A writing about feeling like home everywhere and nowhere
Back home once a year… home? Is it here? Used to be the odd one, to not understanding the conversations around you, to rising up your brown eyes into those blue eyes, to rain and winter coats, to scarves all the way up to your nose and hats and ear pads, and missing the sun half the year, and to riding your bike. You’re used to your home.
But back home you understand it all, but don’t understand why they speak like that. They all look like you, but are no more like you. You look into same height brown eyes, but they haven’t seen what you have, and you haven’t cried the impotence they have. Shirts and shorts, and scarves are mere excessive accessories, but need a cap to protect from the everyday merciless sun. You can’t bike but can’t drive either, to move you feel so constricted.
And your words get mixed up and you can´t find them all. Plug the cables in the right channel, stupid tongue! And you ask questions with such obvious answers that they look odd at you. They don´t understand why you don´t know so. And how would they? If they have stayed all their lives where now they stand, and their lives will end in the same place as that of the dad.
You were used to your home long looong time ago. You don’t belong here, but you don’t belong there either. Where do you belong? You belong to the world, as the world belongs to you, and you belong to no one. Yet you long… for something you don’t know… yet. All you know is that since always you’ve loved listening to songs in words you don’t understand and deliberately don’t want to search the Japanese and Korean and German and French translation. The feeling of alienation doesn’t exclude that of integration, and you love that contradiction. So you live at home with a smile and leave home with a smile.
