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What Happens When You're Neither Here nor There?
Home again, home again, jiggity jigg—I write this blog entry not from the comforts of my seminary subsidized housing, but instead from the couch in my parent’s living room. Yes, my friends, I am home yet again, immersed into a mélange of childhood memories, old behavioral patterns, and expected familial roles. Although I am comforted by the familiar surroundings—framed Ansel Adams posters, graduation photographs displayed proudly on the mantel, ancient grade-school citizenship award magnets clinging to the refrigerator by means of grime and not magnetic attraction—a visit home is a visit to Bizarro World.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the afterlife is split into three realms: Hell (the Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise. Obviously, the righteous are rewarded with eternal glory and the wicked are condemned to various circles/levels of hell according to the degree of his or her infraction(s). Purgatory, however, is neither inferno nor paradise. I like to think of Purgatory as an existential “green room”—your soul, not ready for an on-stage appearance, is also no longer relegated to the dressing room, carefully applying Ben Nye theater makeup and wishing the girl sharing your makeup mirror would shut-the-fuck up about her loser ex-boyfriend. Instead, your soul waits in the green room, flipping though magazines, engaging in banal conversation, and nervously glancing at your watch, waiting....waiting....waiting.
At this stage in my life, visiting home feels like Purgatory. What in the hell [pun not intended] am I supposed to do here? I no longer “fit in” with my old social circles. The chasm between me and my association with my hometown widens exponentially the longer I reside in Austin. Home is no longer Sweet, through no fault of my parental units or the home itself. Home is…well…home “is what it is.”
I am, after all, Meredith Kemp, eldest of the Kemp children and wayward West Texan forging a life the “big city” of Austin, Texas. I left a comfortable life here because I, much like Alice during one of her Wonderland adventures, had outgrown my surroundings. Rather than stay and stifle my maturation as a human being, I chose to leave. My departure, though heart-wrenching, was required.
I suppose that all I can do at this point is “keep on keepin’ on,” relax, read, and enjoy the frenetic (and often awkward) ride we call Life. Besides, I’ll be home tomorrow…
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Another note: I had an opportunity Sunday morning to hear the illustrious Fred Craddock preach at a local church! Truly, Craddock is an amazing orator with a gift for preaching the word of God.
8 comments:
uh, (insert cleaver here)
home is something that has evaded me for something like 15 years, i have homelikeness things, but alas is there really ever "home"?
Home is an odd place, that is where I am now as well. Nice to be home, but nice to leave again too. Peace!
you saw craddock? of all the places for him to preach, it was in the dusty town of amarillo? how do you happen upon these adventures?
i am in complete agreement re: home...ready to head there and stay put until i have to leave again...miss you...hope the return home is "welcoming"...see you sunday night...
As a fellow twentysomething, your reflections really hit home for me (no pun intended). It's even stranger when "home" itself has irrevocably changed - in my case, my mother has remarried and the house itself (including my old room) has been extensively remodeled. It's hard and strange to call a place home that isn't - except for the fact that one's relatively live there - really one's home. But, then, what do you call it? The home of my relatives? My former place of residence? It's hard to know. But, though it is cliche to respond to genuine reflections with movie quotations, I humbly submit the following dialogue from "Garden State":
Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
i live!
http://astrocero.blogspot.com/
mere- after a few thinking episodes, i have decided that for you, dante's descent ends upon a big comtemporary service with lots of hand waving and sweet jesus songs...i laughed outloud...
Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
O! What Cruelty! What Torture!
home is not about a house, but it is about having a soft place to land...that's what makes it home. It's a place you are always welcome and can always return to. This being said, lucky people may have more than one home. Austin with my husband is home. Amarillo with my family is home. Austin Seminary with my friends is home. Thanks be to God for my homes.
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