This follows quite naturally from the last post: if you suffer from rejection you are very likely to suffer from homesickness, too. What and where is home? Well, we've been told often enough that home is where the heart is. But the heart can feel at home in a particular physical place at one time and not at another. When you were little you will have felt at home at your Gran's when she was soft and cuddly and had made Welsh Cakes for you and not at all at home when you had been left there - without your permission - when your Mum and Dad had gone away and there were strange night noises and nothing smelt like it did in your own house. You may well have felt at home in your own house until, again unasked, someone provided you with a little brother or sister who, as of right, took over your Mother's lap, your Father's shoulders and was even forgiven for pulling the cat's tail.
Someone I know well is aware of the capacity to feel at home in the South African veldt while missing his feeling of at-homeness on an island in Scotland, walking on Welsh cliffs, and with certain people no matter where he and they may be. I think I know about the at-homeness with people. I think of the people with whom I feel at home as those with whom I feel entirely myself, no adapting, no modifying, no awareness of self, simply being. Unexpectedly,( for me, that is), I feel very much myself in the context of this blog; I feel at home in it. My heart is in it so home is where etc etc. I don't feel entirely at home on the computer, though. That, as you have guessed, is because of the wizard of Cyberspace. I know he is there, waiting to gobble up my thoughts, or, anyway, my words, the moment I have put them down. I have learned one or two tricks to grab them back before he has gone too far but there is no way I am going to tell you about them because he will prempt those, too. (To prove the point, I first wrote the first 'c' in 'Cyberspace' lower case and was so afraid of retribution I couldn''nt get back fast enough to change it.)
I am really afraid of stuff you have to click on, or, even, not click on, simply do nothing : afraid I will wipe out the entire memory on this thing. It's not helped by my Guru whose repeated "you must have done SOMETHING", I have told you about before. As I said, and keep saying, I have done NOTHING, never. The words are simply not there anymore. How to reconcile my feeling of being at home while writing with my fear of the medium? Perhaps it is symbolic. Maybe one has to fear the medium in which one finds one's heart in case it has the power to wipe the feeling out, to carry it away in to the inner -world equivalent of Cyberspace. Anyway, maybe we have to qualify "home is where the heart is " to "home is where the heart feels safe".
Sometimes, my heart doesnt feel safe out there in the commercial world. My 40 year old self watches my current self opening her purse, searching for money, closing it, pushing it back in to my bag, with horror. It takes FOREVER. That will be the physical stiffness, you see. I am occasionally driven to apologising to the trader or the queue, recognising that I had no patience with people like me when I was not a person like me. (See stationary escaltors and stairs to Ladies' loos in previous posts.)
That's enough tempting fate - and the Wizard. See you soon.
Friday 5 December 2008
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