Home is where the...er...your stuff is?

Muse of the day: Pabst, Lost locations, babies


For years now I have been riddled by the meaning of the word home. On one end this word may represent the place that you grew up, yet on the other end, I know many who have grown accustomed to refering to the place which they currently reside as home. When I'm not thinking about it too hard, I am of the later catagory.Though, at times like the present, I am once again begging the question: Where is home?

Today is day 2 of my first sojourn of the year--if you can call it that--to the place of my birth and schooling, etc...Little Rock, Arkansas. While on previous occasions this has always been a celebration of sorts, this time around something is very different. Well, many things. To begin with: in previous visits back "home" I was always careful to give my old friends the 'heads up', and in turn have someone waiting for me at the airport, and from that point on the following days were filled with friends and drinks and picking up where I had left off...This is not so this time around. This time around, I arrived at the airport and sat outside for half of an hour waiting for my father to pick me up and drop me off at my mother's house, where I was to wait until she got done with church. Needless to say, this Tuesday proper, I spoke with only my father in person. Not that it's a bad thing...just strange.
At around 10:30 my mother arrived at the house and we chit-chatted for about an hour, until she went to bed. This was my homecoming, and also the cause for a confusing bout of self-reflection.

Now while the above is certainly nothing to 'write home about' (haha) I feel that it was indeed the very essence of lackluster, and therefore worth noting. Today, was especially more of the same, only with many more twists of oddness...In the interest of keeping readers I will just hit a few highlights and leave the rest to the imagination...Curtain up at 7:50 a.m. at which time I was awakened by my mother for the first time in several years. This was actually pleasent, and as a reward for the early rousing I was granted access to her car for the day. After driving her to work and coming back home, coffee and smokes in posession, I proceeded to bask in the satelite television for serveral hours. While it was relaxing enough, I found myself dropping all of the cycnicysm that I had accumulated over the past few months (i.e.-"How can one glue themselves to the tube and watch advertisement after advertisement and feel good about it?" and so on...). This lengthy stint prompted the consumption of breakfast and a couple of beers before I was finally ready to take a nap, which was already on the agenda. This was no problem; eventually I was awake, showered, and ready to make use of the borrowed wheels before it was time to go back downtown to pick up mom. Over the course of my relaxing drive I decided that the best thing to do was to visit the old spots. But...Saver's Thrift Store; closed. University Mall; a freshly demolished hole. Lorenzen's Bookshop; available for lease...The list continues. Though one good thing did come of the excursion: a phone call from an old friend with a new baby. Granted, I have know about the baby and been meaning to come down to see her, this was to be the first formal opportunity to do so, and thus the invitation was gladly accepted.
I returned home, mildly dejected, and killed the rest of the afternoon with popsicles and tv shows about ghost-hunters, before it was time to get back behind the wheel and pick up ma.
I did so, dropped her off, and then set back out--at this point nearly two hours late--for my friend's home where there was promise of fresh empenadas.
Alas, the baby was asleep, so I was shown the crib and pictures, fed, entertained by my friend and his new wife, and sent on my way by 9 p.m. It was a great visit, and gave a me a new perspective on what it means to be 'domesticated', as it were, and I got to play wii bowling for the first time. But, through the course of our visit I learned about a party going on up the street. A party where people I know/knew would be en masse. I thought about going. And I though about how for the first time in many years, I had not told anyone that I was coming into town. And I thought about what it might be like to just show up, and smile and catch-up, and drink beers, and then try to drive the twenty-minutes home without incident...just like the old times. It seems however that all of that thinking just landed me back at mom's place and once again in-front of the television. Something was wrong perhaps...but then again maybe it wasn't. The party would have been the chance to just pop in out of the blue and kill many birds with one stone of visitation. But, here it is 11:39p.m. and I have no intention of going.

As I said before, this visit is much unlike the others, and I am still trying to figure out why. Why part of me keeps saying that "this is supposed to be down-time; just take it easy" and another part says "you're young bro-bro get out there and embrace the spring lovliness", I can not help but feel like I have consciously done something to allienate myself from these people and this scene. I'm not sure why, but I've certainly noticed myself doing it before back home...Home in Brooklyn. Where I have spent the last five years sorting through everything and establishing a happy, albeit often solitary, life.

If you're still with me at this point and are wondering what all of this is supposed to mean, know that I am questioning this too. There are things that need to be sorted out. Whether or not this happens in the next few days, whose to say? But in any case, I am in awe of the perplexity of what one actually means when they say they are "going home". It irks me and makes me long for someplace else no matter where I am when I say it...Above all else it makes me want to go there, to find that place where everything is just as it was, and where there's nothing to prove to anyone, myself included.