Coming Home

When I was almost three years old, my parents took me to Disneyland Paris. A family trip to get away from Britain - and go to France (don't ask me what they were thinking). For someone that young, I remember it quite well. Rides, characters and shows, it was a real riot!

However, looking back, one ride I could never seem to stomach was that monstrous It's A Small World... What's so cute about an army of disturbing dancing dolls singing the same set of lyrics until it's coming out your ears? Not to mention those terrifying, constant grins painted on their faces. And it didn't matter how happy go-lucky the damn music was, or how many different sets of clothes they were dressed up in or how it was that the untouched native-american dolls could speak and sing in flawless english - you still left without some small part of your soul. And here's the best part: when you'd had enough, when you'd come to your senses, when you'd realized that you might not leave with your sanity intact, you would turn to leave and - whoops. That's right, you're in a goddamn rickety boat stuck in a little horror-moat (the rhyme fits the scene).



It takes a sick mind to devise such a house-of-horrors for poor, innocent children. Damn you, Walt Disney. Stick to caricatures of talking mice, ducks and dog-creatures (what the hell is Goofy anyway?), and leave the real world depictions to Michael Moore (no.... wait).



In any case, I went to DisneyWorld about a year ago now, much older and wiser in the ways of the 'small world' (at least, compared to my two-year-old self). And, waywardly wandering around the Magic Kingdom, I came across none other than the same damned ride. We each stared the other down, circling around like some mexican standoff (except we were in Florida, and I was the only one moving). Finally, I swallowed my fear, summoned my courage and bravely walked in.

Though they may have stopped the ride midway because my brave war-cry was drowning out the dolls' satanic chanting, I damned-well made that ride my bitch. Walking (or escorted) out with my head held high, I bought myself a victory-popsicle from the hairy vendor across the road. However, while sitting down and thoroughly enjoying the sight of a fat Cinderella trying to make it up the castle steps, I could think only of that ride. Is it really such a small world?

When I moved to North America 10 years ago, I hated it and refused to accept it. But this summer, I left my house in Canada, my friends, books and car, hopping a plane bound for Europe. I've traveled for the better part of my life, moved ten times, attended eight different schools, and lived in four different countries on three different continents. And yet, for the first time in memory - I didn't want to leave. Why?



Now I sit here in Germany, having just come back from the pub with an old friend. He fished up that old memory when, after our food had been set down, he turned to me and said:

"So, Alex. You've moved so many times, and you've a German passport, but vhere is home for you?" (in his thick German accent)

I was about to reply, but I paused suddenly - I couldn't answer. Nothing came to mind immediately, as it used to. Instead, I sat there pondering, racking my brains for an answer. An answer, and not to his question, but to why my usual one no longer felt right. A few moments went by, and he could tell I was having a little trouble. He took a swig from his mug of Hefe-Weissbier, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and said:

"Ah, mein freund." he chuckled "Now zis becomes an entirely different question. Vhat exactly is a home for you?"

I took a sip of my beer and shook myself awake. What is home? I quote Jack Sparrow:
"That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That's what a ship needs. But what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom."




In the same way, a home isn't just a roof and ceilings, a floor and doors. That's what a home may need, but a home is... what it REALLY is... is something else entirely.


"Home is where I hang my hat", "Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes", "Home is where you can scratch where it itches". But we're all so different, and such a vital things means something so different to each of us that it becomes difficult to find an all-consuming, universal, flexible and adaptive definition - Yeah, way to go, Captain Obvious.



But then we get back to the demon-ride. This world isn't so small when you think about it. Yeah, toss aside the internet, the telephones, fax machines and computers and what do you have? A magnificently colossal world, ripe with unknown places and adventures. I'm not saying toss me a fedora, a whip, a fear of snakes and start calling me Indiana Jones (although I sure as hell wouldn't mind) - but I am trying to say that in this giant world, home is something to be valued and understood.
There are so many great thoughts, ideas and opinions on what Home truly is.


"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you" - Christian Morganstern
"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to" - John Ed Pearce
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in" - Robert Frost

We all need to have our own definitions of home. So as I sat there, running my fingers through my hair, my friend looked at me and said:

"Alex, I don't know about you, but no matter vhere I travel in ze verld, I see my home as some-sing I can come back to. And zis vun sing to come back to, is ze place vhere I have somevun vaiting for me. Somevun who matters a lot." he smiled, holding his mug out to me. I grinned, picked up mine, knocked it against his and we drained them both.

Yeah, I've traveled for the better part of my life. I haven't felt at home since I left the U.K. over ten years ago, and I now understand why it felt so odd leaving Canada this summer. A passport, a piece of paper, cannot tell me (or anybody) where home is.



I've unconsciously made that frozen wasteland my home, through its frigid winters, its sweltering summers and its endless political-correctness. I am by no means Canadian, but neither am I entirely German, South-African or British. I am a world citizen, and my home is in the "true north, strong and free". Why? Because of the people I've come to love and miss.

"A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams." - English proverb



My home is where there are people waiting for me, people who mean something, something strong and often indescribable - and though my travels have only just begun, I'll be back home before long.

