Procrastination: thinking about the bush

Well I haven't written much, or done much, but I've been thinking about a few things.

I've been reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which is quite interesting if you like that sort of thing, the sort of question that it raises. And yes, I do.

It doesn't explicitly deal with 'home' questions, but the questions it asks are equivalent. If anything it's more specifically about identity, but identity AS an immigrant, in a certain place, with a certain past. More generally, it looks at questions of both the individual and place, both having history.

It's an interesting way of looking at things - very literary, very philosophical, yet also very subtle. The characters are searching for a 'neutral' place for two estranged brothers to meet. This could have been related in a range of ways, but it is described specifically in terms of 'neutrality' with regard to history - and when they meet, the room is rewritten in their conversation, becoming no-longer-neutral, as it gains connections with the past, with history.

What's interesting is that although its questions are nearly equivalent to questions of 'home', they are in a sense quite different. They cover the same territory without reverting to the idea of 'home' itself. None of the immigrants is ever not-at-home, nor at-home, merely in a place, with their specific history. You could say that 'home is where the history is', if you wanted to - but Smith doesn't want to. Why would you bother searching for home?

So, I ask myself the same question?
If I am going walking in the bush, I might be covering the same territory - unearthing, writing, creating history, and writing self and place - but need it be cached in the terminology of the 'home'?


Well that's my thinking.
Perhaps next time I'll look at 'home' itself, maybe. We'll see.