouthfuls before he was crying too hard to carry on. Well, it was an improvement on yesterday.
Chucking his crumpled tissues and his leftover food in the bin, Peter returned to the living room and bent his knees slowly to
pick up the television remote from the sofa. He found the snooker channel, and returning to his armchair, tried to get into the game that was being played out in front of him. By eight o’clock, it was dark outside, so he switched the television and downstairs lights off, and trudged up the stairs to bed. Once he was in his pyjamas, he washed his face and popped his dentures into a glass of fizzing, blue water, and then carried the glass to his bedside table, trying to avoid stepping on the stains on the carpet. Unable to bear the sight of his being all alone in the bedroom, he flicked off the lamp on the bedside table, and stared up into the darkness.
He wondered if Nancy was thinking of him. He prayed that she was thinking of something; that she wasn’t just an empty vessel floating on a bed of plain white sheets, barely aware of her own existence. His sweet Nancy, the girl who had waited for him while he was away with the army; the girl who married him when he got back; the woman who bought a house with him and gave him children and stayed by his side all through the years. Without her, his home was just an assorted mix of walls, floors, and ceilings.
Peter awoke in the morning light, to the sound of his phone buzzing. It was George again.
‘Hello, George.’
‘Hi, Dad. God, you sound groggy – have you only just woken up? It’s half past nine.’
‘Yeah… I guess I needed the sleep.’
‘Well, I have some good news for you. I’ve just been up at the home, and they said Mum can come home today. I’m bringing her back at lunch time; so hurry up and get the house all tidy for her, and tidy yourself up too, all right?’
‘Oh, thank God! Thanks, son. That’s such a relief, you know.’
‘All right, Dad. It’s good to hear you sounding happy. I’ll see you soon. Bye, Dad.’
‘Bye, George.’
Peter swung his legs off the side of the bed and stood up grinning. He whistled in the shower and danced into his favourite jumper and trousers. In the kitchen, he cooked himself scrambled eggs on toast, of which he ate every crumb. He moved over to the living room and tried to pass the time watching the morning news,
but he was too excited to keep his attention on the stories. The clock’s hands crawled by, and Peter cursed Time for playing wicked games with him.
Finally, the sweet music of the doorbell echoed through the hallway. Peter moved so fast that his feet barely touched the carpet. He opened the door, and Nancy was right there in front of him, and the feeling that flooded over him then reminded him of the day he watched her walk down the aisle towards him, glowing in the white wedding dress that her three sisters had so joyfully helped her pick out.
‘Nancy,’ he sobbed, wrapping her in his arms, ‘I’m sorry, dear. I love you so much.’
Her hair was clean and bouncy again, and she smelled of roses.
‘Well, isn’t that nice. See, George? Your Dad is still my sweetheart. And you’re my little boy.’
‘Yes, all right Mum,’ said George with a smile, ‘Come on, get through the door at least.’
‘Cheeky! You’ll get a smacked bottom in a minute, you will.’
‘Oh no I won’t. Come on.’
‘Oh yes you will.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Peter, holding Nancy’s hand and guiding her into her armchair in the living room. Once she was comfortable, he went into the kitchen to fetch mugs down from the cupboard, and to make them all tea. George had gone upstairs to lay Nancy’s bags on the bed; a minute later he came down into the kitchen and gave his dad’s shoulders a squeeze.
‘Let me get the tea, Dad. You go in and sit with Mum.’
Leaving his son to add milk and sugar to the darkening brews, Peter returned to his armchair, and beamed at Nancy. She smiled back at him, while bouncing her knee to a rhythm that only she could hear.
‘It’s very nice to have you back, my dear,’ he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
Nancy gave a bemused laugh, her eyebrows raised as she peered at her husband.
‘What do you mean, to have me back? I never left.’
Chloe by Lauren Fry Height used to be our only common thread,
my growth spurts chasing my sister’s
as we sprinted through childhood.
