Meditations

So I woke up on Day 3,
after having a very uncomfortable night-time bathroom experience
featuring a Chinese squatter toilet (read: hole in the ground) and a receipt I happened to have in my wallet...

So I was thinking bout "missing home."
While I'm here in Xi'an,
I periodically get a pang where I miss my nice home in Shanghai,
where I know where everything is and where to get good food and where I know some people.

But then while I'm in Shanghai,
periodically wonder what it would be like to be home at NYU,
with all my buds and Bobst and Washington Square and the whole deal.

But while I'm there I periodically want to go home,
and sleep in my own bed, see my family, and eat home food.
Except if I spend too much time there, I start to lose my mind.

So, These places are real,
but I also see them almost entirely through the lens of my memory,
as if these places are in my head.

Then which is "home"? Are any of them? Is my sense of comfort and at-ease just so completely fractured that no matter which one I'm at I'll always need something from another place? I always have to keep moving as I get my fill of one place and need what another can offer?

Or maybe the only home is when I'm on the road, with my backpack and my own mind for company?