IT'S UP TO YOU - NEW YORK

The island of Manhattan is a strange place. Totally crowded with millions of people it conveys the feeling of being welcome and home even if you haven’t been there for years. It may be the phenomenon of skyscrapers limiting the space – though you are in between the diversity of the human race a glance up to the sky suffices to feel total loneliness and nevertheless a kind of safety. Yes, it is definitely the skyscrapers, but what do we actually define as our homes and how can we express what it means to ourselves? Is a home where your family is, are your friends you might can find everywhere in the world the better family and are homes as a consequence therefore replaceable? Somebody one day said home is where your heart is – seems easy, effectively quite hard. Maybe this quote should be taken more literal than emotional. As our hearts are inside ourselves – not in all but at least in most cases – we carry our homes along every day it doesn’t matter in which place on our planet we are located for a while by furnishing it with memories we caught up since our ability to remember killed our childhood innocence. So why can a city like New York impact our feeling of home? It’s like coming back to your small hometown, having the impression nothing will ever change while the time stands still. Of course you can discover new adventures at any time but basically the structures last. People – fashion – the subway. You are used to it, that’s why it’s common and might be replaceable much more easily than you could ever have imagined. At the end we are able to replace everything from a broken plate to a friend if we actually just want to, so why are we often afraid of doing the same way with our homes? Human’s nature of convenience? I believe things would go like they did with Rupert Everett and his VIP dressing room he was so proud about getting after his first big success at one of London’s West End theaters. We are flying high. Five minutes. After that it makes us sick.

Every time I breathe the wasted air of New York City it is the bespoke feeling that comes over. What is a home? Can we accept a certain place as the one giving us the safety we need no matter what happens or is it our actual living style we need to get into somewhat deeper in order to establish nearness around us? I am afraid we often avoid the idea of loving the things we actually got in order not to run the risk that someday that something might be gone. In some points Frank Sinatra might end up to be right by singing It’s up to you! Doubtful if he meant the city or his very self. No matter where we will make it or want our vagabond shoes to stray – sometimes home is just a feeling.

Cheers

Lorax