Roots.

March 19, Tucson.
A week ago or so there was a series on NPR about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the fate of people who lost their homes, and as I was listening to some of them I was struck by not only how people put such a high emotional price on their homes, but also by how they despised the very notion of living in a trailer, as if it somehow signified a free fall on the social ladder for them. For most of them losing their homes was like losing some of themselves it seemed, and relocating to a trailer adding the ultimate insult to their trauma. I guess because these are feelings so foreign to me I have a hard time understanding them. For circus people and a lot of retirees who choose to hit the road, our wheels are our home, and I for one don't like to think that makes me a lower kind of a person. And because I've moved so much in my life I also have a hard time with the notion of belonging to a place, and of letting that place becoming a part of who I am.
Circus people like Fridman carry this rootless life to an extreme. Fridman is "un enfant de la balle," as we say in French (a juggling kid, literally translated.) He was born in the circus and has worked in one or another all his life. When people ask him where he's from he'll say Peru and that means all of Peru, not a place there in particular. He once told me he wasn't sure exactly where he was born, maybe in the Peruvian selva, maybe in Lima. His parents had a small circus and traveled around the country with it. When he was a teenager he also toured in Chile and Ecuador working for other circuses.
For me this rootless way of life was all part of why I wanted to become a journalist, and now of being in the circus. It's a wide wide world out there, and now there's one more good reason to keep on wandering: there's Dylan to share it with. So home is wherever I happen to be. It's where my heart is, and he's right here with me taking his afternoon nap. Furthermore, like all expatriates I know I'll never be of my own country anymore, nor will I ever hope to be of my adopted one either, so there's no use stopping in my tracks. I'm bound to be on the outside looking in, whether at work or in life, and it's been a wild ride so far.