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Being home is something incredibly simple and yet strangely elusive.  It can appear very different based on context.  Yet it is here; there are patterns.

 

Arriving 

In the context of nationalism and colonialism -  home is neither, refusing to be treated as a resource to be mined or cropped; refusing to be someone’s quantification or categorization in a system of ghettoization, the yellow star or the card carrying citizenship of a vassal state; legitimization of empire.  Rather, in this context, home becomes somewhere in a “borderlands.” The infinity from the border looking out.  A coyote at the edge, in the heart of town. Let people think what they like. They’ll work it out or not. Maybe they will find the passage below, to find us here at home, through the narrow crawl through gate; find their way down the heights of vanity and join the party.  “Welcome to the goodlife.”

 

Skinning  

In the context of racism - home refuses to be defined by someone’s definition of skin color or polarized progress tinged racial Darwinist hierarchy - or even an imaginary resistance to that hierarchy which manifests itself as the more insidious pill of “self determination.” Is home not an environment? What’s the color of a house? The skin of a house? What are you? Are you not home? The lights are on but nobody’s home?  Let them be confused; or maybe they understand. Peering into the windows they may get a glimpse of truth in their confusion.  Let people think whatever they like; you and I continue regardless. Or do they book-end so quickly, so easily? Publication?

 

Resting

In the context of mechanical consumption and waste based resource extractive society - home is resting.  Embodiment.  The “sabbath” - meaning “the break.” The breaking, jamming, jiving, wilding; letting the machines grind to a halt.  Standing rock.  We can only stand in the way of the pipeline first by seeing it, then refusal to be fed by it/feed it, simultaneously by living life, by rejoicing here, at the borderline, by the waters edge, pursued by Pharaoh’s soldiers. Here, let’s be merry and enjoy ourselves, enjoy the sunset on the beautiful red violet purple blue sea, while desert embraces back.  There is plenty of work here - the vitalizing work of the spirit. Our lives and infinite immortal spirits themselves are testament, and redemption of the whole.

 

Embracing

Home is completely embracing.  Hate of any kind is always self hate, as it is effused from the mind and catches in one’s own body first, a biological gun, before rippling, ripping through the world, smelling like shit.  Perhaps in a society of unquestioned trauma and warped power dynamics this embrace is considered radical.  Such a society suggests a cutting solution.  Stigmatizing some part always suggests it’s removal; cutting out, eradication of parts of the self, parts of society. No; Love The Haters. Everybody shits.  “When you gotta go you gotta go.”  And it smells.  Fertilizer for the garden. Everybody needs to bathe.  Embrace is extremely normal, the middle way. No need to express approval.  No need to rally or chant, or chase after anyone or anything. Often it means doing nothing.  The “sound of one hand.” The ripple of love is often quiet, maybe even silent, somehow warm in moonlight’s silver shadow.

 

Struggling

 “If not now, when? If not here, where?”  The struggle is here. Without the apparatus of wealth, without the bills, without the mortgage or the status or the approval.  The struggle is here. Who is here? Who is here at the end of the day? At sunrise? Not who comes when asked, invisible tethers. Not one who happens to be around when it’s convenient for them. Not one who is necessarily physically beside, for whatever reason. Why not be skeptical of reasons? When we sit in silence, who is here? We are surrounded by so many ancestors, our parents, all those who have passed, our children; the air is thick, the grass is vibrantly alive with their footsteps, the sunlight shining and the darkness livid and boiling with their pulse.  We are them.  We are going nowhere but here.

 

Loving

In this peace here at home, it turns out there is an ocean of love. An ocean of shores and waves.  As it turns out, here there is community.  There is poetry and meaning to all words.  There is magic because thoughts, words, and actions ripple in the world; so many droplets of rain on a still pond.  We are land of lakes rivers and mountains, moving, intelligent. We are home.