Uniquities and Ubiquities ( #AtoZChallenge )

    I want my home to be like a book with pages to be read and lots of stories to tell.  And indeed, my home is like a thick volume that can't be read in one sitting...

         

          Upon first entering our home, a visitor might not find anything particularly unique at first glance.   As with any of our dwelling spaces, the uniqueness of who we are often requires a closer scrutiny.   Perusing the artifacts of a home one is likely to see representations of family history, personal interests and pastimes, as well as those assorted oddities that might leave one scratching their head or could be the opening of an interesting conversation.

          The built-in shelf seen above gives a good idea of certain things that are ubiquitous in our home.  There are books, media (CD's, DVD's, etc), decorative items, and even a set of juggling beanbags.    In nearly every room of our house you can find these same things in an assorted array of formations.  Each room is like a variation on a theme.  My home is my personal symphony--or more appropriately a symphonic duet between my interests and those of my wife.  

           Our home is my comfort zone.  If I were to be plopped blindfolded into my own home I would immediately know where I was.  With a feeling of security I would relax and settle into that homey feeling.  But if my blindfold were removed and I were to find myself in a room at your house, please let there be books, music, or something to explore and wonder about.

          While in your home I want to see your uniquities and I want them to be ubiquitous.  I don't just want to know where I am, but I want to know who I am with.  Excuse me if I look at the things on your shelves or on your walls.  Tell me what this odd little mystery item means to you.

          Tell me a story.  What you have around you provides me the details, but you have to tell me the words.

          Have you ever visited someone and perused stuff they had on display?   Would you be offended if a visitor started looking at what was on shelves or on the walls?   What might the decorative items displayed in a house tell you?  

Contemplating Sense of Place (Flashback Friday)

       
       Where exactly is your "home"?   Do you have a place where your roots are?   Or as the adage goes, "where your heart is"?   In this post I'll be reflecting on this concept of having a home, a place of connections, and being from somewhere...

       IT'S FLASHBACK FRIDAY - A TIME OF THE MONTH WHERE YOU CAN REPUBLISH AN OLD POST OF YOURS THAT MAYBE DIDN'T GET ENOUGH ATTENTION, OR THAT YOU'RE REALLY PROUD OF, OR YOU THINK IS STILL RELEVANT ETC. THIS BLOG-GO-ROUND IS HOSTED BY MICHAEL G D'AGOSTINO FROM A LIFE EXAMINED--THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL FIND THE REST OF THE PARTICIPANTS OR TO JOIN UP YOURSELF.

THE POST I'VE CHOSEN FOR THIS MONTH FIRST APPEARED ON TOSSING IT OUT ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2010. TO SEE THE ORIGINAL COMMENTS TO THAT POST YOU CAN CLICK ON THE TITLE BELOW TO BE TAKEN TO THE ORIGINAL POST. MY REASON FOR CHOOSING THIS PARTICULAR POST, BESIDES IT BEING AS RELEVANT NOW AS THEN, IS THAT IT IS RELATED TO MY MOST RECENT BATTLE OF THE BANDS POST AND IT'S RELATED TO THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN ON MY MIND RECENTLY. ..

Where're you'all from?

            Robert Young Drake was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from 1965 until 1999.  A noted English scholar and author, Robert Drake was most associated with his homespun stories about the fictional West Tennessee town of Woodville.  Drake was well known for his story-telling skills in the rich dulcet tones of an aristocratic southern gentleman.  After suffering a stroke in 1999, he was forced to leave his beloved teaching position, returning to his hometown of Milan, Tennessee where he died on June 30, 2001.

               I was fortunate to have had Dr. Drake as my professor of creative writing for two classes when I attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the early 1970s.  One of the corrections he made to my thinking had to do with roots and what we think of as home.

              In the first class we were given the assignment to write about ourselves so that Dr. Drake could get to know his students a little better. This was to be a brief autobiography that included where we were from.  My story was the example that he always looked for to teach one of the first lessons about being a writer.

             Since I had moved around a lot in my life I wrote that I wasn't really from anywhere.  My hippie philosophy at that time tended more toward existentialism.   I tried to portray myself as the rootless wanderer in life who was searching for self and purpose.  That was the cue for Dr. Drake's lecture on roots.

             "Everybody's from somewhere," he enunciated in his rich southern accent.  He went on to give examples of writers like his favorite, Flannery O'Connor, who was from Georgia.  Writing, he explained, is an extension of who we are and an expression of our experiences and our heritage, all of which has roots in particular place and time.

               It was in that class that I began to appreciate my Tennessee home.  Even though I hadn't been born there and hadn't grown up there, it was the place that felt most like home and the place with which I could most identify myself.

               When we think about writers, we frequently associate them with place.  With Hemingway it might be Key West or Steinbeck the central California coast.    Many of us think about Hannibal, Missouri when we think of Mark Twain even though he did most of his writing elsewhere--but it was that place that shaped and influenced much of who he was and what he wrote.

                 As Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz was to find out in her fantastical visit, there's no place like home.  A writer can take us anywhere imagination can contrive, but the story has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is inside of each of us.

                 Where are you from?  What do you consider to be home?  How does it influence your writing?