Home

To my elders,

The Graduate and Garden State are two of my favourite movies. They are two generations movie monuments to figuring out who you are and what it feels like to be in your 20s. And I think both are relevant today. In entirely different and yet strikingly similar ways. The Graduate is about figuring out the post university what-do-I-do-now-and-is-this-really-what-makes-me-an-adult? and, you know, having an affair with a 45 year old Anne Bancroft, while Garden State asks what makes somewhere home and someone family. And to some degree examines questions of agency in one's own life. And, you know, is full of witty dialogue like "Don't make fun of my hobbies. I don't make fun of you for being an asshole." And both have amazing sound tracks. I am a Big Simon and Garfunkel fan.

The song "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros is interesting as well.

"Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa

But not the way I do love you.

Well, holy moly, me-oh-my, you're the apple of my eye

Girl, I never loved one like you.

Man, oh man, you're my best friend, I'll scream it to the nothingness

There ain't nothing that I need.

Well, hot and heavy, pumpkin pie, chocolate cake and Jesus Christ

There ain't nothin' please me more than you.

Ah home, let me go home

Home is wherever I'm with you.

Oh home, let go me home

Home is wherever I'm with you.

Hoh!

Hoh!

Hoh hoh!

La, la, la, la, take me home

Mother, I'm comin' home.

I'll follow you into park, through the jungle, through the dark

Girl, I never loved one like you

Moats and boats and waterfalls, alley way and pay-phone calls

I've been everywhere with you, Yes! That's true.

Laugh until we think we'll die, barefoot on a summer night

Never could be sweeter than with you

And in the street we're runnin' free like it's only you and me

Jeez, you're somethin' to see

Oh home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes, I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

La, la, la, la, take me home

Daddy, I'm comin' home.

Jane, Alexander.

Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?

I sure do, you came jumpin' out after me

Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your ass

And you were bleedin' all over the place and I rushed you off to the hospital

You remember that?

Yes, I do

Well, there's somethin' I never told you about that night,

What didn't you tell me?

While you were sittin' there in tha backseat smokin' a cigarette you though was gonna be you last

I was fallin' deep, deeply in love with you and I never told you 'til just now.

Home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

Home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

Alabama Arkansas

I do love my ma and pa

Moats and boats and waterfalls

Lay awake 'til break of dawn

Home is wherever I'm with you

Home is when I'm alone with you."

And then there is the cliche "Home is where the heart is." Because that is far more eloquent than "Home is where you keep all your crap and where you eventually just kind of start calling home, regardless of how you really feel about the actual four walls." Garden State said that "It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. ... I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

I don't think I ever had any better definitions for what Home means, but it was a feeling. It is the place you miss, more than anywhere else, when you are away. When you are anywhere else. Its the geographical version of "I want my mommy." It is comfort, more than anything. It is the place that everywhere else gets compared to in your mind. Every other place is different than Home in whatever ways. So what do you do when the place everything gets compared to starts to change? Starts to shift? I have no answers. But it makes me sad. And I don't know if that's a good reason to go back or to stay away longer. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, walking home after a long day, when I'm feeling a little melancholy, I wonder why I chose to stay. Why I forced myself to stay. I wonder why it didn't feel right to just go home already. And I don't really know what to do now.

-K