Blog #4, What is Home?, August 21, 2021
Jim's Musings from Paris
A few weeks have rushed by since my last posting. When I think of all that has happened in the past seven weeks, since we left the USA on July 1, I get a bit light-headed. After we received the keys to our apartment, we have been busy cleaning, painting, and furnishing the empty space. Our Akron goods have still not arrived. In fact, the boat’s departure has been postponed, for the fourth time, until August 31. I don’t know the new boat’s name, but we’ve gone through the Atlanta, the Tosca, and the Daedalus. I’m a little afraid what the next one will be called. Perhaps it’s best not to know the name.
We have been living day to day with the bare minimum of “things.” We bought a bed—a very good one. I told Jairo it will probably be the bed we die in so we should make sure it’s comfortable.
A sofa (très BoBo chic), a desk and chair, a dining room table and chairs (more Bo(hemian) than Bo(urgeoisie), a guest bed (Léo’s bed), a buffet, a refrigerator (the tallest refrigerator I’ve ever seen) and an Ikea island with stools to create some workspace in our very efficient, Parisian, open, “American” kitchen—these items round off our major purchases. The kitchen features lovely olive-green cabinets, a dishwasher, a washing machine, an induction stove top, a very small oven, and a micro-wave that Kena and Raphael were able to loan us. We also bought a great bistro table and two folding chairs to put on the balcony. It was marked down 45% and just waiting for us in Monoprix when we walked in one day. Other necessities, like sheets, towels, dishware, some flatware and utensils, cleaning products, and lots of Bonne Maman jam to use the jars temporarily as glassware (very Bo(hemian) of us) have found their way into our closets and cupboards.
We are slowly exploring the neighborhood. It’s a little difficult in August since many businesses close for vacation. But we are trying out different boulangeries and butcher shops and trying to determine the best supermarket to frequent and where to buy our vegetables, cheese, and fish. Aligre, one of Paris’ traditional open air and enclosed markets, is a ten-minute walk from the apartment. The options for garden-fresh, local, and organic food are many and will increase in September when the city goes back to work.
Paris has been exceptionally quiet this August. There are fewer tourists because of the pandemic. The streets and stores are much less crowded. Often, we find ourselves alone on a bus or metro car. It’s been a nice, easy orientation to big city life after 30 years of Akron’s small city calm.
This brings me to my meditation for this posting. I’ve been thinking a lot about “home.” Maybe it’s because our recent collaborator, Josy Jones, is working on a project called Home back in Akron. But the question, “What is it that makes home?, has been haunting me since moving into our new abode. Having our Akron things around us, artwork and pictures hanging on the walls, bowls and books in place, will certainly create a more familiar atmosphere in the apartment, but is that what will create home? Certainly, our grandson playing in the space, making “snow” from the Styrofoam packing material, and building forts and castles with his abuelo from the cardboard boxes left from the multiple deliveries, will begin to forge memories and infuse our petite flat with a sense of play and transformation. But what makes a place “home?” In New World Performance Lab’s Performance Ecology work, Jairo talks about the body being the first “home,” oikos in Greek, from which we derive the terms ecology and the eco-system. Perhaps this is the key. Our bodies themselves are home and create home. Home is not one place. It is wherever “I” am. For us, it is the intersection of Jairo’s presence with mine. It is the inclusion of other “bodies” within that juncture: intimate lunches and dinners with Kena, Raphael, and Léo; hosting Viola, our first Akron visitor, for several gaga days before we were in any condition to receive guests; unruly and improvised vacation days with extended family on the west coast of France. Dare I say it without seeming too sappy? Home is not a place. Home is a condition. Home is another word for love.