I always lagged behind,
thinking that I would never catch up,
to her intelligence, her confidence, her aura.
(When she talks, it is impossible not to crack a smile.)
If only I could find a shortcut.
I never did.
I am a carbon copy of my dad,
with my mother’s weighty dark hair.
She is a mirror image of my dad too,
and yet, there is so much difference between us.
Both genetic concoctions of our parents
mixed with different recipes
in different pots
with different utensils.
An entire spice rack of emotions separates us.
I love hard, on the ground before I even realise I’ve fallen.
She loves infrequently, sparingly; a guard up.
An ocean of polarity stretches between us.
The stage is her home.
A costume, a script and a song: the ingredients for her ideal life.
The stage haunts me:
Memories flung at me,
from a time before the trembling and heavy breathing and sweaty palms.
I flourished best in the garden of academia;
she was an extra-curricular activity in herself.
She was unhappy with her image, so she changed it;
I am unhappy with my image, but I have learnt to accept it.
And yet commonality crosses that vast ocean (mirrored in our blue eyes).
Humour knocks at both doors of our mind
and words tumble out in sync
like they are working tirelessly in tandem.
University has united our interests.
A marriage of alcohol, work and socialising,
all chronicled in conversations lasting all day,
interspersed with our busy lives.
Our words always find a way back.
My sister is my home.
Height is no longer all that we share.
Feels like home by Amy Larsen Home is happiness, hope and healing.
It is the voice that lifts you when you are sinking,
And the reason you do not drown.
It is infinite love and a reason to live.
Home is a smell and a song.
It is the memory that warms your mind,
And the meal that soothes your stomach.
Home will hug you,
And hold you,
And hear every worry that weighs on your heart.
It is a place, a person, a feeling.
Home is safety and it is yours.
Migrations by Elri Vaughan There are swallows in the summer.
They come from far away, reminding me that the sun is returning.
Nestled in the roof-eaves, chirping,
beetle-black wings and cream bibs and red faces. In the evening
they whizz like spitballs across the soft, dewy grass,
snatching insects with daring grace.
They leave when it gets colder.
They will return.
They always do.
Monarch butterflies
are champion travellers.
In the middle of their crossing of Lake Superior,
they stop going south and go five miles west
before continuing on their original course.
We eventually discovered that, a hundred million years ago,
there was a mountain there
and their collective memory compels them to go around it still.
A salmon
will defy rivers
and waterfalls
and hungry bears
just to return to the place it knows it belongs.
The caribou of the north and the wildebeest of the savannah
track the greatest distances on Earth across the plains
in search of sanctuary.
Migrations
are journeys to the places written within our DNA
that remind us
we are home there.
You used to give really good hugs.
Last night, I lay awake in the dark
and cried for your arms around me. 
Come Home by Daniella Southin
Content warning: mental health issues Guide you home, my trembling hand
grasped your wrist,
Your wantless skin
pinched by my fingertips.
Tighter, firmer my hold grew,
Wanting you nearer, wanting
you here.
Fuelled by aection, ignited
by separation,
Longer and longer, life
engulfed by desperation.
Firm you remained,
rigid and stern.
Then closer I came -
Tried, but thwarted by fate
so alone I stayed.
At home I mellowed -
Repair and reglue.
They say time is a healer
but medication helps too.
Chemicals balanced,
At last I've let go,
With the scars to show
together we grow.
together we grow.
Snapshots of la vie quotidienne by Anna Walthew Content warning: chronic illness While I'm sleeping, he claws open my door.
Light seeps in to illuminate a dark shadow,
A meowing siren.
What's the emergency?
He leads me to the kitchen and I understand.
We haven't fed him.
Let's solve this crime in the morning I say,
His eyes plead, but I won't give in.
I shut the door and hope that he doesn’t return.
Three hours later I break the surface of my dreams
And stumble into the kitchen.
My parents provided the cat with a feast;
The emergency is solved for another day!
