On Discovering Home

I was saying last week that, having never experienced homesickness in my life (not having a home in particular), I recently discovered that I have become homesick for an entire country. Maybe it's because my friends and family are spread out all over it, maybe it's because I grew up in several widely separated parts of it, maybe it's because I've traveled through the large majority of it and seen it from so many angles. Whatever the reason, I am excited to set off Thursday to reacquaint myself with several of my favorite bits of 'home'. However, the territory my heart knows to call home having been enlarged to encompass Utrecht as well as the United States, I am also setting of on something of an adventure. Knowing Dave as I do, I am sure it will be a most exciting and enjoyable one. That combination of sentiments (like most) is captured better by Chesterton, so I defer to him for the moment:

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an

English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and

discovered England under the impression that it was a new

island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am

either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may

as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration.

There will probably be a general impression that the man

who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to

plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out

to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not

here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you

imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of

folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not

studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of

the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable

mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for.

What could be more delightful than to have in the same few

minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined

with all the humane security of coming home again? What could

be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa

without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could

be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover

New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears,

that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me

the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main

problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once

astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this

queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its

monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once

the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of

being our own town?

So you see that all this talk of my peregrinations was really just a clever ruse to reference Chesterton, giving me an excuse to post the link to the Chesterton site I mentioned to Gerben last night. And here it is.

Enjoy.