Home: Not Always Where We Think It Is
The stars we are given. The constellations we make.
That is to say, the stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.
The desire to go home, to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of the intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars,
to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love.
To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild,
to shelter in darkness and blaze with light,
to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.
Nights alone in motels,
nights with strange paintings and floral bedspreads . . .
I have lost myself though I know where I am . . .
I have never been to this place before.
Times when some architectural detail or vista that has escaped me these many years say to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home.
You get lost out of a desire to be lost.
But in the place called lost, strange things are found.
Text from Rebecca Solnit’s Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
Photos taken in an abandoned motel on Route 301 in Virginia.
