Curled up in the window of an ancient aqueduct in Spoleo watching the traffic groan up into the Umbrian hills in June, I realised that despite my longing for home, I was content and the feeling of being at home was actually close at hand. With my pen meandering across the pages of my notebook I was as at home as I would be lounging on the cushions of my bed in Australia.
Like the snail I was carrying what I was looking for on my back. The stillness that allows me to be aware of myself and my small presence in the world waits for me. Most of the time it seems just out of reach, but if I just allow myself to stop, it is right there.
At my physical home I think I am furthest from the home I carry about with me. There are so many distractions, especially from my writerly self, so much to strive for and organise. In all the casting about and rushing hither and thither I forget that it is from the stillness and the waiting that my best writing comes. And it is in writing that the most powerful feeling of being at home comes to me.
The homesick snail quote came to me from Ric Masten via G Lynn Nelson's book Writing and Being: Taking back our lives through the power of language. Lynn teaches writing from the base of the personal journal. From exploring our own lives, feelings and world we move into public writing. From the wonders of 'word and self and universe' the journal writer enters on a path with a heart 'not to arrive but to see the wonders of the path itself'. From the journal he suggests taking the ideas and writing that most move us into the public realm. When we have concrete stories to tell and are excited by them, we write more powerfully and naturally.
Lynn has sent me back to my journal, to be grounded in my own experience and responses to the world. Perhaps home for me is my journal? It is certainly where I am forced to be still and where I find myself most contented.
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