the familiar

One of the things I got to thinking about in the darkest moments of homesickness when I was enduring my turn at a bout of food poising was what exactly is it that makes home home. Of course one can name family members (including pets), list particular items and reminisce over food and certain ways of doing things - but what is about these things? Put simply, it is that they are familiar, and most the familiar of these are found at home, so much so that they exist beyond the point of conscious distinction. The sounds and smells of home are something that are never noticed until they are no longer there; it is the place where we find those things with which we have the most affinity.

For me putting family aside for the moment, there are still moments now when I miss the sanctity of my own bedroom and most of all my bed, however after traveling once through Tokyo and then on to Kyoto, returning to Tokyo the second time was a kind of welcome return to the familiar. So I started to think what it is about particular places that make people want to move and settle there. Disregarding the person motivated by a need to escape for the purposes of this discussion, it seems to me that there must be some kind of affinity that is felt for the new location; something in the air or water that speaks to some inarticulate part of a persons being that tells them, this is like home.

As yet on my travels I have not found such a place, nor do I really expect to -- in fact I have come to appreciate Australia on levels I never quite imagined -- however, on the road there have been many other travelers who have at various points of my passing through told me of how they have stopped where I have found them, and now call this or that place home. At the moment, apart from a new understanding of my feelings towards the home that is Australia, I feel the most affinity for the act of leaving, of bidding a pace farewell, and perhaps when I return home that is what I will miss most.