[Rethinking ‘home’]

I haven’t much had the desire (or time) to blog since coming back from Nashville. I was away from the computer all weekend and in contact with many of the people with whom I use this blog to communicate, so I didn’t really have any reason or means to write. And now that I’m back here, it’s clear that my visit just renewed my homesickness and that my previous post rings a little hollow: The instant I passed the Charlotte Avenue exit on 40 East, I remembered what really feeling at home is like.

I just can’t shake the feeling that I need to get back to Nashville. And I can’t fake feeling like I’m at home in Memphis. Memphis is a lot of things — historied, troubled, big, beautiful, fragmented — but it is just not my home. I told Phil today that Memphis feels kind of like a B movie to me. He understood perfectly. This is not to insult Memphis or say that it’s a bad place to live; I’m sure I’d feel more warmly about it had I gone to college here or grown up here. But it just contains no significance for me other than my job. I have very few positive memories and experiences binding me to this place. I’m sure it’s perfectly lovely for some people, but in terms of my life, it can’t hold a candle to Nashville. This could and might change with time. But I kind of doubt it.

It’s romantic and silly and hyperbolic and all that. I know. But it’s a gut feeling. And I trust my guts.

But I won’t be miserable about being here for however long I will be here. For now, I’ll settle for the occasional feeling of comfort and contentment that hits when I forget what it is I really want, but in the back of my mind I know that someday it will be time to make the leap back. My life might carry me to far-off places and cities all across the country, and I actually want it to, but my heart will stay in Middle Tennessee. Some day, when the clock in my aforementioned guts ticks just right, I know it will be time to come back and start putting down some proverbial roots. I just wonder how long it will take to get to that point, and if I’ll ever fall in love with another city the way I’ve fallen for that one.

There are photos from the trip here and here. I recall taking a lot more at the party that I ended up with, and somehow I didn’t get a single photo of Amanda or Adam, though I truly remember taking at least two. How does that happen? And how does one go about, asking everyone around to smell the crumpled toilet paper in one’s hand? I can’t be expected to explain it; I had rum and Everclear. But you’ll all be relieved to know that the TP smelled like flowers. It’s true!