Tag: migration

My home

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Home is where the heart is. I was editing a chapter in a book on migration and acculturation, and the Transylvanian author said so. I scratched the back of my ear and thought, is the heart where home is? 

Home addresses I had too many to count. When I learned to count, I also learned to spell. The return address on an envelop. Ponnsdorfer Weg 15, 7980 Finsterwalde. The word Germany I learned much later. It was the only house I knew, until I wanted to leave to see this globe. I shared barren rooms with young men, neatly shaven, hairs trimmed, and in a grey uniform. Home addresses changed in those years and had cryptic numbers. I was discharged and began to learn. My home station was a shared dorm room with bunkbeds. We debated and changed the world in our minds and only snored exhausted after midnight. One dorm room for four was special and surely not home. It was Russia. Kutuzov was in town briefly and plotted Napoleon’s demise in a winter almost two centuries before. I could still feel the continued cries of Mother Homeland, listening from my bed to the cacophony of church bells next door. And the learning continued. The rooms changed. Into apartments that I shared. With a fellow migrant I went to England. The apartments changed. The learning continued. I changed apartments. All had a bed and none was home. Until I bought a repossessed semi in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. We made it our home with sanding and sweat, with plumbing and paint. After I covered my study in dove grey, my son was born. For this room to be his first home, I changed its walls to morning light yellow. And then we crossed the Atlantic to Ontario’s southwest for a new house. At the corner of Marshall and Montclair, it was in the center of my Canadian garden. The trees I planted, the roses I kept were my safe space. My home from home. I left them behind to search to settle and found a century house in one of the many Cambridges of this world. Gothic Revival – the architecture of my house and life then. Moved on. Gone west again. West coast. San Diego. Million dollar houses. Sold too soon. 

Objectively, home is an object. Of what? Subjectively, home is where the heart is. And the heart is my center …

This is prompt 8 – Objects – from a 52-week online writing course, with a prompt each week. Week 8 came and went almost 8 weeks ago. And I have written about the first 6 prompts. I am committed to re-alingning the number of prompted texts and prompt weeks. 45 to go …

Hundrest poem without taers

My English translation

In 2012, I heard Dragica Rajčić read her poetry. She is Croatian and lives in Switzerland. Her volume of poetry is in German; she also writes in Croatian, which I cannot read. I did not like the English translation, also presented at the reading, because it had eliminated all the idiosyncracies of the original. I believe it is the little nicks that make this poem.

And if you like the just texts — poems I wrote or translated, prose that often has a rhythm — they are, in no particular order, under Just texts.

Maria

Now that I am back in San Diego, I have joined a group of writers on Sunday. Each worked on two prompts. The second was a stunning and large photograph from the National Geographic. It depicted a group of migrants or refugees walking. The central woman with a white head scarf was the only one looking straight at the photographer and, thus, me. We all glanced at the photograph briefly, did not read, and each started to write for a few minutes.