Sunday, May 4, 2008

The Return to the Topic of Home

For the last couple of weeks, I've been feeling sick for home. It really doesn't make any sense to me since I've been away for almost 4 months already, but it is just now kicking in. I'm so busy that I haven't really had the opportunity to call home on a regular basis and when I do call home, they are all busy or all together. I hear the laughing in the background as my sister stuggles to hear what I say. As time progresses the sickness grows stronger and more frequent in despite of all the stuff going on in my life. I miss my family, my friends, the comfortable feeling that accompanied me everywhere I went. These things were my definition of home. In my town with my people, not wanting to leave. But I did leave and I felt how far I was from home. But it didn't hit me until now that I really was far from home. But in the course of this realization, I also realized that my definition of home was changing. Almost in the same way as Carlos Bulosan in America is in the Heart and Doc Hata in The Gesture Life. In both cases, their definition of home changed. For Carlos, his location was constantly changing but it didn't seem like he ever found a home. In contrast, Doc Hata had the perfect home which he ends up leaving behind in search of god knows what? He turned his back on the American Dream in favor of finding his true self. Similarily, Carlos depended primarily on himself and gained a greater understanding of his being before he found his home.I feel as if I had the same background as Doc Hata, in that, I was living the good life before I decided to disturb the peace. I was safe and comfortable at home, and then I came to Berkeley. I was in need of finding myself apart from Precious Guan, the sheltered teenager from Long Beach, California. I needed to find out who I was without any pre-existing labels to confine me. An individual that would, hopefully, be able to stand on her own two feet. I don't mean that I need to sever all bonds linking me to the past, but that I need to know I can form new bonds and not only survive on the old ones. So if I must travel from coast to coast to find this new and improved Precious Guan, than I guess I better be ready for it because it is going to occur no matter what. I feel that aspect of my life is identical to Carlos's. I'm far away, living on my own, and constantly moving(not only meant in a physical space occupying sort of way) so that it is not out of the ordinary to lose one's sense of home. But home follows you wherever you go. I have cultivated a new community to call my own with close friends who feel as if I've known them my entire life, not taking th place but overlapping and complimenting the family and friends I have left back "home". Home is completely relative to the observer, each has our own definition, but I feel that home always comes back down to not only a house, family, and friends, but to include oneself as well.

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