sunday scribblings: bed

i just looked up the sunday scribblings prompt for today. it's BED. which... seems weird to me. what the heck am i going to write about beds? nothing.

but then i got to thinking about how the bed i slept in last night is in a different city then the bed i was sleeping in last month, & how so much of my life has been like that, traveling, never in the same place for long. and i started to think about how my idea of home doesn't exist in any certain place, but seems somehow to travel around with me, seems to exist in people more than places. i am homesick for my rickety bed in a castle in england, am homesick for my airmattress in a tent in a valley in switzerland, much more often then i am homesick for the town i grew up in. sometimes i do wish i could have had the chance to live in the same house my whole life, to have one of those lives where no matter what happens or where you go, you can always go back to that one same place that never changes, where your childhood room is just like you left it, with posters on the walls & junk in the closet & old stuffed animals on the bed. sometimes i want that. but then i remember all the stuff i would have missed. i would have missed sleeping in...

a house in seattle.
an apartment in minneapolis.
a guest room in ireland.
a bed & breakfast in edinburgh.
a tent in paris, lauterbrunnen, berlin, venice, krakow, prague.
a youth hostel in spain.
a hotel in morocco.
a basement in spokane.
an airport in north london.
a dorm room in chicago.
a tent in a hayfield in illinois (on a cot.)
a church in london (on an airmattress.)
a gym in a school in missouri.
a church in south africa (on the floor.)
& of course,
a castle in england.



where thou art
that
is home.
~emily dickinson