A Silent Duration
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D: “How do you feel about littering?”
E: “At the risk of sounding redundant: I think littering is a result of us, literally, not taking the rubbish out. I mean, think about it, despite us building these separate ‘residential’ structures called ‘homes’ the literal Earth is THE macrocosm of these ‘houses’ — everything finds itself on the firmness of the Earth. And as a result of not designing or just even knowing where to take our rubbish, we haven’t taken the rubbish out, ever, and it’s just here, on the street. We need to decide where the trash can of the Earth is, and it’s not Africa f—-king bozos. Maybe, like, a black hole or something way out in the universe. A designated, intergalactic dung-hill, like in Futurama lol.”
***
To be a person that feels at home throughout the world sounds like a theoretical/existential conundrum, but really, it is a State of Being that is inherent, made difficult by the various socio-political portholes that we have curated for ourselves. (I mean, consider it: the idea of homelessness is so bizarre when you really think about it in the grand scheme of things but I digress…)Nevertheless, as a very apt example, homelessness is a significant gateway into exploring what it truly means to be at home in the world:
Is it in the confines that create the impression of shelter, and so a lack thereof, signals your expulsion from the Earth and/or the human family? No. (Although I do feel like in some sadistic way, the capitalist solution is to create some space on Mars, the same way people just dump stuff in the ocean.)
Is it the ritualised sense of dignity that comes with ‘taking care of one’s body,’ which in turn opens the most fascinating can of worms that may reveal, what and how the very “in” of our bodies, minds, and consciousness play in this idea of home?
I dont have an answer for the latter.
Home: a place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates…
I am not sure, exactly, what it takes to feel at home in the world, but somewhere along the lines of, and consequences of coloniality, it seemingly requires a certain kind of whiteness, and more often than not, a certain kind of wealth. In all fairness, this is a very boring route to take into the conversation, and I actually have no interest in talking about the inherent fallacy of race.
Instead, I believe these structures of coloniality, (despite their very real phenomenological impacts), to be a psychosomatic manifestation of a complete disconnect from what we understand as the “in” and “out” of what it means to be a person. The external factors of geopolitics and socio-economic barriers that demarcate, and make the world (gluttonous) for some, creates fissures that require us to bridge the gaps between rationale, mysticism, and modernity — ‘in’ ourselves.
Under the “agitation of the pursuit of beings [chasse aux êtres], there reigns an imperturbable repose,” a nonrestlessness in the firmness of the Earth. Despite, maybe even, in-spite, the impending doom that climate change poses to the longevity of the human race, this self-possessed stillness that holds the Earth firmly in its position, must be a significant part of how we define home. All the self-help books tell us that “home is a feeling, of peace, of comfortability, of familiarity.“ Yet whether you feel peace or not, comfortable or not, seen or not, it all takes place, even negation, on the firmness of the Earth. I am in no way suggesting that things like safety, love, shelter, food, friends etc. are unimportant and we should just all live in our heads (lol), but these things are neither contingent on the concepts of modernity, even though their scarcity is a consequence of modernity. (Makes no sense, does it.)
So, what does it mean to feel at home throughout the world?
Most times I find myself a little speechless. No; I find myself a little blank, completely unable to access a language that places me in the midst of a whole, and in turn, a part of that whole. But:
Being asserts itself, bears itself out, to the point of appearing and of making itself into presence in a consciousness. The fact that we speak is the very emphasis of being. The fact that we think and assert is the fact that being itself asserts itself. (Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death & Time).
To extend this Levinasian principle:
Home, in this sense, for me at least, is a doing, an acting out of these processes of Being. Home, materialises in the ways that we position ourselves among others, the ability to be part of a whole.
Home: an induction of experiences that curate a timeline in the midst of other timelines; Home: consistent fluidity, change, intrinsic.
Outside the structures of coloniality, outside the geopolitics, and cultural conundrums that keep the capitalist structure self-replicating, there is a repose, it is in that repose that I find home.
A silent duration:
Like time itself, this silent duration calls into focus, not necessarily what home is (objectified, possessed), but what flows within home. Indeed, I have written, and I am constantly seeking to write, as someone who is at home in the world.— e.
