Each of us has our own in
situ location.
It is home. Embedded
in the deep layers of our own private thoughts, is our uncensored, primal
sense of home.
At peace, at home. Loved, at home. Tired, at home. Our true self, at home. Lonely, at home.
It is our unspoken, private context.
Odysseus, holding onto a broken raft adrift in the Greek
seas embodies the struggle of finding one’s way back home. We get lost, even playfully so ... but then ultimately yearn to get back home.
Or not. Sometimes home exists not as a memory in the past, but as a hope at the horizon where nature is spreading out her "finger tips of rose".
Before I left for Greece a couple of years ago, I awoke one
morning to a line in my head. As he walked out the door, he tore from the walls my feeling of home. My own in situ location had vanished. A black car picked me up from a home that no longer existed.
As I sailed across the Greek Seas, I carried a copy of
Cavafy’s poem, Ithaka, with me because it was the journey I longed for…and not the return. One of my favorite parts is this:
"Ithaka gave you the
marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now."
I kept Cavafy’s poem close to me, while working on Ikaria
Island and also gathering research for my book. I was amazed how
some people built their homes on remote corners of the island, where roads
wash out in muddy rains. Or, centuries ago, when homes were carved into rock formations - camouflage against pirates. One cold winter day I gathered wood in
a forest with an old farmer, and burned that wood amongst the secrets of his
hidden, little home.
As I kept traveling, I questioned my own sense of home. What
it meant. Where it was. Who lived there. If it even existed in space
or time anymore. Or, if it had broken up into fragments that were now scattered in different places, memories and desires.
Then, last night I heard Jason Isbell play live at Lincoln
Center in NYC and one line in his song, “Cover Me Up”, defined so poignantly and beautifully what home can mean:
“…home was a dream,
one I'd never seen till you came along”.
[* Listen to Jason Isbells' "Cover Me Up" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdwnGG29Upw]
