...home is wherever I am. Like a turtle shell, I carry it with me.

I missed Steph's post, but you're not the only one to feel that way, Sail. My family wasn't military, but I lived in twelve different locations before I left to go to college at 18, and I've lived in six others since.

you're not the only one to feel that way, Sail. My family wasn't military, but I lived in twelve different locations before I left to go to college at 18, and I've lived in six others since.

I think it's a trick that people who move around a lot learn in self-defense. There is a tendency to want to put down roots and when you can't, you learn how to emulate an epiphyte with roots that can live in the air instead of the soil. Makes home easily transportable.

I have to say it. I can't help myself: "His eyes slid down the front of her dress."

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

It's not just people who've moved a lot, guys. Except for fewer than five years, I've lived in the same house in the same town, and it doesn't feel like home to me, it feels like a trap.

Home is where I want it to be, if it's an RV for a couple of years, or a tiny apartment in a small city. Wherever my heart decides, that'll be home to me.

His eyes slid down the front of her dress.

"That's beautiful. Or taken literally, incredibly gross."

Vision of eyes falling out and slithering away on their own...

I missed Teppy's post, but I'm likely to be the exception. There's an angry pissy self-indulgent little thing about Erica Road taking shape in my head. It won't get written tonight, though.

I like JZ's. First sentence is a nice long convoluted sentence that worked the way they're supposed to work. It made me quite happy.

It's not just people who've moved a lot, guys. Except for fewer than five years, I've lived in the same house in the same town, and it doesn't feel like home to me, it feels like a trap.

I sympathize. I think this is where there has to be a number of different definitions of home. Home can be used to define the house you live in, the community you live in, the society you live in. You don't necessarily have to feel "at home" in all three (and you may have more definitions of home than that, it's a vaguely amorphous thing--home.) There's times I feel at home in only one of those at any one time. After the last election, I didn't feel like my society was "home" to me anymore. The feeling's starting to come back, but it was alienated for a while. Madison feels like home right now. Mainly because it's where most of my family is. That's not to say that feeling isn't like a pair of shoes that have worn down at the heels and make my feet hurt, but they're still a favorite pair that I'm loath to throw out because I walked so far in them and became who I am because of them. I keep them around out of nostalgia. Some day, I'll throw them out, probably the next time I move. My condo only vaguely feels like home. I've lived in "apartment" settings for so long, that it's hard to treat this place as permanent and allow myself to become attached to it. It'll probably only start to feel like home when I'm about to sell it. My family only felt like home to me as long as my mother was alive, she was our center, our soil. I feel like the family is withering on the vine, now. It's one of the reasons I've chosen to stay around Madison despite the fact the shoes aren't comfortable any more, I want to see if the soles can be replaced. I'm working on it.

what settled out of my head after several days contemplating the subject

My home of twenty years belongs to the landlord. At any time she could say, "30 days notice, I'm pulling the building down."

The dark hills of Pennsylvania hold part of my soul, but Home faded decades ago.

A house is a couple of bad months away from going back to a bank. The grave is yours--until a developer says, "We could just move them."

When I die, I'm going to the flames. My ashes will be scattered and my home will be the wind and the wide, great Earth. Take that away who can.

Connie, that's something else. Man.

lift lid on brain, stir a few times, consider what rises

Psyche-surfing can be very illuminating.

As I say, the pictures don't speak to me much. But the subject does.

Definitions

Maybe I should have stayed away.

Maybe I shouldn't have charged in, like some absurd parody of a fairytale, the damsel rescuing the knight in his high castle.

Suppose I hadn't spent that long night, picking up empty booze bottles, trailing my fingers over every surface I could reach, trying to scentmark, imprint myself. Suppose I'd abandoned you in your mess, in the house you shared with Dolly. Would there be this empty place in me now?

To me, home always meant one thing: comfort. Now, it also means regret.

Is home illusory because comfort is perpetually just out of reach?