On the Canadian Thanksgiving, a rainy Monday, I am sitting on the floor staring through my backyard window at the yellow, pinkish-red and bright orange – the colours of gentle decay. I am trying to meditate, something I don’t know how to do. I am trying to shut off my thoughts and focus on my breath – as soon as I do that, my breath becomes ragged and thoughts flood in, so I start to write. I am thinking of home. I am thinking of the phrase « the center of the universe is everywhere ». I am looking straight at it: a worn-out deck, a trampoline full of fallen leaves, the whole extent of my backyard – unmowed, unraked, overgrown with all kinds of wild greenery, including goat weed that mocks my attempts of taming it and goldenrods that I love too much to domesticate. I hate mowing and raking. I am lazy when it comes to gardening or yard work, but there is more to it than laziness. There is longing. There is an acknowledgement of grief and guilt I am feeling every time I touch the body of the earth with a sharp cutting object. I am thinking of the ecosystems that grow and proliferate in my unkempt backyard, at the centre of the universe. I am thinking of home. When I was young, lonely and unhappy I always thought of home as something yet to come, something in the future, a distant place where I would find myself, where I would belong. I grew up and moved away, then away, then away from those previous always, further and further. And somehow I started thinking of home as something in the past, something I lost without realizing I had had it in the first place. Something I am afraid to never be able to come back to.

I am looking at the leaves covering tall grass flattened by the rain, covering soft, humid and generous soil. Like a layer of skin covering layers of tender tissue, all the way to the heart. Heart is another word for center. Maybe I am not lost. The center of the universe is everywhere. Maybe, instead of running in search of home, all my life I’ve been running away from belonging. Because belonging implies responsibility. Belonging means I should stay. I have never learned how to stay. I have perfected my skills of longing, not belonging. This be, these two tiny letters change everything. Be as in being.