contact  

chosen home

Home may be,
most obviously,
where we live -
the house, 
room,
neighborhood,
city,
countryside.

It isn't always.



contact

 

 

HOME

Home? Anywhere, as long as it's with my family.

Anywhere, except with my parents.

On the hockey rink with my team.

In my bedroom when it's raining, listening to the rain on the roof.

I hear songs I haven't heard for decades, songs my parents played, and I'm back with them.

Home? The smell of eggs frying in the morning.

Snow, the first snow of the season.

Darkness by the water.

Being with friends, that's what feels like home to me – just hanging out.

When do I feel at home? Alone – only when I'm alone.

Nothing has ever felt as much home as my first home – we lived there until my father died

Coming home, for me, was falling in love.

I walk into my office, and it's like a second family - often better than my family.

I have got to have a wide open view.

Nestled, with pine trees all around. A small house, small rooms.

It’s a small white attic room. As a child, it was my last bedroom. Now I paint in it. But even more, home is the river I grew up beside.

My back yard. Best time of all: late summer, early evening.

I’ve loved this province all my life – that's been kind of a home to me – but I never had a true home of my own. I was kind of a nomad. I never saw myself – me, myself – having a real home. Now. at almost sixty, this is the first time in my life.

It keeps changing. You know, you get married, you get divorced. Everything changes. And then changes again.

Home, for me, is anywhere, anywhere in the world where I can feel good – which is just about anywhere.

In my own
my chosen home
on a high plateau
all alone
yet cozy
a nest
and large
inviting in each day
I’ve come to rest
Elsa

endlich
ewig
zusammen
finally
forever
together

my father,
Erwin Schieder

These are the central words of a piece I wrote while sitting with my father on the day of his death, after his death. It's the old dream of heaven (without clouds and wings and angel's things). Or maybe, even more, it's the equally old dream of heaven on earth. I think it was my father's deepest longing, to have a happy loving forever togetherness, a true home of the heart, but he didn't quite know how to make it real.

IN MY OWN,
MYOCHOSEN0HOME
r

welcome

on being at home - a reflection

home-world bound -
speculations on god, the world and home

EXPERIENCES of HOME -
THOUGHTS and WORD PIECES

in my own, my chosen home


EXPERIENCES of HOME -
WORD PIECES ONLY

in my own, ...

EXPERIENCES of HOME -
IMAGES, MUSIC and MORE

summer's passing

****
Elsa Schieder, WORDS

IMAGES, MUSIC and MORE - SEE THE INDIVIDUAL PIECES


words - copyright © Elsa Schieder 2007
publishing house - FlufferDuff Impressions 2007

images, music and words -
see individual pieces for creators and copyright

****

contact    your thoughts    what home means to you

****

All around are the places we live in.
But what does it mean, to be at home?
My father never felt at home.
In my own, my chosen home -
explorations, reflections, word pieces
on the sense of home.

****

To go to thoughts about home and about the creation of these word pieces on home,
along with the word pieces / spoken word poems / mood rap pieces / poems,
click here
.

To go to the word piece - in my own, my chosen home -
that came to me as my home was starting to come together,
click here.

To go to the welcome page of
in my own, my chosen home,
click here.

To go to the creativity blog, on the development of
elsas word story image idea music emporium, click here.

To go home - meaning to the opening page of this site - clilck here.

****

top of page

****

In My Own, My Chosen Home -
thoughts on the meaning of chosen home

Just what does it mean - chosen home? To what extent do we choose our home, and to what extent is our response to certain places built into us? I remember loving the low rolling hills east of Calgary years and years ago - I felt good there. Now I live on a high plateau, a wide open space with a view over miles and miles of fields and forests. Right now the trees are changing color, much like when I wrote the word piece that became the spark for this project - in my own, my chosen home. The view is not so different from the fields east of Calgary. It feels to me as if there is something about wide open spaces, yet with rolling hills, that evokes a feeling of home in me - chosen home.

I didn't choose where I was born - Vienna a few years after the end of the second world war. My parents were lucky to have a tiny home of their own - one small room all to themselves, with their own entrance to the world. The toilet was down the hall - it was for all the apartments (if apartments isn't too fancy a word for where they lived). But a home of their own - that was something for a young couple in postwar Vienna.

But did my sense of home start there - apparently there was a huge window, bringing in way too much heat in summer, but also loads of light, something I have often loved.

