LJ Idol: Open Topic (Home)
There is wind and white clumps of clouds. There is patchy grass, growing in clusters; the earth under and in between is solid, but damp and rich. Far off, I see thick trunks of trees frothy with the high spring green and heavy with pollen, like acne. The sun slashes everything yellow and white and strings to heaven steal my vision when the clouds lean the wrong way. From my angle, with my back in the grass and my head to his chest, I can barely perceive the swaying path around the field. A stone's throw from there is a classy iron fence, and beyond that the sonorous rumble of city -- which I do not hear.
"I can't decide if that's a good sound or a bad sound," he says as his fingers swim absent-mindedly through my hair.
"What?" I reply, senses numbed by sky and sun. A breeze hits me and goosebumps swell; it is cool enough to need each other here, and we are both aware of the excuse.
"That sound. The city sound."
I hear it now. We quietly discuss it, and decide it must be a comforting noise for us city people.
It is borne from humanity, but an entirely godlike sound. It is ether and nether, bowels of earth and space wind. From it, swelling cones of our own decay burst in powder and fume and seek to wrench the sky away, but somehow we are left with clarity for the moment. It is not my place to judge, I decide, but to recognize my dependence on the sound as a source of comfort. We are habituated to those things that we grow up with, that we grow into ourselves with; and the rumble I hear now in this early evening daydream has such a history with me.
These are things I have learned to define "home" by. The ache, I have discovered, moves through possession and labels, and not the foundation of the attachment; therefore, we must seek to cling to those things which are the reason for our physical attachments. "Home is where the heart is," as they say; but they forget that some heart lies in those things that must be left behind, and whether or not to seek to remove their importance is an ache in itself. I ache for my old room: the grey smash of blue carpet that no longer exists, the biggish dresser that held too much, the relative largeness of the space, the way my windchime caught the light and never the wind. I ache for my old kitchen, my old neighborhood, my old bus routes and grocery store and library. They are irreplacable in their own way, and minute shavings of my heart are stuck to them until antiquity.
But every city has a rumble, and every bedroom has a bed; and my family is my family, and my friends are my friends.
And even lying in a field in Pittsburgh 250 miles away could feel like a field back in DC, with the right person to nuzzle.
When my family moved in April, I threw away half my things. When I left for Pittsburgh in August, I still had two boxes from the April move unopened. When I came back last week from school, my boxes filled the room and I suddenly realized that, with the exception of my toy bird collection, I didn't want anything that was left in this place. It's all extra. It's all filth. If I can live for eight months without it, why does it exist? If I can keep memories in my head and in the faces of the people I love, why cling to these objects?
I have a room half the size of my old one, with one quarter of the stuff. And it is still too much, now that I move so often. Clutter in every dimension.
We are adrift, for the moment, listening to the city roar as we lie suspended on the spring grass. There is silk between our hands when the wind blows, and the sun in our eyes is daylight unending. There is a kiss of water in the ground that makes me spread my jacket beneath me. He is engulfing, the boy I share silk and city rumbles with, and reminds me why I will always be home, regardless of where I am or what I have.
"I can't decide if that's a good sound or a bad sound," he says as his fingers swim absent-mindedly through my hair.
"What?" I reply, senses numbed by sky and sun. A breeze hits me and goosebumps swell; it is cool enough to need each other here, and we are both aware of the excuse.
"That sound. The city sound."
I hear it now. We quietly discuss it, and decide it must be a comforting noise for us city people.
It is borne from humanity, but an entirely godlike sound. It is ether and nether, bowels of earth and space wind. From it, swelling cones of our own decay burst in powder and fume and seek to wrench the sky away, but somehow we are left with clarity for the moment. It is not my place to judge, I decide, but to recognize my dependence on the sound as a source of comfort. We are habituated to those things that we grow up with, that we grow into ourselves with; and the rumble I hear now in this early evening daydream has such a history with me.
These are things I have learned to define "home" by. The ache, I have discovered, moves through possession and labels, and not the foundation of the attachment; therefore, we must seek to cling to those things which are the reason for our physical attachments. "Home is where the heart is," as they say; but they forget that some heart lies in those things that must be left behind, and whether or not to seek to remove their importance is an ache in itself. I ache for my old room: the grey smash of blue carpet that no longer exists, the biggish dresser that held too much, the relative largeness of the space, the way my windchime caught the light and never the wind. I ache for my old kitchen, my old neighborhood, my old bus routes and grocery store and library. They are irreplacable in their own way, and minute shavings of my heart are stuck to them until antiquity.
But every city has a rumble, and every bedroom has a bed; and my family is my family, and my friends are my friends.
And even lying in a field in Pittsburgh 250 miles away could feel like a field back in DC, with the right person to nuzzle.
When my family moved in April, I threw away half my things. When I left for Pittsburgh in August, I still had two boxes from the April move unopened. When I came back last week from school, my boxes filled the room and I suddenly realized that, with the exception of my toy bird collection, I didn't want anything that was left in this place. It's all extra. It's all filth. If I can live for eight months without it, why does it exist? If I can keep memories in my head and in the faces of the people I love, why cling to these objects?
I have a room half the size of my old one, with one quarter of the stuff. And it is still too much, now that I move so often. Clutter in every dimension.
We are adrift, for the moment, listening to the city roar as we lie suspended on the spring grass. There is silk between our hands when the wind blows, and the sun in our eyes is daylight unending. There is a kiss of water in the ground that makes me spread my jacket beneath me. He is engulfing, the boy I share silk and city rumbles with, and reminds me why I will always be home, regardless of where I am or what I have.