On Notions of Home

Home can mean many things to different people and in different contexts. One person may consider home as the house in which they grew up, especially if they resided in primarily one single residence for the majority of their formative years. Another individual may think in terms of their home town. Still others, either currently raising or who have raised families of their own, might consider home as being that primary residence in which their children currently undergo the maturation process or where they grew up. Many consider home as being anywhere they reside at any given moment. The homeless might deem home anywhere they lie down that night, or perhaps even nowhere at all.

I believe it is fair to say most of us can use any word in conversation without stopping to reflect on what that word really means emotionally and in the context of the events of daily life. I also believe a word like home, when reflected upon, encompasses a deeply emotional milieu permeating one’s entire being. Home connotes safety, security, conviviality, connection and familiarity. More than just a dwelling or domicile, home provides one’s foundation: the place where family meets, mingles and relates, finds shelter from the outside world, competition, intrusion and antagonism, and enjoys a nurturing center for sustenance, community and love. One’s idea of home reveals one’s roots, not just in terms of place or relationships, but also with reference to one’s internal sense of self and one’s place in the world.

As a child and adolescent, my family moved fairly often. The duration for our longest tenure of residence in any one place spanned 3 ½ years. After I stopped living with my parents and took responsibility for supporting myself and providing for my own life, I continued the pattern of moving from place to place fairly often. During the first couple of years, I didn’t stay in any one place longer than 5 or 6 months. The term of residence in which I dwelt for the longest period during my life lasted 5 ½ years. However, I shared that domicile with a friend, so I don’t really consider that as having been my home. Rather, the dwelling provided a place I shared with a friend, but it formed just one more stop along the way in a lifetime of searching for roots and stability. I also lived with three women, but none of those living situations lasted longer than 9 months. As far as personal residences where I lived alone, my longest term of dwelling in the same place lasted 4 ¼ years. So, given my history of wanderlust, I have never thought of any of my previous abodes as “home” in the sense described above.

I can say, on and off over the years, I spent about 39 of my nearly 58 years in Los Angeles with nearly all of my formative years included among those 39 spent in L.A. However, L.A. possesses no homogeneity, and having resided in 26 different dwellings in that city, none of them stand out enough to provide me with an emotional attachment. For whatever reason, maybe because the lifestyle is so on-the-go in conjunction with the ridiculous number of residences I passed though during my years in Los Angeles, I never even considered the city as my home.

Neil Diamond sang in his song, “I Am I Said,” “L.A.’s fine but it ain’t home / New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more.” I grant that LA courses through my blood, webs the sinews of my muscles and ossified into my bones. Its lifestyle, attitudes and values permeate and inform my consciousness and memories. However, I also rejected the city a number of times and left her as a loose woman and estranged lover because that always seemed to describe the way she embraced her inhabitants, myself included. So, I must paraphrase Neil Diamond and simply say, “L.A.’s there but I’m just gone / The road winds long but it’s my only home.”

Life is a process. One cannot extract any individual moment or experience, occurrence or place, feeling or idea, lover or friend and put that on a pedestal called quintessential. If life teaches us anything, it teaches us about the constancy of change and the fluidity and impermanence within every one of our modes of interpreting experience, including one’s sense of self. I am not even comprised of the same molecules which formed my body when I resided in Los Angeles. My thoughts, ideas and personal philosophy do not match those which made me the unique Don I presented myself as being during those L.A. years. I embrace the change, the process, the fluidity and the impermanence. I am not one Don. I am myriad Dons. I see myself as new every instant, dying to be reborn again millisecond after millisecond.

“What does that indicate home means to you?” you might wonder and want to ask me. I find home in each breath I take. I feel home in every smile I share. I discover home not as security, but through the insecurity of ever-changing experience. Home reveals itself through the process of living. Home speaks to me of and through connection and interconnection.

An old adage tells us, “Home is where the heart is.” I believe the meaning of heart in that phrase can be expressed as love. Indeed, when I speak of home, I speak of love. I carry my love with me everywhere I travel in life. Home does not refer to a place; home refers to an emotional state of being. One can experience that state of being through giving, caring, sharing, listening, understanding and nurturing, because those qualities and pursuits embrace all which best describe home and which best exemplify the feeling, experience and memory of home.

By carrying home with me in all life’s travels to all life’s destinations, I never have to feel the way Neil Diamond felt as he sang his forlorn paean to the loss of home, “Leavin’ me lonely, still.” No, by carrying home with me, inside of me, and expressing it in all life’s greatest struggles, I leave loneliness in places and find community everywhere I find myself situated in every moment of existence. In that mindset and lifestyle, I never have anywhere to go in order to go home because home will always be with me.

Significant Word Exercise - Peace

Meditation

It always begins with the lighting of a candle in a darkened room. This is followed by the burning of incense. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Inhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four… exhale, two, three, four… hold, two, three, four. My body yields to a slow, calming rhythm. As I inhale through my nostrils, the scent of the incense infuses me with thoughts that mesh with the scent being burned: it might be ocean scent, or roses, or sandalwood, or any other from among the myriad of scents available.

