Forward

This post develops my thoughts on the theme of home that I first explored with focus in Home. You may appreciate reading Home before continuing to read this post.

Whenever people ask me where I live, I have, for so long, spoken about the proximity to the city, knowing that Edinburgh is a place whose name people know. Earlier today, though, I realised that I shouldn’t necessarily define where I am in relation to another place: such phrasing can be helpful for direction, to help orient, but not necessarily to create place. What happens when I directly describe where I grew up? The story becomes much richer.

I live in a land of stories and poetry, where traditions from hundreds of years ago continue to this day. I live where I am continually surprised by the world around me, such as when I learned a famous designer lived here, and when I learned one of my favourite painters did some work in various parts of the region. I live where there are hills and homes. It’s quieter here, but I like the peace: the Earth doesn’t need to speak as loud for me to hear what it is saying.

I live among trees and hills that I have seen a thousand times before. I still see beauty in them every day. My seasons are oriented by the trees around and how they reveal and conceal distances near and far. I live by the colour of the plants: the bare branches of winter, the reds and yellows of autumn, the greens of summer, the pinks of spring. I live knowing that my writing is steeped in this place: in the countryside.

While I have dreamed of living in cities, I prefer, at least right now, to visit: to dip my toe into a new stream of life and feel all that I can, and then take away the stories and memories. I love seeing the world, every place having such detail that I could spend a lifetime there and still not understand the place. I feel the same about here: there is so much to see, to learn, to visualise.

My wish for the countryside was that it was easier to make friends; the web is my friend in that regard. But home has a certain way of filling in the gaps: of being a place where you can write letters to new worlds while walking around the one you know so well.

Month by month, year by year, I feel more comfortable saying that I live in the country. Will I move some day? Maybe. Flashes of future furnish my mind, imagining what it would be like to be elsewhere. And in some regards, I wonder if this is the beginning of a new chapter.

Yet every where I have been I have not found a place I could call home as much as where I am now. Moving to a city has always felt like it could be a means of “moving forward,” except now I realise there are so many dimensions of the term. There are ways for me to move forward while still being close to home.