Where is My Heart?   Where is my Home?

My physical heart, the one that beats in my chest and courses blood throughout my body, happens to be hanging out with the rest of me, here in Chatsworth, not to far from where I grew up.

The people closest to my metaphorical heart are mostly in Atlanta, although there a few here in Los Angeles.
But my heart resides in neither of those cities, it merely visits.

I am most at home traveling, although I do like having a home to come back to. I always told Cindy I dreamed of being semi-nomadic. 

Being a solitary nomad is hard. 

I've had homes before. One's I've owned, others that I've rented, others that were provided for me by whatever production my wife or I were working on.

I don't have a home now; just a place where some of my stuff is and where I sleep and do the other things people do. 

I've always enjoyed quotes. One of my favorite books growing up was Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 

There are a plethora of famous quotes that speak of Heart and/or Home:

Open House, Open Heart
I've always loved welcoming people into my home, whether it be for holiday celebrations, or game nights, or just having tea or coffee. People were always welcomed to spend the night if they were too tired or maybe imbibed too much or just didn't feel like going home. When we had our big house up in the Baldwin Hills with a guest bedroom, we hosted all sorts of guests; a filmmaker from Iraq, a person I friended on Facebook because we shared the same birthday and at the time, I didn't have many friend on FB because not too many people were on Facebook yet, as well as another up and coming filmmaker, as well as a fellow set decorator (three decorators under one roof, oh my).

We hosted many New Year's Eve parties, Thanksgiving diners, absinthe tasting soirees, pizza cooking get togethers (I had a wood-fire oven as well as an outdoor kitchen built on one of the terraces), Fourth of July parties to name just a few. 

Welcome Home
People often say this when you first enter the gates to Burning Man.
It didn't mean much the first time I went, but after that every year after that it rang true. Even last year when I left early. 
It was a gathering of like minded folk and some of my most memorable experiences were out there in that temporary community, that temporary home. 

Homeless but not Heartless
I may be in a transitory living situation and I don't really have much of an idea where I'll find "home" again. My hearts taken a beating in the last year or so but as long as it keeps beating, there's hope.
​ Hope for healing, growing, exploring, following one's heart as they say. 

What a Difference a Day Makes
Cindy, Skye and myself had recently returned from an amazing adventure in Croatia. Once again we had pulled up roots, put everything in storage and went on another epic adventure. It had been several years after Yugoslavia had broken up and the region had had a civil war. I had done a great deal of research and it was deemed safe for tourists to return to the jewel of the Adriatic. But there was still apprehension which played out well for us because it was incredibly affordable and without many Western tourists. And we were welcomed with open arms. 

When we returned to the States, we stayed with a dear friend of Cindy's. We were there for several days. We weren't in any rush as we didn't have any upcoming jobs or a place to stay in Los Angeles. But on 9/10, we decided not to wear out our welcome and packed up all of our luggage and headed out towards Cleveland where one of Cindy's sisters lived.

As we were leaving New York City, Cindy opened up the moon-roof and pointed towards the Twin Towers saying, "Skye when I used to live over there, my friends and I wondered if the Towers were to fall, would they hit our apartment?"

She slid the moon-roof closed and we continued on toward Cleveland.

The following day we watched the news in disbelief.  

We couldn't understand what we were witnessing. 

It was surreal. 

We also realized the world as we knew it would never be the same.