Drawing by Nabila, Victim of Drone Attack | Emmanuel Iduma
“In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelterless, but also lost in non-being, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation….
“Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but, also, undoing the very meaning of the world and – at its most extreme – abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd.”[1]
If home is the center of the world, in an ontological (not geographical) sense, have I shifted centers?
I feel I have been beguiled by physicality; I hadn’t known that it is through the visible that one orientates himself with the world. These days I am disoriented by the simple fact that I can’t find her face on every street.
“The very sense of loss keeps alive an expectation.”
I have lost the ability to recall her face without looking at a photograph.
“Without a history of choice no dwelling can be a home.”
When does a dwelling become “home”? If you could feel uprooted in every city you’ve chosen to settle in, what can you claim as home? What is your center?
“The mortar which holds the improvised ‘home’ together – even for a child – is memory. Within it, visible, tangible mementoes are arranged….but the roof and four walls which safeguard the lives within, these are invisible, intangible, and biographical.”
You have to realize, as I have, that home is memory and memory prostitutes itself.
“Meanwhile, we live not just our own lives but the longings of our century.”
I am implicated by demands higher than myself; it has carried me afield. It seems all my life I will have to keep outpacing distance, covering the tenuous ground between my Self and other Selves.
Note[2]
[1] All quotations from: John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, (London: Writers and Readers, 1984), 54-67
[2] “Thought Scores” are numbered on-the-go-ideas originating from ongoing research, readings, conversations, weblinks, controversies, etc. I am drawn to.
I’m intrigued by the distinction you draw between “Self” and “selves.” Are you saying that you have an essential “Self” – a core around which your other (lesser, because lower case) “selves” must revolve? How do you decide which self takes precedence over the other?
Well, that could read “Selves.” I had written “…between myself and selflessness,” but changed that at the final minute. I am referring to the Other.
Ah, now I get it. Thanks for explaining! 🙂