On Finding Home

“Home is where the heart is.”

But when the heart can only find joy from a vicarious distance, peering around corners to steal warmth from strangers, there is no home; the heart is vagrant, and glimmers of hope are but painful sips of water from Tantalus’s pool.

Personally, my heart stays encased in my rib cage, where it is pretty firmly attached to various important blood vessels.

“Home is where your stuff is”.

But if you have no stuff, you’re out of luck there too.

“Home is where my feet are”

This is a deluded fantasy reserved for narcissistic buffoons. Just ask a Cambodian landmine victim.

“Home is where you hang your hat”.

That is, if you wear a hat. Perhaps, if one were to wear a hat constantly, then wherever one decided to take it off and hang it would be free game for a raid of the refrigerator and an evening in front of the TV.


“Home is home, be it ever so humble.”

This flies in the face of the “stuff” concept, and puts a kink in the “hat” bit, if your home happens to be so humble that there’s no hook on the wall. “Home is where you toss your hat in the corner” doesn’t have the same ring.

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

Smoke another one, grab some wheat germ and sing the theme song to “The Littlest Hobo” to yourself while you wait, you knob.

“Home is where the house is”.

Technically, I suppose, you could argue this one in court. And there must be some reason that trailer parks aren’t full of “mobile houses”. (Nahh; that’s just marketing).

“Home is one’s birthplace, ratified by memory.”

Any of you out there remember the delivery room? I don’t. And even if I did, I doubt it would look very nice even with a Christmas tree in the corner.

“Home is the safe place we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

That, to me, sounds like a mental institution.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

See above. And consider the term “homeless shelter” while you’re at it.

“Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.”

The dentist’s office? An interrogation room at the Mexican border? The bathroom at Denny’s?

“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”

Hearken back a few quotes: without my heart, my feet are pretty much soup stock material.

“The home should be the treasure chest of living.”

Yeah; "funeral home".

Here:

“Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson.