homesickness.
It is a gray day in Honolulu. Which is a nice change of pace when you live some place that is so perpetually humid and sunny.
But today, there is something about the weather that is making me feel quite homesick. A longing for Los Angeles. For home.
-----
There is this sensibility that is prevalent among certain sets that one place is just as good as another. That a byproduct of a more globalized world is a more mobile society. What does it matter where people go?
P was of this mind. We argued about it from time to time--why I was so stubbornly rooted within the radius of space bounded by Hawaii, San Francisco, and the California-Mexico Border. There actually is a formula, something like:
Willingness to Stay = fn(average temperture, number of places to comfortably be invited to eat Thanksgiving dinner, proximity to good Chinese food, z.)
But I could never articulate it in a way that was acceptably reasonable or rational to him. To him, it should have all been the same. He was a hermit crab. Picking up each shell in succession and discarding this one for the next. He would have been as happy in Tibet as in New Hampshire.
I think each in our own way, we felt a strange kind of pity for each other. Him for me, for being so fenced in. Me for him, for never feeling deeply, undeniably at home.
-----
It has officially been a year since I moved here to Honolulu. I have a life here now--a job, a fiance, a baby on the way. Plants and, of course, a couch. Plans, too. Plans to build things, and grow things, take classes, start things.
I'm not sure when it is that your homelights shift. When, or if, you ever trade one in for another. I love my life here. But it's not home. Not yet. People ask me about our plans, if I'll ever want to move back to LA. I find myself saying, "We're here. For now."
Looking out at the gray and the ocean out my window today, there is a longing for thick, cold, glassy waves and kelp smells. California ocean announces its presence--it is in the air, reaching. Aggressive, salty. Hawaiian ocean smells more constant, subtle. Less irrascible. Less fishy. Of course, it is all ocean.
And yet.
In the end, what there is to say on a gray, homesick day:
We're here.
For now.
But today, there is something about the weather that is making me feel quite homesick. A longing for Los Angeles. For home.
-----
There is this sensibility that is prevalent among certain sets that one place is just as good as another. That a byproduct of a more globalized world is a more mobile society. What does it matter where people go?
P was of this mind. We argued about it from time to time--why I was so stubbornly rooted within the radius of space bounded by Hawaii, San Francisco, and the California-Mexico Border. There actually is a formula, something like:
Willingness to Stay = fn(average temperture, number of places to comfortably be invited to eat Thanksgiving dinner, proximity to good Chinese food, z.)
But I could never articulate it in a way that was acceptably reasonable or rational to him. To him, it should have all been the same. He was a hermit crab. Picking up each shell in succession and discarding this one for the next. He would have been as happy in Tibet as in New Hampshire.
I think each in our own way, we felt a strange kind of pity for each other. Him for me, for being so fenced in. Me for him, for never feeling deeply, undeniably at home.
-----
It has officially been a year since I moved here to Honolulu. I have a life here now--a job, a fiance, a baby on the way. Plants and, of course, a couch. Plans, too. Plans to build things, and grow things, take classes, start things.
I'm not sure when it is that your homelights shift. When, or if, you ever trade one in for another. I love my life here. But it's not home. Not yet. People ask me about our plans, if I'll ever want to move back to LA. I find myself saying, "We're here. For now."
Looking out at the gray and the ocean out my window today, there is a longing for thick, cold, glassy waves and kelp smells. California ocean announces its presence--it is in the air, reaching. Aggressive, salty. Hawaiian ocean smells more constant, subtle. Less irrascible. Less fishy. Of course, it is all ocean.
And yet.
In the end, what there is to say on a gray, homesick day:
We're here.
For now.
posted by m at 8:25 PM
2 Comments:
I think you're right about where the idea of "home" is. But I think it includes people (maybe that is the same as proximity to someone else's bed and fridge that you can raid without fear of being caught or leaving your wet towel on the bed), and for now, my idea of "home" is a mixture of 2 different places and a handful of people. I miss you!
yep. there is a homesickness for the hawaii that hawaii was when you were here! miss you!
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