Place

I read an entry from some living fossil hinting at a sense of belonging, a macadamia nutted cheese head who seemed to have found it so much so that she was gaining recognition and acceptance, but – life being what it is – had to give it up and move on.

It seems that I am constantly being drawn to what sense of belonging of means and have even wondered if searching for it dilutes it.

I tried in a comment section of some fragmented weblog to state that we who talk of it and look for it cannot achieve that sense of belonging as it seems to be those who are born to a place, don’t leave and are intimate with their surroundings is what we are looking for. Something we are not.

I cannot presume to speak for others but there seems to be this delicate balance, I don’t want to be part of an ex-pat community away in essence bringing my lifestyle to a more hospitable environment. I also don’t want to be subsumed by the place of choice – going native. With few exceptions we who seek will always be the “from aways” but in the best situations no one cares. I say for the most part for there are places where everyone seems to be from away – usually because the indigenous population has been killed off or marginalised – Alaska, the Florida Keys and frontier towns around the world.

Then I ring a hospital in Toronto to assure the second tiered – CBC announcer – that I didn’t scheme to place him there in order to take his place at his workplace and have a place to stay in July.

When assured that while his situation was serious but manageable, we diverted to small talk which while linked to Pouch, it was more of a common point to diverge. Hong Kong, the Arctic. The confluence of others – my evil twin dropping by to see how he is, the Newfoundland Swiss, the Irish Swiss the care and upkeep of a place the cable internet service he put in, ironic as we don’t put in television, me making it wireless. Discussing the loss of his temporary studio overlooking Duckworth Street and Signal Hill as CBC radio moves to the television facilities and less grand vistas. The coincidence of a friend of his from Vancouver and a frequenter to the west coast of the island buying a print of mine at an auction in T.O.

Pouch is our Ram’s Head, our Duke, even our Spur on a Friday. We stop in chat, compare, plan and leave until the next Friday. And I am thinking that maybe my idea of sense of belonging’s location is too small.