At home

For years I've been saying that I never feel quite at home anywhere I go, anywhere I am.  Where I grew up, where I have lived, never feels like home. My home is not of this earth. But what if it is so much of this earth that I can not just call any one place my home.  Last term one of my fellow classmates always referred to my 'american-ness', which could be one of the worst things to say to me.  So, finally I told Khalid how much it irritates me to be identified by my passport, because my citizenship was not by choice.  Don't get me wrong, my american-ness is very much a part of my identity, but it is not my identity.  I told him I have citizenship in my own nation it's called "Leislation".  It's a cool place, everyone's invited. :)  

I've lived a privileged life.  My opportunities and choices have shown me a beautiful world that I absolutely love - I can't get enough of it! There is so much beauty, everywhere I go.  Urban, agrarian. Lush, desolate. Rich, poor. It is the people, the landscape, the simple elements of a culture unknown to my own reality.  There is an amazing beauty in discovering something, expanding one's own understanding of reality.

So, why am I so lost everywhere I go, never feeling at home while loving everywhere just the same?  Because beauty is not all I see, and other's have shared with me their ugly reality. There are too may people hurting, too much of the landscape being destroyed, and those different cultural elements are becoming less and less distinct. 

I just read a chapter by Arundhati Roy, "The End of Small Things",  where she's mourning after India has announced their place in the world as a keeper of nuclear bomb.  Showing the superpowers (and enemies) they are equally prepared, and reflecting on the terrible disease of state and weaponry power.  In it she says something that I feel myself saying at times,  

"I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic.  I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. I'm female, but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple.... Immigrants are welcome.  You can help me design our flag.

My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing.  Admittedly it was a flawed world. An inviable world, a scarred and wounded world. It was a world that I myself have criticised unsparingly, but only because I loved it. It didn't deserve to die. It didn't deserve to be dismembered. Forgive me, I realise that sentimentality is uncool - but what shall I do with my desolation. I loved it simply because it offered humanity a choice."