That Lost Sense of Home

It's raining in Kingsville. Apparently it hasn't been like this all summer. Which is nice to know, considering last year. But a light rain after a dry summer, a kind of gift. 

I hope the autumn is dry and cool and there are few days of showers to mar the smoky air. I look forward to watching the corn fields come down with the harvest. I am looking forward to seeing the leaves yellow and orange. 

I am looking forward to this. And following it, winter. 

But I can't help but say I'm a little bewildered. Leaving Europe was like leaving the comfort of something so familiar. Almost as if I was saying goodbye to a beautiful woman, walking away from her presence and bed to return home to another woman, a kind, but unloving wife. And it's not that I've cheated myself or anyone, just seen something new, something different, a way of life that I would say makes more sense. 

In Germany, you can drink beer in public, on bridges, on park benches, in the streets, on trams and trains. And why not? I rarely if ever saw violence break out. No moments of publich intoxication where the cops had to be called in. The parks are filled in the summer. You can smell the aroma of BBQ. Picnic blankets lie on the grass. There are coolers, bottles of wine. There is nothing really to fear.

Here, the parks are empty, even on the most serene of days.

Spestraat, Haarlem, The Netherlands

In Amsterdam, Haarlem and other Dutch cities it is easy to get around. The trams are so easy to negotiate. The bike lanes are well-paved and amazing. You don't need a car, really. (But be aware of the rules of the road, just because you're a cyclist doesn't mean you can ignore them - and the everyday Dutch are hard on those who defy their regulations.)

Here, the bike lane is the pebbled shoulder in most cities (though some of the bigger are more accommodating of two-wheeled, methane free travelers).

I felt at home in that world. And now I'm 'home'. 

And though it is familiar, I have forgotten the names of some towns and places. I know the roads still but the small differences are there, I can feel them. And it's not all bad, no. But it's not the same.

Before Kingsville, I was in my hometown of St.Catharines. I stayed with friends of mine. They were kind enough to host me for a few days. I didn't really contact family. The old tensions don't seem to go away. We are Dutch so being stubborn (hardnekkig in Nederlands - or thick-necked, how appropriate) and habits like that are hard to be rid of.

But Kingsville, as if the rest of Canada was another continent and in between vast corn fields and wind farms, highways that give one a preview of the prairies. Kingsville where public transportation doesn't exist. Either you drive or bike (on the above-mentioned shoulder). Kingsville where the quiet is continually interrupted by the crickets, the sound of lawn mowers. Kingsville where the liquor store closes at six most nights, where the books on the library shelves are basic bestsellers, literature and art and poetry rare.

Kingsville, the home I would never had expected. Had you told the proverbial previous self of two years ago I would be living here, he would have chuckled and then asked, Kingsville, you mean Kingston, right?

St.Catharines like the other cities of my past are closed doors. I lived in them long enough to discover I didn't feel at home there. But in Germany, I found home. Curiously enough, in Leipzig where yes, the parks are filled and bicycles are seemingly everywhere. Leipzig where it felt like leaving a familiar, loving room where now someone must now touch the other side of the bed and let out a sigh in my absence.

Toteninsel - Arnold Böcklin

The Leipzig of Bach, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. The Leipzig Wagner didn't think too highly of but now he would probably would, what with both the beautiful opera and symphony house facing each other on opposite sides of Augustuspatz. The Leipzig of the silent revolution on Nikolaistraße. The Leipzig where nearby in the late 1700s Schiller wrote his famous An die Freude ('Ode to Joy'). The Leipzig of Klinger and the art museum where you can find my favourite version of Arnold Böcklin's Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead).

Yes, that Leipzig. The Leipzig of friends Sebastian, Mira, Kevin, Tom and crazy Marco who during the volleyball game one Sunday flirted with his teammate's wife. Albeit accidentally and innocently but Marco isn't too innocent.

The Leipzig of trabbi tours, their motorboat, methane-like exhaust and the Stalin building and the Panorama Tower and the grand Promenaden in the Hauptbahnhof where Sundays the groceries stores are overrun. And in the south, the Cospudener See where some parts are for naturists. There on the sand you can find untanned bottoms and love handles without swimming trunks to accentuate their folds. And for one shining, transcendent moment, you might see someone attractive strip down after her bike ride to cool in the waters. Yes, for once, but rare... because you soon learn that most public nudists are overweight, over-tanned men who consume far too much beer, their bratwurt proudly (and unpardonably) on display. In Germany, one needs to misquote the adage and shake your head realizing yes, 'if you don't have it, flaunt it.'

Leipzig for a month and half and I felt more at home than all the collected cities I resided in while in Canada. And like the confused astronaut in a Stanislaw Lem novel, having returned from the stars, he finds it hard to reconcile the then with the precarious now. Where it made sense is behind him and where he is now is a whole another planet. The rules are the same but he feels the unease, unable to fulfill himself with his new predicament. He'd rather be alone and lonely up there, out there than be here.

Home, always a question, a reaching, an enigma. For some home is the kept and complacent lawns of suburbia and the flower gardens and impromptu front porch conversations. There is always that polite wave to a passing car, a recognizable face but still a stranger, a neighbor around the corner, familiar but foreign. You know they have a corgi and take a walk around dusk but that's it. Nameless and you nameless to them.

For others, home feels cosmically misplaced, as if God and his aimless band of angels wanted to tempt the solemn, modern Job, asking him, can you feel settled here when there is something more out there that is more suitable? That lost sense of home, can you live with it?

Of course, it is hard to put roots down in places that don't offer the comforts and cultural richness of a city like Leipzig. One would assume it to be a task in futility to feel at ease in a place like Kingsville when home was briefly there, over there, across the pond in Eastern Germany. Home in the earthy aroma of parks, in the flat tire near the university and the lemony taste of a weiss bier on the Markt. Home, Faust's golden, lucky foot, Mephisto mocking the troubled student above Auerbach's Keller. Rub the lucky foot, the German couple said, and it means you'll return to Leipzig.

One prays this to be true. Otherwise, for now there is Kingsville (and no, it's not bad). At least there is the lovely, verdant scent of nature, that smell of trees in the evening, of wet earth after the rain. And again, let the autumn be a dry one.