Home

8.7.06

I sit on the front porch, enjoying the cool evening and the spider who's diligently building a huge condo complex from our crepe myrtle tree to the entry way and realize how tenuous is both his construct and the very idea of home. I have just spent 2 weeks in another country, in another person's house, feeling comfortable and welcome amongst strangers and now am back in my world of known things and people and marvel at how easy the transition is. If home is where the heart is, then indeed, whereever one decides to open that part of oneself, whether it be in one's regular abode, or a hotel on a business trip, or in a yurt in Nepal or on a medical ship providing services, or perhaps even in jail, then that is where you find yourself. As I clean up the vestiges of an unoccupied house and decant the suitcases and wander the aisles of the 99 cent store I think of all the stuff, the things of life that we associate with who we are. My cello has been unplayed for 2 weeks and it feels like the only thing I really missed while away. Am I being romantic in thinking that I don't need all the other accoutrements I've grown so used to? Or am I still straddling that inter-continental divide, between here and there?

Perhaps it's this ability to keep connected to one's loved ones now, whereever one is that keeps one centered. There was a woman at the house who spent every free moment when not in class on teh phone to her new boyfriend back in teh states. They are in that new falling in love stage, where their whole world revolves around each other and I couldn't help feeling sorry that she was missing this experience to know the town, the people, the country. But that's not what she needed; it was that connection to someone that was more important at this time in her life, than taking advantage of her surroundings to experience a new world. So the telephone cord became her life line, always stretched from teh table to the couch where she would remain hunkered down in virtual real time with someone 1,000's miles away, until she can be with him again. The copper wire umbilical cord to her home replaced that space she was in physically for her time away.

I wonder if all this instant connectibility will help us see the world in a new way. I remember reading that the fax machine was responsible for the fall of the U.S.S.R. as people were able to send documents to each other in the time of a phone call. We know that e-mail was used to prepare for 9-11 and has connected people of various ilks from around the world withe a speed and intimacy never before posssible. One can watch teh news and now seek alternative opinions and information from blogs and other sources, find like-minded spirits to discuss issues of import or survey the opposite camp's positions and maybe learn something new. Or do we just seek information that re-inforces waht we already believe.

When traveling, I love to discuss my country's politics and history and hear how we are perceived abroad. I watch foreign television and think what a skewed picture others must have of us by the programming that they view. And then I watch a father caress teh cheek of his daughter, a mother chase after an errant toddler, a toothless grandmother hobble down the street, young man admire the naked legs of a female jogger in shorts, couple groping on a bench, two men discussing a soccer match. And the scene appears re-producible; a template you could lay down pretty much anywhere (well, except the female jogger and groping couple in a Muslim country).

I come home and see people just being people (thanks Barbra), some speaking this language I just "immeresed" in, and wish our leaders could take a deep breath and open their eyes. The big businesses (and their political partners) that drive commerce, economies and now these wars for the fuel we depend on, are all made up of people who are so far removed from the day to day realities of mankind, there's no way we should expect them to look out for us. They look out for themselves and their friends. THrow religion into the mix and we have tar clotting our eyes shut to the commonality of mankind. I can't look at the news of Iraq and Lebanon any more, can't fathom cultures, cities, homes, families destroyed because some big boys are waving their dicks around in the name of democracy or hezbollah or zionism or capitalism.

I don't know that women leaders would do things differently but I can say one thing, housekeeping and homemaking require cooperation, not competition. They require attending to the minutiae of life that keep us all alive, the cooking and cleaning and mending and making and baking and teaching and tending. As I put my home back together and make a quick microwave dinner I think back to the senora who does her shoppping daily, who climbs up the hill to her house 3 times a day, who takes care of her guests and prepares 3 meals a day for close to 15 people and goes to church and attends funerals and gets her hair done and watches her grandaughters and puts the clothes on the line to dry, as so many millions of women around the world do, I think, what woman has time to make war?

My spider has built an incredibly strong web to trap and house his prey; it takes all day and then he will rest and eat and, if need be, build again when his home is destroyed by the wind or a passing arm. Would we, if we paid more attention to our real needs, and not those suggested by the media or the marketplace, be more creative and less destructive? Have we as a race ever been free from conflict and the transgressions of war or are we doomed, ultimately to destroy so much of what we build, in the name of "nation-building" and "peace keeping" and "sovereign rights?" Will we ever just sit with what we have and be glad?