Brooklyn Woman

A Publication of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

OCT. 17, 2003 issue

The World According To Me

By Ryn Gargulinski

HOME SWEET DITTO

“All things on earth point home in old October.” –Thomas Wolfe

Upon meeting someone for the first time, you get your usual array of mundane and probing questions: Where do you live, where do you work?  What’s your sign, are you married?  Can you juggle?  But I also constantly get another one thrown into the mix: Where are you from?

Immediately people know I am not a born and bred Brooklynite although I have lived here over 14 years.  It could be my lack of Brooklyn attitude – I only curse if the train gets stuck and I don’t prop my foot on the wall behind me when I am standing around on one leg.  It could also be my hybrid accent, one I both mimicked and invented, sort of like a salad bar, picking and choosing drawls that sound  harmonious or exploring certain words in weird ways with my tongue and alveolar ridge.  This question, as you can imagine, puts you immediately on the spot. 

When I make them guess, I can just go along with their answer, whatever it may be, acting incredibly amazed that they got it on the first try.  However, this has placed my origin in places like Ireland, Russia and Iran (don’t ask!), places I have never been and know little about except they drink stout, they drink vodka or they had a thing called a Shah.

Answering this question truthfully puts half my life on the line – or at least in an eardrum.  Here I would have to explain I am from Michigan, the heart of suburbia and a town called “Troy.”   No, not DE-troit (as people inevitably hear it)…but suburbia – where the yards have grass and all the houses look the same except for the blue one on the block that made everyone mad.  This response can go as long or short as it may, depending on my level of loquacity and their level of interest at the time.  It also leads to the age-old “Why did you move to New York” inquiry which, in itself, is another two hours’ worth of tragic explanation.

So to avoid all this, it’s often quite easier just to lie and say I’m from Bensonhurst.  Regardless of the outside response, an inside question had continued to snarl and nag me: Where, may I say, is my home?  It’s not only a question of where I may “say” is my home – I heard it’s like legal law marriage, if you have lived somewhere for x number of years, you can say you are from there.  But it’s how I feel in the deepest, shrillest depths of my soul. 

What, exactly, is home?  We are incredibly programmed to reply in tired clichés that it’s where you hang your hat collection, display cheesy needlepoints proclaiming “Home Sweet Ditto” or where your bleating heart is (provided you did not leave it in San Francisco).  And how do we know we are there?  Is it when the cows come, too, or there’s a pillow embroidered with our name or a place, perhaps, in which they speak our own language -- English instead of Swahili, asking for Coke A Cola by calling it “pop?”

I have found that, after decades of questioning my “home” and living in an array of places that have never lived up to the proverbial moniker, home is much more than an adobe hut overlooking the breathtaking sunsets of New Mexico (hmm….I think I could easily get into THAT home!)   We can live in the throngs of Thailand or the bowels of Bengal but none of it will feel like home unless you have that inner comfort with yourself.  This comfort is elusive, self-created, and not always evident, precisely the reason people jut from place to place like drunken sideways Nomads looking for a place to roost in which they hope to feel fully sated. 

It’s a phenomenon called “Geographics” where you simply keep moving.  You insanely jut from place to place, hurriedly scurrying from one dead-end only to move to another, often not even caring if you leave your brand new couch behind.  You are not, of course, aware of this at the time, otherwise you would have not gone through six apartments and $9000 worth of U-Haul fees in your first five years of Brooklyn alone.  You are trying to get away from something.  You are trying to get TO something.  You don’t know what the hell you are doing.  But there is an enormous catch: wherever you go, you are taking yourself with you.

When you realize this key and decide to concentrate on fixing your INNER house, it’s not so tough to live just about anywhere and feel, in your heart, you are home.  For the first time ever, I believe last summer, I finally felt this borough of churches in which I have dwelled so long has opened its arms to accept me – or more importantly – I have opened those arms to accept myself.  Yes Brooklyn, I can say, has become my home.  Well, now – that must mean it’s now time to move!