Where is home for you? Are you happy there?
Over the two years I wrote The Infinite Onion, I thought a lot about Home with a capital H, wondering if a deep feeling of Home would be possible for me after living in eighty places in three countries. I felt homeless in a conceptual way, and longed for an easy answer to my dilemma of where to settle, where to put down roots for good.
Storytelling, especially the long form of a novel, allows me to explore extremes to a degree I can’t in real life. In The Infinite Onion, I considered the extremes of home/no home. One of the main characters, Grant Eastbrook, becomes homeless after losing his job. The other main character, Oliver Rossi, has always lived in the same house.
Working my way into Oliver’s character, imagining what it might be like to live in the same place all my life—something I’ll never experience—felt bittersweet. Every inch of Oliver’s home told years of stories in a pile-up of memories. How would that affect him? I knew the benefits and costs of moving frequently. What would the pros and cons of staying look like?
By the time I was fifteen, my family had moved fifteen times. I went to three different schools in sixth grade. That was the year I gave up a little, turned to books more and tried to make friends less. The college I attended required travel and new experiences in the wider world for two quarters of each school year. Over the decades, as I pulled up roots again and again, my map of Home became an unfocused blur.
I wanted to settle in one place, but was stumped about where. I’d bonded with the specifics of so many different places over the decades and couldn’t see how to narrow the field. My favorite countryside, trains, and restaurant reside in Freiburg, Germany. Canada had me at publicly funded health care. My beloveds live in widely scattered cities and towns. How to pick a place?
Months passed. I continued to write The Infinite Onion, projecting myself into Oliver’s psyche. A detailed floor plan of his house took shape on my laptop. Details multiplied on my hand-drawn map of the land around his house. I lived vicariously in the story, then pored over Google maps and websites to create an intense spreadsheet of town comparisons, fired up to choose a place and begin developing for myself a semblance of what Oliver had. I don’t regret the many lessons learned from exploring the world, but I yearned to settle down.
As I strove to bring Oliver’s world into sharper focus, I decided to stop trying so hard to use logic to solve my issue of finding Home. I surrendered to the story. I daydreamed without touching my spreadsheet. I folded the map and let go.
Around the time I sent The Infinite Onion off to beta readers, I hired an astrocartographer—a specialist in the intersection of astrology and cartography. The outcome is that I now live in the exact place I want to live: Eugene, Oregon. Eugene wasn’t on my spreadsheet, but it’s perfect for me. I love it here. We have an international airport. I can explore the world and return to Eugene as my home base.
In the process of finding Eugene, I discovered something even better. Eugene and my apartment are home, but my Home with a capital H lies elsewhere after all.
With help from Oliver and Grant, I’ve realized my Home is not a location but a state of being. I am most at home when I’m quiet. When I collude with the muses to download and craft a story. When I tune in to create.
My Home is imagination. As I write, my roots reach down to magma. I share stories to open the front door. As you read, you accept my invitation to visit.
Welcome to my Home.
About the Book
The truth is harder to hide when someone sharp starts poking around.
Grant Eastbrook hit the ground crawling after his wife kicked him out. Six months later, in Seattle without a job or a place to live, he escapes to the woods of nearby Vashon Island to consider his options. When he’s found sleeping outdoors by a cheerful man who seems bent on irritating him to death, Grant’s plans to resuscitate his life take a peculiar turn.
Oliver Rossi knows how to keep his fears at bay. He’s had years of practice. As a local eccentric and artist, he works from his funky home in the deep woods, where he thinks he has everything he needs. Then he rescues an angry man from a rainy ditch and discovers a present worth fighting the past for.
Amid the buzz of high summer, unwelcome attraction blooms on a playing field of barbs, defenses, and secrets.
About Alice Archer:
Alice has questions. Lots of questions. Scheming to put fictional characters through the muck so they can get to a better place helps her heal and find answers. She shares her stories with the hope that others might find some healing too. For decades, Alice has messed about with words professionally, as an editor and writing coach. She also travels a bunch. Her home base is Eugene, Oregon.
Connect with Alice:
Your post hit…home(!)…with me, Alice, as I attended fifteen schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. When I attended college, I was determined that I was going to stay somewhere for four years for the first time in my life, and I did.
Best wishes for the success of The Infinite Onion; it sounds great!
Kareni, you are a kindred spirit indeed. :)
Thank you for the good wishes!