| | I know only what other immigrants have told me. That no matter how much money and how beautiful the life and the city and the weather it never quite feels like home, and why one piece of ground smells different from another no one knows, but it does and no matter how familiar it gets it will always be ground, never grounding. You get there--the other place--only to discover that home is deep in the innards and can only truly be removed by surgery, complicated emotional surgery, and nine times out of ten there are unforeseen complications and there is haemorrhaging and scarring and a dull ache like a cramp that flares up on cold damp days or hot days, beautiful summer days when everything is pleasant enough except when the wind blows. And even the trees speak a different language.
--Alison Wearing Honeymoon in Purdah
But when home is African rain
and explosions of crape myrtle in Charlotte
injera be wot
the Southern Cross and Cassiopeia
Banyan
guavas
my old Saturn
Grandma's Jewish coffee cake and blueberry muffins
the combination of rock and chalk
most of all my family
things that have disappeared and things that have grown
there is no special ache
just restlessness.
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| | Posted 1/26/2008 1:13 PM - 5 comments
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