My heart rate slows down and I feel a tingling sensation run up and down my spine. I focus my mind on each of my chakras, one at a time: the base of my spine, genitals, navel, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and finally the crown. As each chakra is opened to receive universal energy, I feel it expand and throb, then pulse in rhythm to my breath. With my eyes closed, my inner vision observes a whirling vortex of white light above my head. Then, a beam of white light descends from the vortex into my crown and all of the chakras emanate a glow. It is at this point I intone my mantra. Over and over, the word resonates from my throat as I allow it to ring out for as long as I exhale. I never break the rhythm of my breath.

Sometimes, it feels as though the blood ceases to circulate in my body. Sometimes it feels like a fire within me rages. There are times when I feel as if a flood of water is washing me from the inside out. Occasionally, I visualize the white light enter with my inhaled breath and a gray smoke expelled when I exhale. On those times, the gray usually becomes cleansed a little with each breath, so that at first, I see dark, murky and thick strands of smoke expelled when I exhale until, with enough time and focus spent on the breathing exercise, the smoky discharge gradually changes into a light, wispy and thin white mist.

That is the time when I try to empty my mind of all thoughts and hear the stillness of the night. I tune out words and just hear whatever natural sounds might be present. I don’t think about the sounds, I just drift on them - mindlessly, thoughtlessly, and serenely. It is in this state that I find inner peace.

Commonly Accepted Understanding of Peace

According to Wikipedia, “Peace is a quality describing a society or relationship that is operating harmoniously. This is commonly understood as the absence of hostility, or the existence of healthy or newly-healed interpersonal or international relationships, safety in matters of economic or social welfare, the acknowledgment of equality and fairness in political relationships and, in world matters, peacetime; a state of being absent any war or conflict” (Peace, Wikipedia, 26 January 2010). Very much the same definition can be obtained by looking in other encyclopedias and dictionaries, so this definition can suffice as a working description of the common, universally held conception of peace.

In the sense described above, peace is not viewed as an inner state of being for an individual. Rather, peace is seen as a state of affairs, equilibrium, between two or more parties: individuals, collectives, countries or cultures. The viewpoint expressed suggests that peace is defined by relationships, and especially by the absence of conflict in those relationships. When people get along, they are at peace with one another. When countries are not engaged in war, they are at peace. When ethnicities and classes treat one another fairly, with equality and evidencing social justice, they are perceived as being at peace with one another. Thus, harmony in relationship, between and among groups or multiple individuals, expresses the popular and broadly universal conception for the meaning of peace.

On the Beach

I walked along the seashore. The sound of the surf rolling in to the beach, waves occasionally crashing, reverberated in my ears. Gulls flew overhead, and their calls rang out between the rhythmic ebb and flow of waves which washed the sandy shoreline. The gray day hushed the breeze into stillness. Out on the water, a few gulls and a lone pelican bobbed on the rising and falling ocean. Three dolphins took turns diving and swimming through the waves, riding on the backs of the waves the way I once rode on breakers’ faces. Way off in the distance, I could see a fishing boat maneuvering to reap the harvest of the day’s catch.

The salty smell brought a smile to my face. My eyes laughed at the damp mist in the air. Driftwood and dead kelp was strewn about on the shore, left there by a higher tide. I dug up some sea shells as I strolled along the water’s edge. Some children played in the surf. A man ran with his dog on the shoreline. As I watched life around me, I found myself feeling withdraw, apart. An understanding came upon my mind that I did not need to be part of the activity. I sat on a large log and gazed about me through my sunglasses. All I wanted to be was one of those waves, and as I imagined myself to be one, I found peace of mind.

Celebration for the End of WWII

At the end of World War II, after the last atomic bomb had been dropped and the Japanese surrendered, celebration rang through the streets of New York. People hugged everyone nearby. Strangers kissed to the moment. A tickertape parade wound through the streets. Bells rang out. Champagne bottles were uncorked and people toasted to both victory and peace. People shouted their glee. Mothers expectantly awaited the return of their soldier sons. The end of hostility released revelry to the new found peace.

Summary

I look at what I have written and notice something odd. The commonly, or universal perception of peace as defined by Wikipedia is one which entails a relationship between two or more individuals, or cultures or countries or other social units. Yet, neither of the moments from my life which I presented as having been emblematic of moments in which I felt and experienced peace have anything to do with relationships.

It appears from my examples that peace, for me, is the absence of relationships, the absence of people, the absence of the complications and entanglements that come in relationships with others. It seems that my conception of personal peace is an emotionless state, both joyless and without sorrow. Rather, peace, in my life, is evidenced by an emotionless serenity in between joy and sorrow, where I am in harmony with myself and nature, but where other people are only and always on the periphery. Peace, then, for me, is contented serenity in solitude.