Awareness and Tranquillity

By Nicole Jones

There is a home we all know.  Somehow, it is where we came from and where we are going at once.  I have known a time, long since past now, when my home sprung up around me in walls and colors and the delights of noise, parents, warmth, love.  My childhood, a childhood that I reach for now and again that lies a little too far away upon a foundation twisted perhaps too much by imagination to be held up for long.  It falls away from me often as inconsistent bits of myself, crumbling when I want a secure vision of who it is I have been, hints of what I may become.  Then I look elsewhere for comfort --home! I think-- to a beautiful house in the mountains that I have known and loved through all else that has shifted.  And there was much transience, as there always will be, an ebb and flow that we will never quite catch up with.  My house felt with me, my heartbreak, my soul’s greatest plummets, the journey of both my psyche and body.  The house held them all, all the comings and goings.  And then I realized the house was one of them.  As it had entered my world with such strength and immediacy, so too would it leave.

Then the realization arises that home can only really be held inside of ourselves.  Where we truly reside in life’s comforts and love is within the only part of our life that is not ephemeral.  All else begins and passes on our journey through this world. The joy we feel when we interact with beauty, contemplation, color, sensation, remains.

--Nicole Jones--