When a House can be a home
Home = The place where a person lives and where one's domestic affections are centered.
House = A building where people live.
Italian isn't specific enough to make the distinction between house and home and even English, though it tries and has 10-20 diverse definitions (try explaining the verb form sometime to an Italian), English speakers still tend to lump the words into two primary catagories.....often, to explicitly emphasize the presence of the former, when you have only had the latter.
This is a good thing in the sense that it is a way for the spirit to recognize when you've found that special place. But coming from an quirky background like I have, where I have moved around a lot (I stopped counting after my 20th) I have come to realize that for me....a home is also a place of refuge, a place where the heart can rest or restore itself, retreat to when necessary, and sometimes grow in ways that it doesn't realize. I have been lucky in that for all the hardship involved in packing up again and again, and never seemingly having permanent roots to any one place, I HAVE found this other definition many times in my life, and in several places. Places where I could lay my head and close my eyes and feel at least that I had a sense of comfort there, even if not ownership or autonomy or even, ahhh the magic crux for us all humans control.
Maybe this is why (for me) where I live is less intrinsically tied to how and why I got there and more intertwined with what I live while I am there.
For me that means my little street in the SVBVRA is home, for now anyway, maybe not for a lifetime, but for now my itchy feet feel comfortable in my Roman shoes.
House = A building where people live.
Italian isn't specific enough to make the distinction between house and home and even English, though it tries and has 10-20 diverse definitions (try explaining the verb form sometime to an Italian), English speakers still tend to lump the words into two primary catagories.....often, to explicitly emphasize the presence of the former, when you have only had the latter.
This is a good thing in the sense that it is a way for the spirit to recognize when you've found that special place. But coming from an quirky background like I have, where I have moved around a lot (I stopped counting after my 20th) I have come to realize that for me....a home is also a place of refuge, a place where the heart can rest or restore itself, retreat to when necessary, and sometimes grow in ways that it doesn't realize. I have been lucky in that for all the hardship involved in packing up again and again, and never seemingly having permanent roots to any one place, I HAVE found this other definition many times in my life, and in several places. Places where I could lay my head and close my eyes and feel at least that I had a sense of comfort there, even if not ownership or autonomy or even, ahhh the magic crux for us all humans control.
Maybe this is why (for me) where I live is less intrinsically tied to how and why I got there and more intertwined with what I live while I am there.
For me that means my little street in the SVBVRA is home, for now anyway, maybe not for a lifetime, but for now my itchy feet feel comfortable in my Roman shoes.
posted by ~Sparrow | Thursday, October 11, 2007
1 Comments:
Are you being a mind-reader? It's interesting that you blogged about the very thing that's been weighing so heavily on my mind in recent weeks -- where's this little wanderer to go. What's a wanderer to do when she feels stuck.
I'm glad you found your place, as another friend of mine has just found her little corner of peace as well. Now it's my turn.
(And how come you didn't answer my last sms?! Brat ;-p )
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