I visited an art gallery and within it was a piece about home.
Or rather a lack of it.
Embroidered on a black wall with a matte finish, with solemn letters of half-hearted gold, home, in this literal work of art, was defined as,
‘Any place that posses important truth and traditions, especially those that we sometimes have trouble holding on to.’
And I could not help but cry.
Because that is the only definition I have ever encountered
That had made sense.
Being raised by a struggling single mum makes you quite nomadic, so no space built of bricks has ever earned the title of Home.
I have learnt that real family is scarce and people are weaved and woven to be eternally fleeting, so no steady Home can be found within anyone else.
There is no group or community that does not eventually cause my tongue to sour and my nose to turn as it begins to unravel before me and I notice its grim and grimy cracks. Sometimes, honestly upon the wall paint, and other times, deceptively deep within its splintering foundations.
Even culture will not claim me. I do not celebrate anything, nor know how to read or write my mother tongue, nor have any knowledge about my people or land. No matter how hard I try, I just cannot figure it out. So I am declared a coconut, with my melanin-rich skin almost comically contrasted with my bleached guts.
So where am I left? Where is Home? What is Home?
Nowhere.
No one.
Nothing.
Respectively.
Until the Universe arranged that fateful meeting with the definition of Home, sculpted by an artist with struggle almost literally worlds apart, but the suffering still precisely the same.
‘Any place…’
Home is not limited to boundaries nor walls. It is as malleable of a concept as any human construct ever. It is not limited to the physical plane, just as Holmes found sanctuary in his Mind Palace and the Buddha his Nirvana.
‘that possesses…’
A possession is not something that is inherently there, but rather intentionally acquired. We possess things like unnaturally shiny pearls, pin-up curls and drinking problems. To possess something is to be without it and then, after efforts, with it. One does not inherit a Home, but rather, actively creates it.
‘important…’
Importance is subjective. I firmly believe that the thickness of soy milk is the key to creating the perfect cake, whereas you just want a liquid for your cereal to swim in. You say the engine of a car is its beating, bleeding heart, whereas I just think that it’s just a box that makes the machine move.
‘truths or traditions…’
This is the core of Home. Within its walls, knowledge accumulates, and from said sacred knowledge, sprout patterns of behaviour. That is all truths and traditions are. And that, in its most naked and natural form is what home is.
‘especially those that we sometimes have trouble holding on to.’
Home, just like its inhabitants, is flimsy and in an unpleasant state of constant change. It is usually a troubling place, simply because that is when it is at its healthiest. When ones’ Home is under consistent questioning and criticism, it is prevented from devolving into a comfort zone. We have trouble holding onto Home because we have trouble holding onto ourselves. And this reliable turmoil, always present and always poorly-timed, becomes a plush and well-decorated room in all of our homes.
So, home may not be any physical structure, nor collectives, nor individuals, nor any form of identity,
But, Home is me buying myself a green juice every time I do well in a test or my unskippable routine of chugging one litre of water before bed. Home is there during shoulder presses at the gym or within moments of complete physical dissociation whilst staring out of a bus window and listening to Nicki Minaj. My beautiful Home is found whilst waxing my eyebrows every Sunday morning, and amongst carefully selected words, stuck onto random walls, by artists I will never meet.
I am my Home.
My body the bricks, my Self the individual, the gushing stream of ideas, and thoughts and emotions my community, and my consciousness my sole identity.
My Home is me.
Comentários