When a girl, I was sometimes entrusted with proposing a toast in Zuko (vile stuff, I must say, even though it’s off the point now). At the end of my speech I would always say, “I wish each one of you a roof over your head!” Was it an unintelligent archetype or a premonition of the 1990s’ Great Migrations? Or, perhaps, from the mouth of that babe came forth words of a centuries-old wisdom verbalising the never-ending human wish to have one’s own space of security and harmony?

Some say, your home is Planet Earth. Others say, your home is your country. For some people home is a place where they are deeply rooted. So, every time they come there they feel empowered, God only knows how, by the warmth of the soil they set their bare foot on, when children.

Flashbacks of Home as an idyllic space, where you were once happy, keep knocking on your heart’s door like the proverbial Claes’ ashes. Especially, when you feel absolutely sick and tired or desperately twisted by the asphalt tablets of Cold Town. Or, when, right out of the blue, you feel strangely homeless and freezing cold even by a hot fireplace. Then, all of a sudden, you are rescued by a feeling of assuredness, a reminder that you do have a hearth of your own always able to warm you up!

For every badly hurt soul there must be a lighted window “with cream-coloured curtains,” a symbol of healing security meaning, “It’s your Home where you are always welcome!” To have none is a real tragedy! This kind of longing for Home Stephen King calls “a real disease, the pain of an uprooted plant.”

Some time ago the word “cosmopolitanism” had almost an opprobrious connotation. Nowadays it denotes a positive ideology of “world citizenship.” Unimaginably sharp turns takes the dialectics of time at times, doesn’t it? Well, why not, after all?

Time turns over the pages of centuries while space expands. Life is a Wonderful Voyage! So, ships shouldn’t stagnate in harbour. Sails want to be filled with the Wind of Wandering. Meanwhile, what’s the use of the most wonderful wandering if the wayfarer has no Home to make way to? Wandering about the world makes wonderful sense only if one is welcome somewhere. Or, when one is prepared to welcome someone.

You can find yourself all alone and totally lonely surrounded by a crowd of “Facebook friends.” Meanwhile, the place you can call your “fortress” has no towers or fortifications as such. It’s just a flat with walls, doors and windows. Nevertheless, this is where you feel at Home a deux with someone who really needs you. This is where the light warming up your heart is always on for you. This is the window you lift your eyes to while walking from the parking lot in the dead of night to see this light on in it. At this moment you know, “There is Me. There is You. There is Us.”

Home is where the light is always on for you. For you are always welcome at Home.

Lara Lychagina

Editor-in-chief