Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Tuesday Aug. 22, 2006 - Year 4, Day 154 - homeless
written in Edmonton, sent from an internet café on Jasper Avenue
17C/63F, calm, clear & mild this morning inn north Edmonton; Gusta remembers the neighbourhood but not enough to walk calmly - she knows this is familiar, but clearly it is not home
where is home?
yesterday was full & long & wonderful; an early start, lunch with DB in Red Deer & the evening with my kids @ The Fringe Festival in Edmonton; we soaked up atmosphere, saw a mediocre play & hung out; the big event was to see some of Krista's new things she is so proud of - apartment, car & boyfriend - each nicer, newer & cleaner than their predecessors . . very vice
return visits to Edmonton are more than 'warm summer evenings & soft water', but those two are especially nice; the Fringe Festival has morphed a little, but not much - but I feel like a Calgarian visiting more than an Edmontonian coming home
moving at age 8 to Red Deer, I feel no sense of home with Estevan yet I really enjoy spending time in that province & standing in a wheat field; then leaving Red Deer where I grew up, where I felt at home but I lack the need/urge to return there for something I miss or long for that cannot be cured by visiting with DB; Calgary, then Edmonton then back to Calgary have been my homes interrupted only by meaningful vacations to far off warm places; yesterday I spent some of my time in Calgary, Red Deer & Edmonton - in each feeling at home, but not feeling I was home
what makes one place HOME & others just places to revisit?
clearly western Canada is where I am from, Alberta is where I live, Calgary is the community I currently feel most part of; my recent explorations of countryside in this province & SW Saskatchewan searching out the ideal weekend retreat & regular musing about spending part of the year somewhere very warm where palm trees grow causes me to wonder where home is/was, or, if I really have had a sense of home
home, or perhaps the absence of feelings of homelessness, is where you are with the people who matter to you; that makes a lot of places home
Mark
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