Home, and Away, for the Holidays
When the "bad" is right.
A few weeks ago we spent time studying Parasitic Ontology, looking at the circle of life and coming to terms with the idea that even parasites (might, probably) have a purpose. I’m still digesting that (ha!) and will share more later.
But that idea brings me to some graffiti I spotted in Bra as I was taking one last (for the year) walk around town, before I leave for St. Louis.
Graffiti is vile and ugly and ruins beautiful things, except for when it doesn’t, and that makes you look at it all differently. A new way of thinking, right?
I’ve been here in Bra, taking classes at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, for two months, and my brain is quite satiated, but also hungry for more. I’ve immersed myself here, and yet just scratched the surface. I’ll be gone for only two weeks, and already I am missing it.
At the same time, I haven’t been to St. Louis for two months, longer than I’ve ever been away from home. I will be there for two weeks, with a couple days in Minneapolis to see family, and will put a lot of effort into making sure the whole trip doesn’t become just a blur.
Then I have a one-way ticket back home — where is home now? — to Italy. I don’t know when I’ll be back home before classes finish in June, since we don’t have more than a few days off at a time. And then I have an internship, which might be anywhere in the world, for up to three months, which I know now is enough to call someplace home.
And so the walk around Bra was purposeful, as I soaked in the sights and sounds and tastes and smells, and thought about what is here and what I’ll miss, what I know and what I don’t want to forget. The Christmas decorations will be gone when I get back. Will there be snow? School will be back in session, and my friends will return from their holidays, or be doing their own thing in Bra because home is too far away and too expensive, and I will be happy to see them again. Will I remember which key is for the gate and which for the door? Will any letters be waiting for me? Will the pâtisseries offer delightful treats like this in January, not just December?
So now I leave home, to go home, before returning home, before possibly finding a new home, and then returning home. And in my soaking of my home of Bra, I saw this graffiti and thought, yes, with home wherever I am living and enjoying life, it was a good day.
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Hi Brian,
THAT is the most amazing pastry!
What is that :)? please tell me.
The sweet, kind and taboo piece of graffiti makes me think graffiti could be a dream passed from one person to another in some way, a cloud of thought captured on a piece of brick.
Here's a poem from an Indiana poet, Marc Hudson.
Could there be a more american-sounding place than Crawfordsville, Indiana?
a little medieval, maybe just right for a cold Chicago morning ... here it is 16F.
"Here is my home. Here heap my cairn
at just this hour some morning.
In each of us is a country.
I have known a man at home in the barren of tundra
a seeker of barrows and old flints,
and a woman in the grasses of islands."
it goes on, but that seemed the most related to your theme of home :)
Merriest Christmas and happy travels!
Heidi
I love this post. I know what you mean about a place becoming home quickly. It's a really wonderful feeling to be a home somewhere totally exciting and new. As I've rented out my house in Portland for a few months, each new place I go, even for a few nights, I'm like "I'm going to go home now" (to the B&B or wherever). It's really interesting and makes you think about where you feel 'at home' and can see yourself.