Home?
04th November 2014
Home?
What or where is home? I have recently visited my childhood home, the place I have lived and worked for many years. Whilst I was catching up with friends and family I was also using the opportunity to visit parts of the South East I love. This included the South and North Downs (inc the River Wey) and the New Forest. These are places I have visited for many years and on a weekly basis and feel a strong affinity with. They feel like home to me.
As soon as I arrived these places are immediately familiar. The views, the noises, the mixture of flora and fauna are all obvious and expected. I am in a territory that my senses immediately understand and the places feel like long lost friends.
On returning to these familiar areas I inevitably encounter a mixture of wild life that I know as equally as the shape and colour of the land I tread. I hear the guttural roar of rutting stags, see delicate Gold crests flitting along the branches of a Holly Tree and detect a skylark singing from high. I know where things are and when they will happen. My subconscious tacitly recognises and anticipates the views, smells and activity all around. My subconscious feels safe, comfortable and therefore in tune. Rhythms are instep.
Therefore is the concept of home founded on the familiarity and subsequent connection we feel?, .....and maybe one feeds on the other?
Is even this question significant?
Is the thought of 'home' a place or feeling we should aim to capture and live within? Or is it a place that just holds the conveniences of familiarity and experience?
Some people seem to be able to make new homes very easily, without ever seemingly looking back to a place of familiarity. They never need to return to the place where their early formative experiences reside. Whilst others will have a constant eye on the turf of their childhood. Their home is a place of nostalgia that holds their "grass is greener" memories. Home is a definite, tangible place and its loss would be profound.
However, could the answer to 'where and what is home' be even more complex?
The poet John Clare had a very strong connection to his place of birth and would have had a clear view of where and what home is. It was a place he needed to be. Clare understood home by the shape of the land and mixture of flora and fauna that covered the land. He determined home by the natural changes and rhythm of nature and felt a part of these changes. He was part of the pattern and make up of his home as much as the Yellowhammer that built its nest in the hedge, who's home was a mere "bunch of grass that spindles rankIts husk seeds tall and high (and) 'tis rudely planned, Of bleachèd stubbles and the withered fare". Home is a way of doing things dictated by need, availability and a deep understanding. This sense of home is reflected in his poetry.
When Clare saw the many changes to the land around him (such as the effects of the enclosures act) he saw this as an attack on the values of 'place' and the connections that make home a home. Later in his life Clare, due to poor mental health, was removed from his home. However, Clare's home lived on in his mind. Home for Clare was eternal and was more than just bricks and mortar, or loyalty given to the arbitrary fortune of birth. It was a unique slot in the landscape that could only be filled by him. A puzzle without a piece, or a piece without a puzzle. Either way both would be incomplete.
I have a lot of sympathy with this view as I too find home is where I have a 'slot' that is uniquely shaped for (and by) me. This gap has been created by a deep understanding and knowledge of a place, whilst unknowingly absorbing all the information of the environment. This would be from simple adaptation to the temperature of the seasons, sixth sense knowing of where the sun is at different times of year, feeling part of the pattern of life as it goes about its annual business of living and surviving. It is feeling that is profoundly deep, almost unexplainable, with a spiritual connection to the land around me. It calls me at such a low decibel only my soul can hear it, whilst my mind continues to try to interpret the words.
“Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.”
― John Clare
What or where is home? I have recently visited my childhood home, the place I have lived and worked for many years. Whilst I was catching up with friends and family I was also using the opportunity to visit parts of the South East I love. This included the South and North Downs (inc the River Wey) and the New Forest. These are places I have visited for many years and on a weekly basis and feel a strong affinity with. They feel like home to me.
As soon as I arrived these places are immediately familiar. The views, the noises, the mixture of flora and fauna are all obvious and expected. I am in a territory that my senses immediately understand and the places feel like long lost friends.
On returning to these familiar areas I inevitably encounter a mixture of wild life that I know as equally as the shape and colour of the land I tread. I hear the guttural roar of rutting stags, see delicate Gold crests flitting along the branches of a Holly Tree and detect a skylark singing from high. I know where things are and when they will happen. My subconscious tacitly recognises and anticipates the views, smells and activity all around. My subconscious feels safe, comfortable and therefore in tune. Rhythms are instep.
Therefore is the concept of home founded on the familiarity and subsequent connection we feel?, .....and maybe one feeds on the other?
Is even this question significant?
Is the thought of 'home' a place or feeling we should aim to capture and live within? Or is it a place that just holds the conveniences of familiarity and experience?
Some people seem to be able to make new homes very easily, without ever seemingly looking back to a place of familiarity. They never need to return to the place where their early formative experiences reside. Whilst others will have a constant eye on the turf of their childhood. Their home is a place of nostalgia that holds their "grass is greener" memories. Home is a definite, tangible place and its loss would be profound.
However, could the answer to 'where and what is home' be even more complex?
The poet John Clare had a very strong connection to his place of birth and would have had a clear view of where and what home is. It was a place he needed to be. Clare understood home by the shape of the land and mixture of flora and fauna that covered the land. He determined home by the natural changes and rhythm of nature and felt a part of these changes. He was part of the pattern and make up of his home as much as the Yellowhammer that built its nest in the hedge, who's home was a mere "bunch of grass that spindles rankIts husk seeds tall and high (and) 'tis rudely planned, Of bleachèd stubbles and the withered fare". Home is a way of doing things dictated by need, availability and a deep understanding. This sense of home is reflected in his poetry.
When Clare saw the many changes to the land around him (such as the effects of the enclosures act) he saw this as an attack on the values of 'place' and the connections that make home a home. Later in his life Clare, due to poor mental health, was removed from his home. However, Clare's home lived on in his mind. Home for Clare was eternal and was more than just bricks and mortar, or loyalty given to the arbitrary fortune of birth. It was a unique slot in the landscape that could only be filled by him. A puzzle without a piece, or a piece without a puzzle. Either way both would be incomplete.
I have a lot of sympathy with this view as I too find home is where I have a 'slot' that is uniquely shaped for (and by) me. This gap has been created by a deep understanding and knowledge of a place, whilst unknowingly absorbing all the information of the environment. This would be from simple adaptation to the temperature of the seasons, sixth sense knowing of where the sun is at different times of year, feeling part of the pattern of life as it goes about its annual business of living and surviving. It is feeling that is profoundly deep, almost unexplainable, with a spiritual connection to the land around me. It calls me at such a low decibel only my soul can hear it, whilst my mind continues to try to interpret the words.
“Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.”
― John Clare