Last night, Taylor found his way to his mother's bed, as he often does. Arriving home when everyone else in the house was asleep, I fell asleep in his abandoned bed, just pages short of finishing Harry Potter #3, but I awoke at about 2:30 AM for no apparent reason -- no storm, no discomfort, no bump in the night, nothing. Once awake in the middle of the night, I seldom return to sleep right away, so I stumbled down to the computer and spent an hour puttering on-line and compiling a list of recollections and impressions that I've been mulling for years, resolved this time to begin unfolding these recollections in order to understand the powerful sense of home that these dream-like impressions infuse in me.

My impressions blend yearning (which remains largely unexplained) and recognition, a combination of senses which provokes a response very like an instance of d�j� vu might, except that my apprehension of the impression is not so likely to be swept away in the slipstream of routine consciousness. The impressions are rooted deeper, I think, in objective reality, specifically in homes and sometimes the associated yards. Other differences exist, I suppose, but I haven't delineated them yet.

The written attempt won't, of course, describe just a dwelling; it must, however, describe dwellings, because particular homes arouse the sense in me of recognition. The moments during which I feel the impulse anew seem always to occur in response to my noticing a home, sometimes only peripherally, usually through a windshield, almost always only from the outside, and sometimes populated, but more often not.

Invariably the dwellings that prompt this foggy wish to understand the mythos of home are modest ones, never palatial -- more Cotswold-y than Neuschwanstein-like, and often very plain, but places I imagine to be comfortable for the residents.

My impressions so far are simple and probably very ordinary, but as clear as the visual images are, the verbal explications remain indistinct and not a little vexing, not unlike this vague and rambling entry. On the one hand, words might reduce the images to an observation about the apparent simplicity of the lives of others or, even more banal, to something along the lines of "the grass is always greener," and afterwards my fascination with these images might end. On the other hand, attempting to explain my impressions here might allow me to understand them. I doubt the former, and hope for the latter. There's a third "hand," but it won't clap here.

So. This effort will probably become nothing more than a diversion for me, and I mention it here not to tease, but to commit myself to examine it more thoroughly than I have so far.

Reading:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'll have to hurry because Taylor has started to read through the series again and might lap me if I don't make tracks.