Just a Stage without the Actors

 If there is one thing I’ve learned in college it’s that home is not, strictly speaking, a place.  In no way is home a neighborhood, restaurants, and attractions.  For if you remove the soul of the place, you are left with nothing but a used, old, decrepit building.  Home is soul.

 

Home is made up of family- those who you live with and those you communicate with deeply and frequently.  When I long for home I long for my dogs, brother, parents, and friends.

 

I also long for special locations.  I long for the beach, Disneyland, and the local shopping district.  But see, those items aren’t what I’m really longing for.  I’m longing for the connection I’ve made with people there, the memories that I have made over time.  I can visit any of those locations on a perfect sunny day, and it will only dig the pit in my stomach deeper, leaving me feeling more empty than I had before arrival.

 

I want to share a lot of these locations with my friends at school.  So they can see where I’ve grown up, where I came from, what made me who I am today.  But I don’t what to show them the places, I want to show them the memories. I feel like my old home explains a lot about myself, and I feel like the act of sharing these memories will make the bond between my friends and I closer than it ever was before.

 

See, home is where your heart is, and for me, that’s at school.  The last five years has been a slow process of moving, and in four months I’m going to be kicked out, and go homeless again.  Nostalgia will be all that I have left.

 

A lot of people have questioned my obsession with Disneyland.  They want to understand what it comes from, and how I can go time and time again and not get bored of the same rides and shows.  I’ve never really given anyone the same answer.  For some I’ve said the rides, for most I say the atmosphere.  But really, it’s none of these things.

 

I think my feelings towards Disneyland can best be captured by Steve Martin in his autobiography Born Standing Up.

Ten years later, after the Beatles, drugs, and Vietnam had changed the entire tenor of American life, I returned to the magic shop at Disneyland and stood as a stranger. As I looked around the eerily familiar room another first came over me, a previously unknown emotion, one that was to have a curious force over me for the rest my life: the longing tug of nostalgia. Looking at the counter where I pitched Svengali Decks and the Incredible Shrinking Die, I was awash with the recollection of indelible nights where the sky was blown open by fireworks and big band sounds drifted through trees strung with fairy lights. I remembered my youth, when every moment was crisply present, when heartbreak and joy replaced each other quickly, fully and without trauma. Even now when I visit Disneyland, I am steeped in melancholy, because a corporation has preserved my nostalgia impeccably. Every nail and screw is the same, and Disneyland looks as new now as it did then. The paint is fresh, and the only wear allowed is faux. In fact, only I have changed. In the dream-like world of childhood memories, so often vague and imprecise, Disneyland remains for me not only vivid in memory, but vivid in fact.

 

What does home mean to you?