Home.

From the "shit going on in Bigskeptic's Life" files....


In this era of foreclosures, squatters, etc, the very notion of home has been questioned, compromised, and forced into having been redefined.  People with families now regularly live out of their cars rather than the traditional 3 bedroom/2 bathroom set up that generations of people came to view as "home."  I think my own definition has always been fluid, because based on my past, home was a travel trailer in a storage yard, a double wide trailer, a traditional house, a monolithic antique semi-mansion, tiny apartments, relatives couches, a best friend's floor, the road, among other things. I didn't understand people's attachment with "home" as a location. Still don't. Never will.

The right to your home has also been attacked, and it's come down to a judgement call by the bank or corporation invoking Eminent Domain in most cases, minus one I can think of where the police officers asked to remove a woman from her home simply couldn't abide because she was 103 years old and on her deathbed. She skirted eviction because the law enforcers saw a glaring indecency and decided against acting on their orders. You can read the story here: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/103-year-old-woman-1245741.html 

So home is an very personal thing, obviously, and carries with it a multitude of meanings. Right now, "home" to me is a point of contention, because I find that in most of my heartaches there came some sort of discrepancy between the matter of a home, what makes a home, or where "home" is located. The amount of leavings that I have endured in my life adds up to watching a lot of taillights disappear in the distance, disappear away from my current definition of home, away from me.  I always understood the necessity of every leaving, despite the sadness of watching as someone you love leaves, because I feel the same draw to the road, to whatever's next, to making your way in your renewed life elsewhere. 

It's very American to set out on one's own in discovery of self, which is why American Literature is teeming with tales about heading West, heading to college, and essentially to steal from Thomas Wolfe...to never be able to go home again.  There's truth in that, because once you leave that definition of "home" from your childhood, you have moved past a very basic illusion we humans have developed...and that's the notion that "home" is a place.

As we're collectively fighting the banks, watching Friends and family losing their houses, we seem to be fighting for more than a place to live, but the idea that home is how we define it, and by taking away our homes there is a much larger infraction occurring. It's personal with us, because so few of us stay in proximity to our birthplaces anymore.  It's not just the loss of a house, but the loss of that self discovery that said, "I found this place. I made it my home."

As I sadly prepare to once again watch figuratively as taillights disappear into the distance, I have to question why my own feet have been planted for so long. Am I living up to my gypsy roots? Maybe having stayed in one place for so long has made sedentary the quest for constant self-discovery.  Maybe the next set of taillights to disappear over the horizon should be my own...

Skeptically Yours.