Home (6.5.2020)

Home

A strange yet familiar word

What home means? A house? My room? The people I cherish? A memory? The world? Everything that is known by mankind?

Death can never be homely. We don’t know death.

My dog ignores the sky. He never looked up. He is unaware of the power of the stars. The sky creates something else for us. It is not the sky we, humans, perceive, but the dream. The illusion, the imagination.

Yet I look at the sky. There were clouds. Now there aren’t anymore. I lift a cigarette to my mouth while my dog observes me. I can never imagine what he is thinking, neither he could ever imagine my wonders. He is unaware of the moon now. There is a sort of immanency of the world that confronts my thoughts tonight, I can only materially perceive it in the movement of the clouds. While I lift my cigarette, a thought is also lifted on me: how soon is now?

Or, on the contrary, how long is now?

I have been experiencing 28 years of a long “now”. Still I have no idea how long it has been. How much of it I lived and what does it mean. Time is imperceptible. I am, like my dog, unaware of the time.

Sometimes the older humans try to warn me about it. But even them unknow time.

Time is homely? Is it what we could call a home? There are timeless things. That means that these things will pass our individual time. But what is the true relation between time and life? Are they lovers or enemies? Well that’s a hard question.

An exemple. I can say: I love someone. Sometimes “I love someone” is in the past. Sometimes “I love someone” is in the future. Time and space cannot change the fact that I love someone, even if it is too early or too late. It puts me at ease to know my eternal power of loving someone, and to know I am loved. It doesn't matter when, it resounds weather in memory or in hope. Time separates things, but it also connect everything. I can be sad now and still be aware of my complete happiness. This is the true beautiful complexity of things.

Another thing is also clear now: I cannot possess time, or life, or space. They possess me. I have to put myself in my place then, and accept them as they are. Like the death of a cell won’t make the whole being die.

Time, life and space, they are all I know. These things are all that matters to me, for I don’t know nothing else. Still, I am not that important to them. This is not sad, it should be a relief, a beak of chains. We can have the intelligence to respect them, and preserve the liberty to wonder unaware of the meaning of all of this. I know I am just as special as everything else. Not really special as an individual being.

The moon, for exemple, is more important than me. Why? The moon is looking at me right now as it is also looking at many other things. It can reach almost everything. But I, my vision can only reach the moon, my home and my dog now. Between the moon and I, there is a big difference then. The difference is space and time. The moon has a big space and a big time. I only have a tiny small space in a very small amount of time. The moon could be a home for many humans though many, many generations. I could be a home for only a very few ones in a brief moment of their lives. The moon is a big god, and I am a small cell. But there are many cells and only a few big gods. There is where our power lies.

My dog and I, we are deeply connected. So are the moon and I. But I spent most of my time ignoring the moon and spoiling my dog. Because my vision and my time are limited,I have to choose wisely and to split attention between things and emotions.

I am sure the average amount of time that humans live affects drastically our view of the world. If we could live like trees, or like a fly, we would perhaps have another perception of everything.

Another exemple. My dog, he would probably live around 15, 20 years. To me, a human being, I have a particular perception of him based on it. He was a baby, now he is an adult, and he’ll grow old and become an old dog very quickly in my perception. I would still be an adult the moment he die. But at this very long moment - now - while I am watching the moon, the clouds and smoking my cigarette, we are both infinite and alive. We have all our lives ahead us. And we both treasure a big amount of time we passed together. And now, we are sharing this moment. It might be very a differently moment for me and for him. But we do. He is smelling better than me, I am seeing better than him.

Things are the way they are, and it is enough. No, it is amazing.