I still don't know the definition of home, I actually expected to find more of a solid answer. But I know that home is where people you love are, and it makes it the most hard to leave a place. When you choose a life where you meet so many faces, you have to say goodbye a lot, and I think of Elisabeth Bishop again who herself traveled all around following her heart "the Art of losing isn't hard to master". I'm the kind of person who is left depressed after a day at the mall because I saw so many people I'll never get the chance to know or keep in my life, so sating farewell to important teachers, classmates, and anyone else I come across, for that matter, leaves my heart a little bit bruised. It takes awhile for my heart to really build on something, but when it does its adhesive sort of sticks and I feel as though a part of me is gone when that person is. There are just too many people in this world to know, there is just not enough time to connect with every thing and every life. That is one of the saddest things about life, the abundance of good that will never be reached by U.S. Home is where the signifiers are, the little motifs that prod us into our cocoon of sameness. The sound of the turnstile, the sound the bathroom door makes when your roommate closes it in the morning, the smell of the hallway, skateboards, the red awning of The Strand on Broadway. The grates outside the K Mart that scare you every time you walk over them because you can see the subway below. Even the homeless man who stands on the corner of 14th and 4th every day asking the same thing. The guy who gives you extra donuts at the coffee shop just because, the signed movie posters on your way to class that remind you of the genealogy of a artists past and how hallowed the halls you walk are. The murmur, the constant noise horns pavement skateboard dog yelling fountain bike church bell children playing sounds keep you alive and stimulated, and there is life happening all around you, and there it is, and someone is doing back flips and someone is tanning and someone else is throwing a football and someone is playing folk music reading tarot cards protesting rape culture drawing playing in the fountain bickering about work talking about a boy scolding their child and life is so very much alive. But then I think of the warm bundle of my dog on the scratchy carpet and the way my tree looks from where I lay in my bed, and the crickets and cows and stillness, save the monthly tornado siren. The times you'd go outside in the winter just to lay in the muffled silence of the snow that doesn't let anything in, the sky that's never black this. You can go outside and walk for miles and not see a single soul, you smile at everyone you know and even more people you don't. It smells like cow shit and fresh air, thank god, finally. The way the garage door rumbles your floor in the muted blue of the morning when your Dad leaves for work, orange sliver of light flowing from the hall. The dark scent of coffee is really what wakes you. At night the air comes on cold to chilly, at night the doors all get locked and the dog is let outside. Your moms footsteps in socks back to her room. The low frequencies in your fathers voice penetrating the wall. Goodnight, Danni, I love you. I don't want to die. I want to stay alive, forever being, forever making. I want to know what happens. I want something to happen, please. Stop Pennsylvania
