No Place Like Home


I’ve been a lot of places. Some of them were wonderful, scintillating, beautiful, even stunning. Some of them less so. None of them, however, ever felt like home. And this chronic feeling of rootlessness is strange, given that I come from Colonial era families on both parents’ sides. I'm many generations removed from the push West, and myself have straddled the four corners of the continent, always searching, never finding. Where did I truly belong, and what would there be about such a place that would make me feel at home there?

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, clicked her ruby heels and whispered, “There’s no place like home.” For her, that black and white farm in Kansas was where she belonged. Good for her. But I never felt that way anywhere, from the very beginning. Maybe being a Jersey Boy had something to do with it. Jersey was always a place to leave, not go back to. But Springsteen did fine with that locale and identity. So did Malcolm Forbes, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Thomas Edison, and Einstein.

Me, I never fit in anywhere (other than the superficial niceties and necessaries for survival), even from the beginning, and had to keep moving. But what feeling or thing was it I was so desperately yearning for, searching for my whole life?

Even the word 'home' itself is a misnomer. When that National Board of Realtors announces the “sales of new homes” figures for last month, they are talking about buildings. I am talking about a sense of place. A place where I feel I belong. I have been all over Planet Earth in this search, and with all that travel why did nowhere ever every feel like home?

Odysseus’s journey home only took a few years. Mine, still ongoing, has taken fifty years and I’m still looking. Does that make me a footloose drifter? Even a homeless person? In a way. Yet I’ve owned lots of buildings, and parts thereof, and own a condominium now, where I presently live with my family. It’s very nice. But once again, it’s not home. It’s just the place where I live. Some of the ‘homes’ I’ve owned or lived in were very upscale—luxurious, even. These ranged from a spring Street loft to a Murray Hill penthouse in NY, to a hillside Spanish chalet in Sherman Oaks, California, to a luxury ranch in Ojai, to an adobe chalet in Santa Fe to a golfside bungalow in St. Pete. All were quite nice. But none of them were home.

Why not? What was missing, from the time of my childhood? And if others feel this way as much as I do, what does this say about our history, and culture, and people? Have we become a nation of drifters?

(Excerpt from Gene Ayres' forthcoming memoir: On the Road Again 2010)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Red Tide is Coming

Image
For those of you who once read my blogs, and might read them again, I am back. It has been a year of silence, that happily is about to be broken. I was fighting many battles in my absence, in many ways and at many levels: for my life. I am back, at least for now, because I have won those battles at last, if not the war. As to that, one cannot truly control the outcome of one's life, much as we might wish otherwise. Still, we can try. Imagine, if you will, having to pick up your life and move (we've all done that) but in the process, incurring a grievous injury requiring surgery. Then take it further: that you go to sleep in pain, and wake up a different person. Or two different persons: persons who do not relate to you, who are hostile to you and to each other. One is manic; the other profoundly depressed. So then you reach out for help and are given medications, and the medications trigger a terrible reaction. So then you try, try again, and finally find balance. Imagi
Read more

Serial Killers: a Troublesome Trend

Image
  As a mystery author ( E.C. Ayres ) I am troubled by a trend in the writing and publication of mystery/suspense thrillers: serial killers have become a near requirement in today's literary fare. Personally, I yearn for the days of Agatha Chrystie, Mickie Spillane, and Sam Spade. It was all about character development, depth of relationship (bright and dark), memory and recollection, illusion and disillusionment. What happened in those novels were vivid reflections of life as it is or was truly lived (and sometimes, ended). They reflected our actual world, albeit focusing on a particular location or aspect. The keys, always, were character and suspense. And when done right, it can be unforgettable. There can be exceptions, of course, to this trend (or any trend) as always. The book that triggered my need to write this blog was this one:  As I delved into the early chapters I was instantly troubled by the opening introduction of a serial killer just getting warmed up, it seemed, wit
Read more

Greatest Female Blues Vocals

Image
In no particular order:           Etta James    Damn Your Eyes    Her deep, guttural voice was made for the blues. Mamie Smith Crazy Blues She was the first to break the color barrier with this song in 1920. However, white pressure groups demanded that all of her backing musicians were white. Ma Rainey    See See Rider , with Louis Armstrong Paramount marketed her extensively, calling her the "Mother of the Blues", the "Songbird of the South", the "Gold-Neck Woman of the Blues" and the "Paramount Wildcat". Bessie Smith      St. Louis Blues No less a legend than Janis Joplin considered Bessie Smith the world's greatest blues singer. She became known as "The Empress of the Blues, so clearly, there's room for one more title. She died in a car crash. Ethel Waters     Stormy Weather Born as a result of her mother’s rape, she led a tragic life. Ethel was never shown any love by her family. She married into what would become an abusive r
Read more