But we always have more to talk about.
Like how the NHS wants to kill my sister.
Its bureaucracy shoves a blade in our hearts
When it doesn't deem her worthy of an appointment
Even though I hear her throwing up
Every single day.
Talking about chronic illness has become a condiment
That we can’t eat breakfast without.
She shuffles into the kitchen,
Big brown eyes, rumpled eyebrows and a fluffy dressing gown;
It's 11am and she has arrived.
She's probably here to put the cat in a headlock,
But we all rush to hug her,
Holding her a bit too long and too tight.
She's can’t do anything today again,
But hopefully we can go on our habitual walk.
We offer her a bouquet of activities
But she politely rejects the gesture.
She can't enjoy the flowers
So there was no point in picking them.
I'm away from them now,
With barely any time to call.
I manage to get out of my commitments long enough
To call them on the way to Aldi.
It's a year since your sister had sepsis they say
We're going to see the moon in Gloucester cathedral
To celebrate her being alive.
I say something about how nice that sounds.
Capturing the moon and stopping its orbit
Is a strange way to celebrate life, I think.
But not as strange as the fact
That home continues without me.
Home Town by Merel Waeyaert You see a grey river
with grey stone banks cradling grey water
and grey bridges encasing the whole
under grey rainy skies
Walk along, sink in, stretch out – you cannot
strain as far as this river, ever
coiled in, encircling, doubling
back into a city it forever
escapes from
you are only footsteps, and hands curled in pockets
are lulling and lapping
the stones the waves
an ebb and flow of grains of peace.  
The view from Marton Moss by Rob Haslem
Did you hear that come Brexit, they’ll be shipping rubbish up from down south?
They’ve earmarked sites round our way for shite the Shires want chucking out-
Space is needed apparently, for when our deal with the Swedish incinerators packs in,
‘cause we all know that’s Cuadrilla’s plan really, turning Lancashire into a dirty sink hole by Christmas.
Mirror also reckons record levels of cocaine were found in water taken from the Thames in London.
Which is funny, innit? Cause whilst they’re shoving crap up their noses, we’ll be covering ours up from the stench.
Get this Andy, a ‘Youthquake’, is forecast to shake next election, I wonder maybe, we can only hope, anything other than this…
Oh flipping heck, Cathy can you pass us the broom from hallway a second? The window’s fallen from its sill.
Autumn at Home by Emily Sumpter Russet rustles and crimson crackles
On a dead, concrete road.
My father, great tree,
And I, his seed. The leaves we walk on
Could be his, for all I know.
Rain and plant matter form a paste
And the path to home bends left:
My tiny boots adhere to both.
My father, great tree, puts my hand in his
For safekeeping.
Our steps are fuelled by foliage –
My boundless giggles triggering his
As, crunch by crunch, our journey shortens.
Such pride, in autumn hues, engulfs me
When I make him laugh!
Thus have we walked through montages
Of calendars shedding their days.
Now, bigger boots shelter my feet
And other hands have
Clamoured to claim mine.
But fathers’ hands and family trees
Grip tightest. Every autumn,
When the dead roads grow lush carpets,
I wander back to see home decked
With chestnuts, yellows, reds.
For though those leaves prompt time to pass,
We’ll walk through them, eternal.
The Scenic Route by Emma Fletcher She spends the night at the bottom of a bottle.
Curled up in the base. Haloed. Reaching up the neck,
chipped acrylics clawing at the glass as dark
music pours over her.
Overflowing, overfilling, she drowns in it.
Like a gull with wings weighed down with slick,
she flails in the dregs.
The bottle tips.
Out she spills, into the morning.
Pearls of dew beading her eyes
as she sits and leaks, soaked up by an unhailed taxi.
“Where to?”
“Home.”
A word she once used for the quiet house in the small town
now stands for the new address she can’t remember.
Dawn burns across the unknown city. She watches
rosy fingers trace strange shapes in strange shops on strange streets.
