Home - Click heels 3 X's
It all became this invisible torrential rain, flooding over me as I scraped the remains of my cat off of the highway named Graves that navigates directly in front of my house. My skull felt crushed like his. Grabbing a common shovel and hole digging tool from out the garage I proceeded to carve a hole out of the baked and hardened earth to put my feline friend, returning him to the source, it all made sense. My body remained the same like his, planted and bound in kilmd red clay. The thought drenched me. This is not my home because my heart has not been here all this time, if in fact, home is where the heart is.
In my many relocations I figured each place would eventually become this lofty concept of home they write about. I convinced myself that as long as my daughter is with me I could make any place home, more like some kind of familiar. Not so. Alas, I feel that Ive deceived myself for quite sometime because I was unable to be honest with myself, because the truth hurts.
I've been here below the Mason Dixon line for close to seven years now. I fled, looking for this "home", thinking it had moved here with my mother. In this hour and minute I realize that mother was never home to me. A lesson Ive relearned. I know that the only real home I ever had was in Forest Hills, Queens. Once upon a time I centered, grounded, flourished there like a wild dandelion from the concrete.
All the places Ive uprooted to share a common observance. An unfamiliarity that seeps beyond learning streets and ones way around the place. It lies within peoples gesture, speech, demeanor, radiating off of them. An Ive-been-here-all-or-most-my-life sorta thing. A comfortable knowing like a baby's pacifier. This way of reading natives without forethought and translation. Where local customs and culture becomes ingrained in the genetic code and an integral part of every breath and surrounding. Sometimes its as simple as understanding the bugs, fauna and weather. Sometimes its as pure as the interpretation of a smile or someone's body language that I completely miss. Familiar in a familial sort of way. Ive been reading these differences in the people that surround me for years. Knowing the difference between them and me yet unable to assimilate my culture, customs and intuition. Ive been bucking a confederate mindset.
I genuinely had a kinda love for this south when I arrived. I can't say I really wanted to leave NY. I can say that I thought I had or needed to. I figured it would be good for Z as a kid to live somewhere a lot more kid friendly. My move had a lot to do with my mother as well and not wanting to be 900 miles away from her as I had in my moves to Cali and what not. It took the first 3 years to not be pained by the unfamiliarity, the obscene slowness of people and the pace of life in GA. Mind you I went from a big city to a small city. But, I embraced warm weather, bath water temperatured beaches, Southern charm and hospitality, etc. etc. I have always missed the subway, bodegas, single slices of pizza, egg sandwiched from the deli, shit opened 24 hours, clubs closing at 4am or fuck around open till daybreak, my friends, style, savvy people - lawd I can go on. 7 years later I've become all to familiar with the subtle, undeniable, residual resentment of southerners. This has definitely worn me out. I use to think that it was about black folks, slaves and loosing the civil war - which it is in some respects. What always conflicted with that theory was that this underlying and silent resentment I could feel like sound waves was also found in black folks. It all is so clear to me now and I am unafraid to acknowledge these ideas and feeling. The one thing I have learned from the south is the face. Natives here will always get the "I'm so happy to be in the south" face - southern
charmfakeness. Yankees put it down as it is. There isn't no gloss no smile. What it is is what it is. I won't even go into the social structure and how that shit works here.
No matter how much southern rap infiltrates northern air waves...its always gonna be some country shit to me. No matter how much my speech adapts to the often barely there southern twang, my dialect will always be some yankee shit. There is a reason why these states wanted to break from the union. That idea was in its baby stages as I observed the results of the last two presidential elections, the last being the one that brought up the cessation the most. There is an almost tragic, serious, integral and yes extreme difference in thinking. The silent resentment I have familiarized myself with (too much) is a resentment taught from generation to generation. There is no wonder in my mind why many southern cities were burned and nearly destroyed during and at the end of the civil war. It wasn't just about the destruction of the southern economy, I think it was an attempt to burn a cultural mindset with racist roots. "...and so it goes."
Anywhoo, I'm over it. I could go on...but ain't that just affirmation...I've even been having dreams at night of snow and bitter winters. I wane "home". And home ain't here.
honest.like.a.yankee girl
