Write a short story (600 – 1000 words max) that describes your sense of home and the values and stories that you use to connect yourself to your home and respond to all comments on your blog.
Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.
This one’s overdue cause I spent too much time reminiscing and being nostalgic.
Just kidding. Kinda.
I was trying to remember all the houses I’ve lived in throughout my life and came up with 7 different ones. During this writing process I figured the words house and home can’t always be used interchangeably and that home can be a moment too.
I’m writing this blog past its due date so I’ve had the chance to read a handful of other ones and have noticed a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories. According to Mattias Martens, in a very personal blog post that tells a brief story of his childhood in Saskatchewan, adolescence in Yukon, and latter bits in Vancouver, home “is a habit that builds up around you”; additionally, it can be “small and scattered”. Kathryn Cardoso, in her blog about home being difficult to find due to the constant relocation she faced early on, argues that home is “a complete sense of nothing”; this nothing for Kathryn is the wilderness as it draws out the sublime. In Jeff Malo’s blog about end-of-semester-visits from Kelowna to Coquitlam, home is “familiarity and comfort”; Jeff believes that home is where there are stories one can attach to landmarks and where one’s friends and family reside.
I think this list of mutually shared assumptions is spot on. When I think about home I think about all of the different places, “however small and scattered”, I’ve lived in (Martens) from my grandparent’s place in a small province in the Philippines to the big city in Manila; followed by my family’s move to Vancouver and the multiple basements and apartments we rented before finding our first house; my summer-long stays at my grandma’s in Honolulu; and my (temporary?) move to Kelowna for post-secondary. Home is the door I unlock at the end of the day, the shoe rack I put my kicks on, the drawer where all the keys are supposed to be in, the love seat I lay on, the TV that runs idle in the background playing local news or sports highlights missed during the day, and the phone I use to browse social media. This is the ritual I go through at the end of a work/school day in my house. Or the habit, as Mattias might say.
Furthermore, home is a place that’s intrusive-thought-resistant. Kathryn states that “it’s a complete sense of nothing”. I agree with this idea and relate it to my room. My room is very minimal. Books, memorabilia, and photos are all organized and tucked somewhere in my closet free from plain sight. My bed, dresser, hamper, and clothing rack are the only things immediately visible. Clutter stresses me out so I try to keep everything neat and tidy. I don’t want to have to think about anything so any school work, mail, and technology are kept out as much as possible. A festival wristband or a concert ticket I recently attended will probably be the only thing on top of my dresser that can be considered clutter. But even then it’d trigger positive thoughts and not negative ones. When you’re an English and Cultural Studies student reading wordy academic articles all day long that talk about how much this world sucks, the last thing you want to do is read (or think) some more. As students we spend so much time trying to decipher what’s being said that the little energy left can only be used to think about the basic things. I want to be able to lay on my bed on a dead Sunday afternoon and think about nothing, or be able to lay on the floor doing back stretches on a dead Tuesday evening and think about nothing. Home is a place of nothingness, where if Buddhist monks were to watch me, they would be jealous of my attainment of Nirvana.
Home is a place I feel comfortable and am familiar with. It’s the small province of San Manuel, Pangasinan I was born in where everyone knew each other and seemed to genuinely care for one another. It’s the little duplex I lived in in Manila where if my neighbors heard me dribbling a basketball outside they would come out and shoot hoops with me as well. I remember as a kid, my friends and I would stop by the corner store just at the end of our street to get soda in a plastic bag after biking around the neighborhood. Home is predictable. It’s knowing the lady behind the counter of that corner store and her knowing our exact order before we even placed it. It’s a place you just know.
It’s also a place we attach stories to. Home is the boba joint everyone in high school took their first girlfriends to because no one could afford anything more than two four-dollar boba drinks. It’s the skate park by the rec center we spent evenings and weekends on because we were too broke to do anything else. Or the caged basketball courts we sprained our ankles, fell on the pavement, and hit some crazy game winners in.
Whatever home is, I think it’s ultimately a place where we can be ourselves. It may be our room in our house, the outdoors, church, or an arena. I have so many different ideas of home. I think of all the places I feel comfortable and familiar in. Places where I’m surrounded by likeminded people. Home to me isn’t bound to a physical place—I don’t think it’s limited to that. Home is also a moment of bliss. Home was when Zedd dropped “Clarity” at Contact Music Festival 2014 and had to tune out the sound just to let the crowd sing the lyrics:
‘Cause you are the piece of me I wish I didn’t need
Chasing relentlessly, still fight and I don’t know why
If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy?
If our love’s insanity, why are you my clarity?
Essentially, home is a place we can be ourselves.
Works Cited
Cardoso, Kathryn. “Where Is Home?” ENGL 470A. UBC Blogs. 5 Jun 2015. Web. 13 Jun 2015.
Chow, Kevin. “Thailand – Coke in a Bag.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 17 May 2010. Web. 8 Jun 2015.
Martens, Mattias. “The Sense of Placelessness.” ENGL 470A. UBC Blogs. 4 Jun 2015. Web. 13 Jun 2015.
Malo, Jeff. “Short Story Post #4.” ENGL 470A. UBC Blogs. 5 Jun 2015. Web. 14 Jun 2015.
ZeddVevo. “Zedd – Clarity (Official Video) ft. Foxes.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 11 Jan 2013. Web. 8 Jun 2015.