Last night, I went to the spoken word show at the Loft that was a fundraiser for the APIA Spoken Word Summit in Boston. It's been a while since I last went to a spoken word show and I was pleased to see some of my friends perform, notably Ed "The Korean Dream" Bok Lee, Sun Yung Shin, and Bao Phi.
The theme of the show was the meaning of home/homeland in a climate of war and terrorism. It got me thinking about what is home to me.
The first thing to come to my mind is whether I consider Minneapolis/Minnesota my home. I've lived in Minneapolis for 5 years now and it's the longest I've lived in one place as an adult (since I left home for college 19 years ago!). But do I consider Minneapolis my home? Interestingly, I consider Mpls (the city) more of my home than Minnesota (the state). Day by day, I do consider Mpls my home but I think home is more of a layered experience. Not like the onion analogy in which there is a core (e.g., birthplace) and each new location (MA, VA, CA, TX, MN) is layered over the core. No, I think home is a permeable set of layers in which places, locations, cultures move closer or farther away from the core. Minneapolis as home definitely is moving closer to the core with each passing year, but it is because my friendships are deepening, my community involvement increasing, my duties/responsibilities expanding.
Some of the poets last night spoke about home in terms of friendships and cultural ties. I understand their viewpoint, yet I think these relational experiences are more manifestations of my sense of home/place. Home/place is clearly more subjective than objective...more emotional than factual. It's filled with your yearnings and dreams, fears and sorrows, contentment and joy. Home/place is reconstructed memories of the past pulled into the present and stretching into the future and present day experiences reshaping the way we think of the past and clouding our visions of tomorrow.
Sometimes, what is home today will not be a part of your home tomorrow. This is the permeability of it. Home can be like a piece of shrapnel embedded within the flesh. Each experience in life is shrapnel. Some shrapnel gradually make their way out of the body, while others become encapsulated by your muscles and ligaments and sink deep within your body.
When I was in college, I read Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart. That book had a profound effect on my identity as an individual, a Korean American, an Asian American. I had that unsettled existence most adolescents and young adults go through but compounded by ethnicity, race, and culture. For me, back then, home was transient - a moving freight train with me running along side the tracks trying to jump on like a hobo in an old Charlie Chaplin movie. When I read America is in the Heart, I realized that I didn't have to chase after my sense of place, belonging, connection, home. I needed to look within and accept what was within me - the good, the bad, the ugly. I had agency over my life. I could not let the outside world completely define me and completely determine where I belong.
Of course, this transformation did not happen over night. It has taken years and the transformation is still occurring.
Today, when I think of home, I think family, friends, work, community, my house and my neighborhood. Mostly, though, it's the degree of content in my life. To me, I know I am home when I am content.
Posted by richlee at August 12, 2005 12:25 PM