Homelands

In reading Nikki's post about Australia becoming home for her, my own mind started to wander and wonder about that concept and what it means to me. I think my concept of home is skewed by two or three different interpretations. Home, or a part thereof will always be Newfoundland - a large part of that is because of the people, but it is also the rough geography and the majestic sea and the culture that is found there. But mostly it is the people. People like Patrick and LA, Jonjon and Bridgette, Kellie-Rae, Rus, Dennis, Tracey, and so on and so on.
It is the setting of people as home that draws me to my second interpretation - or rather is an extension of that concept. Home is where those people are, so there is home for me in Australia, there is home for me in Montreal, there is home for me in Vancouver and hell, there is even home for me in two places in California... one in a make-believe relationship that fell dramatically apart in a town I have never seen, and the other in another part of Cali, where I have also never been but seems as real and as welcoming to me as any place I have been.
Finally, there is where I have my house, my job, my marriage, my brother and his wife and kids and my mother and my close group of friends, here in Ottawa. All of this seems like it should be soothing, and satisfying, but what it really means is that I am "fractalized," with longings to be in all of these places and never really content in any of them. This may be the missing piece that I discussed yesterday.
Maybe it is part of the problem rather than the solution that for me, home is transitory based on where the people I love happen to be. Maybe it is a struggle of identity, or how I perceive that identity of home that causes the constant longing for what is not currently at hand... hell maybe it is the lack of ocean... I don't know. I just know I feel unsettled and I feel the need to move around. I know some truly amazing people all over this planet. and maybe I feel I just need to get out to see them in their "homes." But that reality is far away right now. Even co-ordinating the next trip back to Newfoundland seems daunting and expensive.
Even though I am home, I want to go home, to all of them... somehow bring all the homes together at the same time. Which is both spiritually and physically impossible to muster...