Home

Field-notes from the edge of things

1.

I’m at a hippy festival. Everyone around me looks ecstatic, singing about home, and I’m not sure if I belong here.

I’m visiting my friend at Oxford University, at a dinner table next to students adorned with cravates and confidence, and I don’t want to belong here

I’m 16, drunk on cheap lager in the Ritz club in Manchester, when the DJ plays Radiohead’s Creep, and I feel like I’m not alone in not belonging here.

I’m lying face down on the floor, emerging from a journey terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measure, when I instinctively reach out from the darkness to hold the hand of the person next to me, and I feel like I belong here.

---

2.

“They’re all pretending.”

“Some people are so fake.”

“I can’t believe how judgmental I am.”

I stood at the edge of a crowd whooping and dancing and weaving and twirling to a song and a band I have never heard before, and I noticed how bloody judgmental I can be. This temporary tribe all seem to know and love this song, but here I am feeling self-conscious and squirmy about my non-participation. The judging thoughts keep me awkwardly on the outskirts. Why can’t I just get involved? Maybe I need a beer, or something stronger.

My daughter appears. She wants to get ice-cream, and I am rescued from the edge.

---

3.

I bump into an old friend by the fire. We compare notes. He too feels like an outsider, watching these people dancing and chanting and transcending, and I meet him at the edge. I notice as we speak I’m turned at an awkward angle, giving him my side profile, and conscious I’m not eye-gazing as is the manner of things in this particular field.

---

4.
Home is here. Now is where the heart is.

My heart is beating right now as I think about all the humans I know who are truly at home in themselves. The problem is that for each candidate, I am quick to find their flaws. Am I just highly attuned to people’s edges, or does my own judgment stop me from resting?

My heart continues to beat, and meanwhile, somewhere in the Pacific, a raft of sea otters drifts along with the currents, sleeping. They are wrapped in kelp so the current doesn't separate them. Their paws are touching.

My heart beats.

Jamal is sitting in the park with his schoolfriend when he gets the call. He picks clumps of grass, squeezing them in his fists and letting them fall. He makes an excuse to leave. The next day at school he spends his breaktimes sitting on the toilet crying.

My heart beats.

In a conservation area in Kenya, a female giraffe is standing beside the body of her one-month-old calf. She has been standing here for four days. Other females come. They wrap their necks around one another, and stay a while.

---

5.

Its 10 pm, and my daughter has had 6 hours sleep, but has somehow motored through this day with energy and joy. I go to get her some food, leaving her in a trolley under a tree by the fire. When I come back she is crying: “I miss mummy, I want to go home.”

My heart beats.

I know how she feels.

I take her back to the tent. We snuggle up, touching paws.