She sees, she soars, she breathes.
The taxi lightens her purse almost as much
as it lightens her soul.
to Remes by Alice Doig and did it hurt when black leather walked past
feet forward pace fast no time to look back
no thought or sense that
maybe you weren’t OK and
maybe you shouldn’t have stayed on the
cold hard rock floor
pavement footpath
your bed your bath your home you’re homeless.
Home by Ahmad al-Satati You ask me if I miss my home. My home, like anyone’s home, is prone to being missed. It’s nice, spacious, full of jasmine everywhere. When you open the window in the morning, hundreds of different birdsongs please your ear. The breeze coming from the east, the flowers in the garden give you a wide smile. Your neighbours greet you cheerfully, chattering for half an hour on the window. However, let me tell you that I’m not allowed to miss this home. I supress the idea that I’m eager to miss home. When I finally have the courage to miss it, an army of nightmares invade me in my sleep. Hundreds of frightful solders surround me, grab my face, and bring me back to that horrible day when they arrested me, covered my eyes and brought me to deepest point in the hill. My home is marvellous, or maybe it was. But am I brave enough to shout loudly: “I miss the nice food of my mom”? Missing suggests somehow, I will return. The tanks are destroying everything, the rockets transform our nest into wreckage, the bombs cannot be described. I would love to say that I missed my old friends with whom I used to play football with bottles of plastic on the streets. I confess that I’m afraid to face that uncountable numbers of them are either arrested, dead, or nowhere. Don’t ask me if I miss my home, when my home is Syria.
In Which Everyone’s Holiday Was Fine, Thank You by Mikey Barnes Content warning: medical anxiety, blood, and body horror crumpled blankets and strangely lucid dreams piled in the corner of your childhood bedroom. home is where the shower runs warm and the oven burns gas and you agree to eat eggs so that nobody will be angry with you. your sister is a black belt now. your father will no longer drink at the dinner table. your mother remains smooth stone that will never grind to sand. the town centre is exactly where you left it. your nose starts bleeding on the third floor of Waterstones and suddenly you are back to hacking up your lungs for the stain of broken bones, wondering why your hypochondria is so synonymous with home. you tell yourself that you prefer continuity over change, then realise this body is the only constant you have ever known and it petrifies you in its ability to remain the same. this body that scares you shitless with every stab and ache. you take off your chlorine-stained binder for the day, imagining your ribs stitching themselves back together beneath the skin. everyone is equally hideous on the inside, right? your insides terrify you because you cannot control them. your insides are a minefield. your insides are Flanders in bloom. your insides are the reason you fainted in your ex’s parents’ bathroom. you have been betrayed by your body too many times to leave it to its own devices.
you’re cutting your hair in the sink again. you’re waiting for the doctor to call you. this place, this body, this bedroom – they never change no matter how much growing up you do. and still. this house loves you. this safe loves you. this consistent loves you. but at what cost? you make the bed. you take the shower. you poke at your ribcage underneath the spray and wait for the train to rattle you home again.
Cromer by Frankie Rhodes How could I describe to you, this place beside the sea,
where land blends into water just as milk dissolves in tea.
The quiet of the morning as the town begins to stir,
and coee roasters open up their windows to the world.
How could I describe to you, the taste of morning brunch,
of runny yellow yolks that spill on slabs of bread that crunch.
The family by the window who take soya milk for three,
the old man in the corner who just likes to sit and be.
How could I articulate the stillness of the air,
within the dusty book-shops lined with fairytales to share
while outside tourists sprawl with laps of salty cod and chips,
their sea-exhausted dogs just sane enough to lick their lips.
How could I express to you the sand beneath your feet,
or the church that stands to greet you round the bend of every street.
The steps that slowly stagger down towards the fishing zone,
where life is slow and steady, and you're never far from home.
How could I describe to you this place that I conceive,
and how could I express to you how hard it is to leave.
