Home may be,
most obviously,
where we live -
the house,
room,
neighborhood,
city,
countryside.
It isn't always.
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,
MYOCHOSEN0HOMEr
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
****
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 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
______________________________
site design, site construction
- Elsa Schieder
copyright © Elsa Schieder, 2006 - all rights reserved
copyright © elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com,
2006 - all rights reserved
an all round creative space, creativity emporium and creativity
match space
CLICK
HERE TO CONTACT
excellent resources and tools, excellent site, excellent help
Elsa
of
elsas word story image
idea music emporium.com
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.
