home is where the...well, somewhere

I've always adored this scene from Garden State and tend to think about it a lot when I feel homesick, homeless, or homebound (best from 1:00+).

For as long as I can remember, my concept of home has been rooted in a constant, relentless, nomadic shift. I never grew up in any one particular home (most of you understand my mom's ongoing Monopoly game). The only place I visited repeatedly during the past 25 years is now one big matryoshka doll of nostalgia—a house full of closets, which are full of boxes, which are full of photos and knick-knacks and letters. My early twenties have all been spent trading a dorm for a balcony for a bungalow in Memphis for urban living in Austin. If only I'd decided to play the game like the Red Paper Clip Guy...

During the frustrating *awesome!* venture of looking for the next place I'd call home, I spent a lot of time trying to dissect where I had felt "at home" in the past and what about those places managed to borrow a little piece of my heart. Slowly I started to realize that I couldn't define those nebulous spaces as home, persay, because the things that felt most comfortable to me usually weren't structures at all. "Home" to me is d-d-d-d-dirty rap seeping through the walls at Rosemary Lane, avoiding potholes on the bike ride back from the Draught House, grilled steaks and merlot on an ivy-lined porch in Chicago, the silhouette of my mom typing on her computer.  Now home is on the site of an old airport, where I am in hyper-nesting mode, trying to unpack all of the things that will set the scene for the next chapter of my life. Of course approaching it that way puts so much more pressure on the unpacking process, because if I choose silk drapes over tan faux wood blinds, what will that say about me?! So I'm taking it as lightly as I can (not very), but I am still so excited about the day I say I'm on my way home and I mean it.