What does it mean to feel at home? - Some thoughts by Hannes Boos I spent the biggest part of my childhood in a yellow house in a medium-sized town in Switzerland. In our small garden there was a tree which was so big that no other plants could grow nearby, because they were robbed of their water. When it was summer, our family used to dine under the tree's shadow, enjoying the cold it gave after a long day of heat. Afterwards, me and sister went out to play with the other children in the streets and alleys of our neighborhood; laughing, crying, shouting and running, never caring about the everlasting danger of a fast death in the form of passing cars.
I always thought I would be terribly sad when we would move out. I always thought I would cry like I a baby when I had to leave my house, my garden and, most of all, my bedroom; with the wooden closet which I inherited from my grandparents, my big shelves with my innumerable books, and the bunk bed I slept in every night. I always thought that I would sob and refuse to leave, when I never could eat with my mother and sister again in our small, shady dining room; when we would never watch "The Simpsons" again, as a family in the living room.
And yet, when we finally moved out a few years ago, not one single tear left my eyes. But why? Was I already too old then to be sad about losing my home? Did I really lose my home? Is home a place? Was the house I lived in my home?
What is a house? Where does a river begin, and where does it end? If you stand at the edge of a lake and watch the water pass by and flow into a stream, is it possible for you to say with certainty, to which a particular group of drops belong; the lake where it came from, or the stream where it is going to? Is there even a lake? And is there a stream? Or do they just exist as concept in our minds, created to bring order into a world, where there would be no such thing otherwise? One might even be tempted to ask: If no one observes it, is there a world at all?
In all probability, the answer appears to be yes. But it is a very strange place, this universe without an observer. There is no up and no down in it, no left or right, no hot or cold, and no green or yellow. Everything loses its edges, borders soften up, what once appeared to be separated becomes one, black and white melt together, even the concept of matter itself becomes questionable,
until there seems to be only one homogenous block left, something very much outside the possible realm of human imagination; the Cartesian extended substance, the Schopenhauerian Will, the infamous Kantian thing-in-itself.
How dierent is such a world to the one we live in; to our earth full of rivers and streams, mountains and vales, rocks and trees, animals and people. Being humans and capable of touching them, feeling them, watching them over time; we seem to help these things into existence by giving them a name, putting them in categories, distinguishing them from others, referring to them in our everyday interaction. Our ability to memorize is an inevitable part of this process: we do not only receive information from an external object, but we also cast our memory of it back to the object itself, thus really creating it as a thing that remains the same over time; a necessity for us to make meaning of the world.
For it is like this that the world presents itself to us most of the time; as meaningful, as something intuitively understandable, at least to a certain degree. It is the perspective of someone living inside the world and experiencing it, as a subject amongst other subjects. As humans, i.e. animals with a language, we all have some kind of shared conceptions of what might be called a mountain, a house or a river. If we did not, we could not have meaningful conversations with each other. And yet, our understanding of the things around us seems not to be exhausted in the commonplaces of our language. We each have a personal access to the world as well, based on our being as an individual with particular experiences and memories.
Imagine yourself walking with a friend from another county through your home town. You and him will each have about the same visual perceptions, and yet walk through two dierent cities. Where he sees an old lawn outside a schoolhouse, you will hear the screams of your childhood friends playing football on the everlasting afternoons of the summer; where he calmly passes a small house with a big garden, you will pay attention to the windows on the ground floor, subconsciously waiting to see the angry old woman who used to scream at the boys on the streets and their loud games; where he turns his nose up at an unkempt garden in front of an abandoned scale, you will only think of the girl who blessed you there with your first kiss.
