Home

A friend of mine over on Myspace wrote a blog over the weekend that really got me thinking. She asked, "How do you perceive home?" To elaborate, do you consider the place you live now, where you work, shop, play, and exist as home? Or is it where you were born and raised? Is it with your parents or maybe an ex-lover? Or are you a Jack Kerouac, considering the next town over the hill your home... for now.

What is 'home' to you?

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Home is where the heart is. For the longest time during my mid to late 20's, I always thought of San Luis Obispo, CA as my home. I called it my 'happy place'. I had went to college there along with several of my best friends from high school, and those years molded and shaped my thoughts and beliefs like no other time of my life. When I moved on, I felt tied to SLO; not unlike a surfer is tied to the ocean no matter where he lives. Home to me was walking down Higuera St. during Farmer's Market, or spending the afternoon browsing and listening to CDs at Boo Boo's Records. Home was a crowded and highly overpriced two bedroom apartment on Islay St. that I split with some of the funniest and entertaining buddies I've ever known. Then I matured, got older and moved on. San Luis is a beautiful city, but it cost a mint to live there. I still have friends that get by there somehow, doomed to live paycheck to paycheck... but happily doing so with the Pacific Ocean only 10 miles away from their doorstep. I envy them. My perception of home has shifted as of late.

When I think of home, I see my parents house in the mountains of Tehachapi, CA. It's this three story geodesic dome house that sort of looks like a brown golfball half buried in the Sierra Nevada scrub. When I go back there to visit them, I get this warm swell of happiness in my stomach. I think of the great times I had there in Tehachapi, with friends and family. I think of how nice and cool the weather is (in comparison with the rest of Southern California). I think of the locomotives that ran through the center of town, and my high school...where I was well liked by the band and artistic crowd, but passed through the halls like a ghost to everyone else. I remember learning to drive a stick shift in an empty K-Mart parking lot, going to Indian Pow-wows and parties up in Mountain Park... driving out to Bear Valley to secretly see my first girlfriend against my parent's wishes... playing burgerball with Ryan, Mike and Eric until 4 in the morning in a supermarket parking lot. I remember kidnapping a promotional cardboard cutout of Kenny Rogers from Little Ceasars... tying him up... taking pictures... and then holding him for ransom in exchange for crazy bread. I remember looking out on the hills between us and Mojove and watching the thousands of windmills quietly turn in the night mountain breeze.

This place is now home to me, although I reside 2300 miles away. Home is where the heart is.