A Project, A Home
“We are the real countries.” — Michael Ondaatje
We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That’s all I’ve wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps...
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
It’s the night before our last night in this apartment, and I thought that I’d have more insights to put on paper than a few scattered paragraphs.
After all, it’s the place I’ve lived in the longest in the past ten years abroad. And yet, it’s the only place that has practically expelled us; structural water damage in a high-rise feels futile to fight against, or to wait indefinitely for it to be rightfully solved.
Home is yet again a foreign concept, at least in the traditional sense of it - a reliable, long-term, safe, comfortable place to rest in. I used to feel quite fatigued by the chaos of displacement, taking place religiously every one or two years. Something has changed, though: three different layers of personal insights which may or may not relate at first sight:
Projects: not countries, not homes
In the past years I have defined my life by countries and cities and homes, and yet when I think about each of them as individual projects, especially now in retrospect, my weariness is replaced by a comforting sense of satisfaction.
I loved my homes and tried to live well in all of them, but I knew they were evanescent, a defined time to regroup, followed by another search. They were homes, but also projects in which I started things anew: I dived into the bureaucracy of immigration, started new jobs, learned new streets and cities, and had my mind changed, altered, and enriched by the places I’ve loved and left.
Home as a perpetual return
As an immigrant, there is a chance my home will always be the temporary return to the first places I left behind. As the years pass, now an entire decade abroad, this feels sharper than before. In a way, that’s a bliss: to have a place one can always return to, like in a perpetual cycle of adventures and returns to that “one time, one place.”
Take your pleasures yearnings seriously
Personally, the home within myself becomes clearer when I take my yearnings seriously. By yearnings I do not mean simple wishes or desires, but those things, ideas that keep throbbing in the back of my mind, that I always return to as something unresolved, still puzzling, and ready to be bridged into life.
The problem I encounter more frequently as the years pass is listening to those yearnings carefully, in order to make them clear, so that I know how to spell them out. Spelling them out is the key.
Some days have passed, and countless boxes and bags are scattered all around our new place. I can see the North Sea in the far distance, and I know I’ll quickly make this shell of a place into another home.
Dear readers,
Thank you for your support this year. I am not yet sure in what form I will continue this newsletter next year. During the first two months of the year, I will take a short break to curate and edit a book of essays and interviews that I plan to publish in a small batch.
If you would like to receive a copy, please reply to this email or reach out to me on Substack and I will add you to the list.
For those who celebrate, I wish you a wonderful Christmas, and for everyone, a beautiful, prosperous New Year.
Onwards,
Patricia