Chosen home - I think this name came to me also because I'm the child of immigrants. To some extent they chose to leave - with dreams of a promised land, a land flowing with adventure, like in the Westerns my father had loved since early childhood, and a land flowing with opportunities, as shown in the films my mother saw at the Canadian consulate. Eacgh of my parents chose to leave, lured by different possibilities, stirred by different dreams, hopes, fears. Yet for neither of them did Canada truly deeply become home - in some ways, one cannot choose to be at home. This was not, deep inside, their chosen home. My father had burned all bridges to a flourishing buisness - he would have had a hard time choosing to go back home, he would have had an emornously difficult time acknowledging that deep inside he longed for another home, did not feel fully at home.

I have chosen to stay. This is a choice - because in my generation masses of English-speaking people chose to leave, chose to make their home elsewhere where English was welcome, where there was no separatist movement.

To what extent, actually, is this my chosen home - and to what extent did I just never make the choice to leave? Did I really choose to stay, that is?

Now my partner and I are rooted in our home - our personal home. Our chosen home is also the closest large city - which was where we lived, home, for decades. To some extent Montreal will always feel like home. Out here in the country is my personal home space. But the city is home in another way - the stores, the streets, the parks, the restaurants, the people, downtown - and my work.

There is so much more on chosen home, but this is the beginning. In my own, my chosen home - thoughts, reflections, word pieces, music. My chosen home, and the chosen homes of many others.

Elsa
October 1, 2006

copyright © Elsa Schieder 2006
publishing house - FlufferDuff Impressions 2006

______________________________

home place, home space, forever at home,
home is where the heart is, homeward bound,
no matter how humble there's no place like home,
home home on the range where the deer and the antelope play,
home - where my heart is waiting silently for me, falling into place,
outward bound, chosen home, homeward bound, o give me a home,
hearth, heartland, home cooking, home baking, home fries, chosen home,
home schooling, home fooling, chosen home, home and garden,
family, street, neighborhood, c countryside, familiar sights and sounds, chosen home,
safety, security, comfort, a roof over my head, a place to put my bags down, a place to call my own, the world is my home, the world is my oyster,
homeless, roofless, rootless, uprooted, hungry, wretched, restless, wanderlust, leaving home,
wretched like a homeless child, the wretched of the earth, not a crust of bread, o give me a home,
my home my native land, homeland, mother tongue, father land, deep rooted,
chosen home, home place, homestead, homesteading, chosen home, home ties,
chosen home, highrise, condo, apartment, house, split level, farm, barn, chosen home,
farmyard, vegetable garden, flower beds,homeless animals, shelter, sheltering,
the sheltering sky, the sweltering sky, the far north, wide open spaces,
chosen home, the seasons, the world is my home, my home is the world, at home in,
at home in words, at home in ideas, at home among people, forever at home, never at home,
homeless and friendless, not a friend in the world, a friend in need is a friend indeed,
chosen home, the luxury of choice, not feeling a home, out of place, o give me a home

______________________________

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Elsa
of   
elsas word story image idea music emporium.com


chosen home

HOME

Home? Anywhere, as long as it's with my family.

Anywhere, except with my parents.

On the hockey rink with my team.

In my bedroom when it's raining, listening to the rain on the roof.

I hear songs I haven't heard for decades, songs my parents played, and I'm back with them.

Home? The smell of eggs frying in the morning.

Snow, the first snow of the season.

Darkness by the water.

Being with friends, that's what feels like home to me – just hanging out.

When do I feel at home? Alone – only when I'm alone.

Nothing has ever felt as much home as my first home – we lived there until my father died

Coming home, for me, was falling in love.

I walk into my office, and it's like a second family - often better than my family.

I have got to have a wide open view.

Nestled, with pine trees all around. A small house, small rooms.

It’s a small white attic room. As a child, it was my last bedroom. Now I paint in it. But even more, home is the river I grew up beside.

My back yard. Best time of all: late summer, early evening.

I’ve loved this province all my life – that's been kind of a home to me – but I never had a true home of my own. I was kind of a nomad. I never saw myself – me, myself – having a real home. Now. at almost sixty, this is the first time in my life.

It keeps changing. You know, you get married, you get divorced. Everything changes. And then changes again.

Home, for me, is anywhere, anywhere in the world where I can feel good – which is just about anywhere.

In my own
my chosen home
on a high plateau
all alone
yet cozy
a nest
and large
inviting in each day
I’ve come to rest
Elsa

endlich
ewig
zusammen
finally
forever
together

my father,
Erwin Schieder

These are the central words of a piece I wrote while sitting with my father on the day of his death, after his death. It's the old dream of heaven (without clouds and wings and angel's things). Or maybe, even more, it's the equally old dream of heaven on earth. I think it was my father's deepest longing, to have a happy loving forever togetherness, a true home of the heart, but he didn't quite know how to make it real.