Home.

What is home? Is it the place in which you live? Is it the place that you are from? Is it the place that you consider closest in nature to who you are as a person? For many people the question of what is one's home is not complicated, for it is all of the above. But increasingly there are people such as myself who live in one place, have come from somewhere else, and have become who we are through the effects of multiple places. What is home is complicated for me.



I have lived in Portland longer than in any other city in my life. I feel confident walking about the place. I understand the complex nature of the city, rapidly layered with different groups in different parts of the rapidly expanding and changing city. But every time I open my mouth it is clear that I am from somewhere else.

I am someone who is comfortable talking to absolute strangers, someone comfortable in places where I don't know the rules, someone who knows that the essential similarities between pople are greater than their differences. I know this from my nine years in Michigan, where I was transformed from a painfully shy introvert, with a tendency to mope, and a general disdain for people, into someone who enjoys being on stage, the most optimistic person I know, with a belief in the goodness of my fellow woman. This transfomation took place through a psychological process called "flooding". The constant interest, and outgoing friendliness of hundreds of mid-west americans over several years is the reason for this change. But I don't consider Michigan my home.

I just got back from ten days in England and Wales. The very look of it is comfortable to me. The greenest of fields surrounded by hedgerows, with a stone farmhouse under grey skies is what beauty means to me. The accents of the british countryside, particularly the rhythms of banter in a country pub, are the sounds about which I do not need to think. It is how I think, the method by which I prefer to converse, the atmosphere that soothes my spirit. But this environment is disappearing, replaced by the convenience of driving and the internet. Replaced by specialization, and international plane flights, and exotic cuisines.

A nice man who was once a friend of mine (taken away by the cult that is Alcoholics Anonymous, and the threats of his wife) once said that I was a man with no country, that I would never be home. He was right, and the places that are the closest are slowly dying under the tender care of the wealthy retirees of England. But there is still enough of it left for it to make me smile with its beauty, to wax wistfully of its charms, and to feel renewed and inspired by seeing it once again.

Time for a spot of tea.