Home

I love Portland with its bagpiping unicyclists, its well-dressed statuary, the farmer’s markets, its DIY, pagan, can’t spit without hitting a band member, love in every flavor culture. It is home and I am happy here. But hometown is the San Francisco bay area and the minute I cross the bay bridge, I am home again no matter how many years I’ve been away. Paris feels like that. And Ljubljana.

Home is so much more than wherever I choose to hang my hat or where I come back to each evening. It is a sense of belonging, of comfort and love and connectedness. I can’t even say I can limit this to a geographic location. Home can be found in someone’s arms. Home is even sometimes a friend’s home or wherever my family may be. And sometimes, no matter how much I love a place, no matter how close I am to a person, I will always be a tourist.

Some people are polytheists, some people are polyamorous, I love a lot of places as home.

Anyway, one of the places I feel this way about is the ocean. I was raised only a mile or so from the ocean and rarely have I lived more than an couple of hours drive away from a beach. I may dream of living in Paris, but I doubt I would last long. Between the sound and smell of the surf and the feel of sand under my bare feet, I am utterly at home and happy. I’m not often good at sitting still, but I will lay lazily in the sun on a beach for hours and swim in the surf until waterlogged. It is peace and comfort and love. Home.

I ran away to the beach again this weekend, mostly to write, but also to walk along the shore with a bone-chilling wind at my back and ponder things.

I managed to take a few pictures as well, collecting material for a new project. Not content with wide world around me, I got a little more up close and personal with the textures of the rocks and seashells…