Here I am, about to move into my boyfriend’s house, trying to imagine where and how I’ll best fit — both in my need for a space to unwind, but also in a place in which I can grapple with my gender issues, research, etc. Part of that hinges on what I can call home, a place best suited for activities of worldmaking and restoration.
“Home” has been many things for me: Asheville, Western North Carolina generally, the Southern Appalachian region, the city of Charlotte more recently; my childhood room that’s no bigger than a walk-in closet, the Asheville mall, downtown Asheville guided by a desire to wander; in the presence of a select few, namely a best friend, or even my own company. These spatio-temporal spaces, including within others, are carved out by my own comfort dwelling in them, owed in part to familiarity and relative acceptance. Is it always the case that Western NC, the city of Asheville, and other broader “homes” have welcomed people like me with open arms? Not necessarily. As loving as home may seem, an uncritical home-traveler would lose themselves to the desire to remain comfortable.
By moving in to a relatively stable environment with my financially sound boyfriend, would I be sacrificing that criticality for the same pursuit of comfort? I’m not sure. But I look to Mariana Ortega for some guidance.
Ortega discusses “home,” “world”-traveling, and the process of making a home in the final chapter of In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self, aptly named “Hometactics.” As this isn’t academic, I won’t be throwing cited paragraphs in here. But she discusses her own methodology called “hometactics” in which she attempts to engage in a critical “home”-traveling, a sort of self-mapping meditated by her constant negotiation of social locations, multiplicity, and thick/thin senses of not-being-at-ease. When thinking of our various “homes,” these factors often come into play as we’re stuck in-between.
I’ve always felt stuck in the middle. A white-passing MBW (mixed black and white), gay, gender-questioning Appalachian with both a poor and middle class perspective, I’ve always been uncertain about who my people are and where I stand. Those who I’m told are my community members, kinfolk, who my goals are apparently aligned with never seem to allow for ambiguity and permeability among their own. This leads to a question of home — a place or places in which the self can come to rest, critically and creatively, to carve out some semblance of belonging and holding.
Ortega’s hometactics hone in on certain tactile decisions made about engaging with one’s immediate environment, be it a “streetwalker” who uses dérive-like practices or someone painting their walls to reflect the colorfulness of their cultural memories. While Ortega might characterize my engagement with hometactics as eyebrow-raising for a perceived white world-traveler, I cite the struggles of the past few years, along with life long crises of belonging, as enough to warrant a search for home.
If I move in, will comfort triumph over self-mapping, self-discovery, and creativity? I think, as I’ve slowly started to realize, my thin to thick sense of not-being-at-ease in this new home prompts new possibilities for expression. In some ways, I’ve already started — reintroducing manga into my literary repertoire, watching new films, bringing in art supplies for an eventual project. These things inspire joy, reinvigorate my creative side, and are tangible representations of what is possible within a new home.
These aren’t meant to be permanent or totalizing tools. My engagement with pleasurable objects won’t heal any deeper sense of disassociation or restlessness that I feel. Namely, on the issue of gender exploration, I might feel inclined to reduce or draw less attention to exteriorized expressions or gestures that could jeopardize my place here. The multiplicitous self is not a cite for existential comfort but, for border-dwellers, a place where ambiguity, blended being, and permeable worldmaking can happen.
As for homotactics, imagining a places for realizable creolized, queer orientation will be necessary no matter where I locate myself.
