home

it's always been difficult for me to define "home".
"home" can be in so many places and one is not necessarily better than the other,
just different.
for the earlier part of my life, "home" was a little island in the middle of nowhere.
a little place often forgotten if not unheard of to most people.
over the years, that has changed but it's always interesting to see the complete
amazement in people's face when they ask me where i'm from.
it's as if to them, it can only be something you read about once in elementary
school with a few geographical facts that might come in handy in a game
of trivia pursuit; not an actual place inhabited with actual people living a life
not so different from their own in some cases.
now that i'm here, this is "home" too. this is where i learned who i really am
and hopefully who i will be (it's still up in the air in this regards, don't ask me why)
i took some baby steps here, starting from learning to communicate to learning to
love myself. and to some, those might have been things that came easy or sometimes
not really things to be aware of. but the mundanity of my everyday life here has been
the biggest and most exciting adventure of my life so far.
i've had a few and this particular chapter has topped them all. it hasn't always
been the best, but it's been the most defining in many ways.
eating fried chicken was a milestone for me, okra?! i've never heard of it
until i landed here. words like 'ma'am', 'y'all' 'fixing to' (although i have not
adopted that one yet) were things i found peculiar and a bit hard to understand
the usage and purpose, in the beginning.
i love it here. i love it in a strangers vantage point kind of way even though
i've been living here for sometime now and call it "home". i'll never fully understand
what being a southerner means and yet i do some pretty southern things.

now, i can relate to the pace of life, which can be difficult to describe sometimes.

you know it is! you have to have lived here for a while to truly appreciate it and not be befuddled by it.
then "home" can be any number of other places. places like japan, where my heart
sung the moment i stepped off the plane. even though, i was yet again swept up in the middle of a different culture, listening to a completely different language, and expected to be confused and at loss. well, i felt at "home".
"home" could be a hut in the middle of nowhere in africa, south east asia, and all the other
places in the world where my heart yearns for a cause. or even a swanky place somewhere
like new york city or paris or some other fancy destinations.
really, it could be anywhere! this is the reason why i don't understand that feeling of being rooted somewhere. to have one place be the place where you always come back to, where your
home "home" is. for me, that place does not exist because my "roots" are softly held to the earth and always ready to be transplanted elsewhere. while still remembering and loving the places where they've been.
why am i rambling on about all this?
yesterday, i had a conversation with a friend who was trying to define my "home" for me.
he came to the conclusion that i am one those people where "home is where the heart is" literally!!
that countries, borders, nationalities or geographic locations don't really define my "home" .
but rather, where my heart loves to be or yearns to be.
well, that brings it all back to the same point: i'm unable to define "home".
if it is where my heart is, then it is on 3 continents, enumerate numbers of countries,
and amongst several languages, customs and cultures.
because right this instant, my heart yearns to be on that little island in the middle of nowhere,
enjoys being here, dreams about being in places like africa and south east asia
while reminiscing about the gentleness of japan ...