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As Dorothy said, there's no place like it.
By Western reckoning, my birth sign is Cancer. Among the strongest traits of the Cancerian is a love of home. In the Japanese/Chinese zodiac, I'm a sheep--also a homebody.
So what's a home-lover like me doing living in a foreign country? Even more, why did I choose to become homeless for three months? When I sign in to lodging, I have to give my former office address, because I don't live anywhere.
How can this be?
My buddy Eric made a cogent observation once. He told me that even though I've opted for a sort of alternate home (this was before my current homelessness, when I lived in an apartment), I seemed to really crave time alone in that home.
Put another way: whatever situation I have defined my "home" to be, I grow really attached to it.
I accept this observation.
When I was a little kid, pre-school age, my aunt took me to visit my grandmother a day's drive from home. Everyone marveled that I didn't cry to go home. Someone said, though, that it meant I was secure enough about home that I wasn't troubled by being away from it.
Maybe. All I know is that for as long as I can remember, wherever I'm going to sleep that night is "home." And I do love it.
In 1995 I put my things in storage and moved in with actor Robert Urich and his family. (That's another story.) My stuff is still in storage. [2019: Since 2016, it has been here with me in the Philippines. At last.] I lived with the Urichs in Park City, Utah, for half a year, then with my folks, then in a Urich-sponsored apartment in Santa Fe while I worked on a show with Robert. Then back to Mom and Dad's, then to Japan, where my apartments were arranged by Aeon, the language school I worked for here. [2019: Then back to L.A.--mostly with Mom and Dad--then to China for 11+ years. And now settled in the Philippines.]
I haven't signed a housing agreement, or paid rent directly to a landlord, in almost seven years. [2019: Now I own one!] Yet every night, I love to get into my room and shut the door.
Someone said, "Home is where the heart is." I know what they meant, but I think I need to tweak that. For me, home is in my heart. I am fortunate in having a kind of peace when it comes to that sort of thing, evident even when I was a child.
It has its down side, though. I'm often late to appointments, and one reason is that I'm just so happy wherever I am that I hate to leave! On this walk, it's hard to get out of my room in the morning, and just as hard to leave wherever I am and return at night--though once I'm here, I'm ecstatic.
People in America ask me when I'm coming home.
Well folks, I'm home. Wherever I am.
Posted September 25, 2019
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