contact    your thoughts    what home means to you

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To go to the thoughts around writing in my own, my chosen home,
along with the word piece / spoken word poem / rap mood piece / poem,
click here.

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

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

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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.

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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

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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, homeward bound, o give me a home,
hearth, heartland, home cooking, home baking, home fries,
home schooling, home fooling, home and garden,
family, street, neighborhood, countryside, familiar sights and sounds,
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,
home place, homestead, homesteading, home ties,
chosen home, highrise, condo, apartment, house, split level, farm, barn,
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,
the luxury of choice, not feeling a home, out of place, o give me a home
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