Random thoughts on the meaning of home

What is home? where is home?  where and how do I feel at home?

None of these thoughts are new for me. Indeed, I have been contemplating on them for as long as I can remember. Here are some recent ones since my return from Africa (southern africa) and earlier this year, from Israel.

I have now lived out of South Africa for far longer than I lived there. I have lived in America, California, for longer than I have lived anywhere else, and yet I have always experienced cultural dissonance.

The first night in Namibia I sat on a bench outside my room.  The moon was just a sliver.  All was quiet, other than the occasional rustles, and notes of night birds.  I was enveloped in the immense stillness of the bush. Overhead was the southern cross -  I gazed at the sky thick with blazes of green and orange, and effervescent trails of shooting stars.  The vastness of the milky way so clear and so deep. The more I looked, the more comfortable and the more settled I felt.  No words, no thoughts, just the caress of the gentle wind, and the quiet and the immensity of my surroundings.  The two pointers guided me to the southern cross, and due south. I was home again.  A feeling beyond words - just quiet, settled, deep.

In Israel, when I drive through Wadi Ara and the Jezreel Valley opens and unfolds, and I see Har Tabor I experience a similar feeling.

Is home a place? No, I don't think so.  In terms of South Africa it is a place where I feel immediately comfortable. Everyone sounds like me? No waiter ever looks at me in a strange manner when I request water. They know what I am asking for and bring it to me.  How comforting it is to order a toasted cheese and not to be questioned as to the type of cheese and bread I would prefer. We stop at robots and go up and down buildings in lifts. I feel that this is how things should be, and I like it.

And even though I grew up knowing I would leave because of the system of apartheid, and the discomfort and dis-ease I felt, it is where I was born and raised.

Israel is  home of a different kind. Possibly the most important events of my young adulthood happened there and they have kept me forever linked to the turbulent, lovely little country.

And now, here I am, and have been for a long time, in California.  I would not still be here if I did not feel a sense of well being.  The beauty of this area reminds me of South Africa and Israel.  I have worked in the east bay for a long while and have discovered much about the different people here. I like the diversity.

So --- these are random thoughts - no answers.  I will continue writing and thinking about them I am sure.