Home… Where is that?

To me everything is a writing prompt, or more to the point a thinking prompt, an inner conversational starter. I’ll see an image or read something and my mind kicks into gear, talking up a storm and a bunch of words burst out of my fingers onto the page. Sometimes I ramble all over verbal hill and dale, occasionally treading in a cowpat while distracted by and swatting at a halo of flies which have been attracted to the fumes my head is giving off.

I like most of all to explore an idea and see where it leads. That is my version of traveling. I prefer thought journeys to physical ones. There is more freedom and less practicality. And you can go far beyond this earthly place. That’s why my mind loves the internet. I can go anywhere, even into space (have a gander at Saturn as it eclipsed the Sun), see everything all at once, change itinerary with the click of a button and do almost anything without moving more than the muscles in my hands and eyes. I can also stop and turn it all off. The journey ends where I end it.

The thing I find most exciting about thought journeys is finding a thought in my head which I didn’t know was there. Or discovering a new version of an old mental construct, flipping myself and my world around. Sometimes the new view becomes my new home, and sometimes it’s just a short trip away then I return to my old home, my comfort zone, where everything is just as I left it, and just the way I like it even if I don’t like it.

Just before I checked out the Daily Post’s Daily prompt, I was having an inner argument with a Gawker article. Not arguing with the article itself which I sort of agreed with, and thought was a clever observational piece, but with some of the comments. Comments are a wonderful source for writing prompts because people can be very passionately open when commenting especially on internet news sites. One person’s passion tends to inspire another’s passion. Rants, yours and those of others, are a great muse.

The article was about a celebrity. Nothing can induce more passionate comments than who we think a celebrity is and what we think of them. They are a strange symbol to us of so many things within us. If we love a celebrity, identify with them in some way, we sometimes love them with that weird thing known as unrequited love, a very intense feeling which grows and grows and never has to face reality. If someone disses them or we perceive them to be slighted, then we rush to the rescue far quicker and more fiercely than we would if someone said the same thing about us. They don’t care, but we do. Why? Because they represent something to us which is a treasure no one must touch.

I spent a while traveling in the world of celebrity on the internet years ago when it was trending. It was intriguing at first, but eventually it became familiar territory, so that journey ended and I moved on to something else.

So, the Daily prompt, well, there was the one before which used James Lipton’s questions for his celebrity guests on his show. I watched that show a few times… I must admit the host was always more fascinating than the guests and what they had to say. They were mostly too self-conscious, out of their comfort zone, sometimes painfully so, but he was in his element, one designed for him by him.

There is nothing more intriguing than observing a person who is fully at home in a time and place.  At least it is intriguing to me because I have never felt at home anywhere, not in any time or place. I make do with where I am, both physically and timewise… but I rarely feel that feeling – This is my time and place and I belong right here. I’ve had moments of it and what a rush it is! Mostly I tend to always feel as people do when they are far from home. Slightly uncomfortable, a bit out of sync, and searching for some familiar bearings in the unfamiliar.

Reading this – Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home – my mind went blank and silent. To know where the farthest place from home is, you first have to have a place known as home, and I just thought – Where is home?

I searched my mind for a concept of home and the best I could come up with is within me. No matter where we are or go, we carry ourselves with us like a snail with its shell. Our shell sometimes changes, gets bigger or crushed… do snails rebuild their shell when it gets crushed? Why have I never wondered about that before… maybe I have and have forgotten it because it was many journeys ago… must go and look it up, perhaps again and perhaps it will be forgotten again, I’m sure someone has the answer somewhere out there on the world wide web of amazing journeys elsewhere, near and far.