Home (Double Identity)

Home is an apartment overlooking the sea. The winds are stronger and it's colder but that's all fine by me. This home is a large room with an ocean view and a careful colour scheme: red, brown and cream. The wonky top shelf - please don't fall down - and the lamp I bang my head on constantly. Sliding closet doors, (the right one always gets stuck a little,) and the windy walk down to the front door. The gas station opposite and the park down the road.

Home is an urban landscape with skyscrapers by the dozen. The constant presence and motion of people and I wonder where they're all going and what they're doing here. The constant buzz of traffic as vehicles of varying sizes and styles head in all directions carrying all sorts of people. Home is the multitude of shops and the overwhelming bombardment of advertisements everywhere. Home is a consumerist capital and if you walk slowly you'll fall behind.

Home is sitting in coffee shops with your friends. Walking around the streets and grabbing each other in an effort to not get swept away in the people-sea. Laughing at people in clubs and shouting over loud music in attempts to have your gossip-conversation right now. Finding grass and sitting in it just because it's so rare and lying down and then it goes everywhere but you don't mind.

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Home is green grass and blue - sometimes grey - skies. Large fields and trees and grass and all that picturesque imagery that comes to mind when you think of nature, you know? Walking on an empty sidewalk with no one all around and seeing your breath as you inhale, exhale. Finding everything closed on a sunday morning and the emptiness that's all around simultaneously eerie and relaxing.

Home is a box room at the end of a corridor which is cleaned once, twice, three times a day. Fairylights - the ones by the window always fall down - light it up once it gets dark and the only space on the walls are gaps between pictures. This home is a visual clash of colour but you got over it a long time ago . The overspilling closet and the guitar in the corner which is strummed occasionally but carefully in case the neighbours overhear. Newspaper covered branches tower over a laptop where you sit writing your thoughts down.

Home is deliberately falling asleep in film screenings and whispering through them with your friends as you sit in YOUR designated row (2nd from back, always.) Sitting on other people's beds after you've made them or fighting over a good spot for a film. Sitting on the floor of the corridor with a crowd that multiplies and grows as people leave and join. Dancing around the kitchen when it's crowded and trying desperately not to scald or be scalded with a hot saucepan. Talking about philosophy and life and things so inconsequential and unimportant that they stand out more in your mind and become important.

Home is the inside of your head. Your thoughts fly free and derailed and your opinions are your own. Your transatlantic dreams and hopes and aspirations and your future is all mapped out in the vaguest of ways. Your ideas and your writings and your work space and all your thoughts which are so articulated and elegant in your head but just so awkward when they leave that safety net. This home is with you wherever you go.