Metamorphosis

“I don’t want to be anything or anyone I wasn’t meant to be. I am who I am, and to be anything different isn’t being true to myself.”

It’s these words that bring me out of my half-dazed state in Rutherford Lounge. I shake my head, what does that even mean?

Tell me, when did humanity become so static? When did timeless Change suddenly decide that human nature was exempt? Since when were we just one person? One set of invariable and inert characteristics? Never.

I turn to my friend, drawing her gaze until I have her attention.

From the time we’re conceived, brought kicking and screaming into this world, we change. Time changes everything, second by second, day by day and year by year. To be so naive and self-consumed that we are one, stable being and character unaffected by Time’s eternal and inescapable grasp is a fool’s notion and is better abandoned than strived for.

She sighs, unconvinced, we are only as capable as the world around us allows us to be, operating within a set of limitations and boundaries. I shake my head.

Granted, we are small beings, but with immeasurable power over our own lives and others, our smallest actions reverberate through a world connected through emotions and feelings, thoughts and ideas. Not only do our own actions change others, but in so doing, change ourselves as well.

She rolls her eyes: it’s the fight for our beliefs against the accepted dogma that allow us to preserve ourselves. I nod: but does that fight not define you? Make you stronger? Make you more confident?

Why not embrace it and let it change you? Change can be beautiful too - you just have to change yourself to see it, accept it with new eyes. We build who we are over time, build character, integrity, courage, honour, trust, temperance, fortitude, prudence and justice. Trying to avoid it is futile; it is natural, it is all-consuming, it is beautiful. It takes so many diverse forms that we cannot even begin to understand how far it stretches, over boundaries, both physical and psychological. From the beat of the smallest butterfly in India, to the chaos of the largest hurricane in Mexico. From the most insignificant, fleeting wink, to the three most powerful words on the planet.

She raises an eyebrow and begins to actively listen, as I grin and continue.

We grow. We learn. We live. We love. We take risks, make choices, lay it on the line. All of these things change. Yeah, each choice is based on the way we think, but each choice in-turn changes how we think thereafter, influencing future decisions for years to come. Change is not biased, nor is it limited. It can act microscopically and macroscopically, changing everything and anything. The more we try to avoid it, the more we become slaves to it, letting it control our actions regardless; all done in a fruitless and barren attempt to keep it from touching us.

She taps her fingers unconsciously on the worn plastic table before us: But I’m no quantum physicist, Alex. I could sure as hell try, but I’d be a useless wreck. That’s who I am. I chuckle awkwardly, yeah alright, but there’s a difference between ability or potential and enjoyment. You might not be in place to enjoy quantum physics right now, maybe never, but who says you can’t do it?

People often say that they can't help who they are, that they can't escape it. It's your bloody choice to walk away and accept difficulty, to give in, to submit. Don't try. It's just an intention to fail. You choose from the very beginning to be overwhelmed. The human mind is capable of more than many of us can dream. It was once unthinkable to amass $1,000,000,000. Enter John D. Rockefeller. Human flight was a fairy tale. Thank the Wright Brothers. The very idea of a black president was a joke not even worth mentioning over dinner. Barack Obama challenged it. ALL of it has changed. Why? Because people believed that things could change. People can be selfish, can be cruel, can be wicked. But they can also be selfless, good and benevolent.

Blinking repeatedly, she ponders what I’ve said and the recognition shows in her sea green eyes.

You can sit on your ass and blame the world for your predicament, but quite frankly, it’s on you to change. It’s nobody’s fault but our own that we find ourselves where we are. A good friend of mine has managed to turn full-circle: 360-bloody-degrees. From a life he despised, from a past he was once ashamed of and from a future he saw as nothing but bleak and hopeless - he found change. He found choice and he realized it. He found happiness and he hangs onto it, clinging on to it with everything that he is; because he knows he deserves it.

I pat the same on the shoulder as he chokes on an Italian BLT, swearing at me through a mouthful of lettuce.

We trade youth for wisdom, opening our eyes and seeing a world we only strolled through and couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t understand. It’s these individual changes that shape us, mould us, make us. You never lose sight of who you are, nor do you become someone else. You’re still you, just more so with time. Time changes, and so do you.

So who are you? You decide. You don’t find yourself. You create yourself. You don’t know yourself. You understand yourself. Your very choices -from when to get up each morning, to which drug to take from a shady black guy with bad teeth and a wicked leather coat - shape who you are.

Every choice sets off another completely different set of decisions you can make, the lineup changing with each and every subsequent choice you make... each “encounter could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!... Granted that’s a worst case scenario.”

And though every choice is immortal, it's effect isn't. You choose to act on it, change it or keep it.

The table goes silent. Done with his sandwich, my friend’s eyes dart from person to person before decidedly ninja-ing the white-macadamia nut cookie sitting in front of me. Shoveling it down hungrily, he looks to each of us. What? I was hungry. You weren’t hungry enough. Cookie’s mine. So sue me.

Funny, I can’t remember him being such a goddamn fat-ass.

Everything begins with Choice.

Welcome to Evolution at its best, at its most microscopic and detailed level.

Welcome to Metamorphosis.