Not a particularly clear concept for me and that is not because I am an immigrant. The only geography that I inhabited for the first half of my life didn't seem to have any corners that I could reliably call my own and, since I could be nowhere else, I fashioned a space for myself by projecting my inner world like a movie on the bare walls of my rooms. Ethereal though it was, it was the only home I knew. It turned out however that those walls were not entirely bare. The furniture against them, the doors and windows built into them, the utilities and adornments hanging on them, all added dimensions to the two-dimensional image of my movie. Eventually every crack and crevice on the walls provided a lulling familiarity and the prospect of having to leave the confines of those walls took on the meaning of "leaving home."

So here I am now having spent more than half of my life "away from home," which it would seem is the only way for me to feel at home. Still, even I have found a place to belong -- with others who also carry their homes within them and spend many a joyful conversation weighing the exciting possibilities of living somewhere else.

The other day, in a conversation about Howard Dean's ability to beat Dubya, I suggested that if Kerry is more electable then perhaps Kerry-Dean would be a viable and exciting ticket. This could never work, it was pointed out, because both are from New England, a consideration that would never occur to me, not because I happen to live in New England but because this affiliation of a person to a piece of land only makes sense to me if the person is a farmer.

--aslam

10:40:38 PM