In one way or another, we all have been in similar positions like this hypothetical friend; namely when the world shows itself
towards you in its more indifferent, more original, manner. For example, try to remember the first time you met your old school class: All you saw was a bunch of boys and girls, some blond, some dark-haired, some tall, and some small; try to remember the difficulty you had learning their names, even holding them apart. It is not easy to mentally connect those strangers with your classmates they became to be, and as which you think of them now; the skinny boy in his oversized jumper who grew on you as your later best friend, the girl with dark curls who turned into your secret crush, the big boy whom you gradually learnt to detest. Or pay attention to what happens every time you learn a new card games: First, the cards will all look about the same to you, and you are indifferent about their functions; but later, after you finally played few sessions, each of them will appear to you in its own original way, connected with a feeling of joy or disappointment, depending on their value in the game which you start to project back in them from your memory of past games. Nothing in the physical structure and thus in their visual appearance of the cards has changed, and yet, there was a shift in the way they represented themselves to you: Although you probably have not been aware of it, you catched a tiny glimpse of the underlying indifference of the world, before it was hidden again under the surface of your everyday life.
The cases I just described are interesting, yet, in a way, harmless. But there are others, scarier ones; not entirely similar in their structure, for sure, but nonetheless related to the ones above. I think, like I already indicated, that we are normally able to make some sense of our life. It appears to us as somewhat meaningful; we get lost in routine, we do not think about the riddles and abysses of our existences. And yet, in every human life there appear to be some moments when the peaceful mirror gets shattered, and nature shows herself in her truer shape; as the absence of purpose, as a movement without a goal, as a world beyond our understanding. Two of the most fundamental ways this can happen, are love and death. We all know it: When a beloved person dies, or when our love for another human being is not returned, life stops making sense to us. We do not understand how the universe can be so cruel and go on with its existence, how the sun dares to mock us by continuing to rise as if nothing happened, as if the world has not just collapsed; because for us, it did. We also become aware of what deep inside us is already present, that we all are going to die ourselves; that our time on earth
is finite. The feeling we have, when we realize this, can be called existential angst.
And maybe this is what home really is, the opposite to angst. Home is meaning, home is to feel protected, home is warmth, home is where you do not have to be afraid. In German, we have a particular word for the feeling I connect with home: Geborgenheit. Geborgenheit is the feeling we had, when we lay in the arms of our mother after we got bullied at school; Geborgenheit is what Bilbo felt back in his Hobbit Hole after his adventure in the Lonely Mountain; Geborgenheit means to find comfort in your own bed watching your favorite movie after an emotionally challenging day. But if Geborgenheit is what you feel at home, is home then a place after all? It can be, but maybe it does not have to be. Home seems to have a spatial dimension, it is something outside you, but with a special relationship to you: Home can be a place, a person, a book, a movie, a song or a dish. Home is where you find protection and consolation from a chaotic world; like the people of the Stone Age did back in their cave, sitting around the warm fire, while a demonic thunderstorm raged outside.
And, to go back to the beginning, this also might be the reason why I did not cry when I moved out from my house. Because I did not play with the neighboring kids outside anymore, because I stopped to dine with my mother that often, because I spent most of time either with friends or alone, because I grew older, because I grew apart from my family; because I did not feel protected there anymore; because, while I lived there, it has already stopped being my house. Whatever I once had, I had lost it already. I was not a child anymore.
And maybe, this might also belong to the very concept of home; its temporal (and modal) dimension. Home seems to be something you return to, somewhere you can go back to; except time is not reversible and, thus, a return is not possible. Home is a place in your childhood; a childhood you actually might never had; a childhood nobody had. Or, in a more Freudian mindset, your concept of home could also have an origin even older than this, older than your earliest memories; maybe it derives from the warmth you felt in your mother's womb, feeling safe and united in a sense you might never experience again.
Home is something eternally lost; and something you might lose even more as you grow up, becoming a part of the chaos of the
outside world. Home is something we seek and desire, but hardly ever fully reach, and probably never for a long time. Home –like love– is an idea, an ideal, a promise always only half fulfilled; and it might be our never-ending search for it, our tireless trying, that makes us such sad yet beautiful animals.
Or maybe, just maybe, those are just the words of a pessimist; of someone who has not found his home (yet).