Chronicles of returning "home: after 5 years.
And I add “” because after 5 years nomading, that word has completely lost its meaning.
Papeles is an exercise to reflect on the concept of time, and rediscover the meaning of pertenecia (belonging). Papeles (papers) is the name of my house, my dad - who is an artist - named it after his extensive collection of different papers that he brought home from his travels. Half home, half artist workshop, this house in Caracas, Venezuela is the only home I’ve ever known. I moved out when I was 18 to live in France. I had no idea I wasn’t going to be coming back home in a long, long time
Why didn't I come back? that's a fucking good question lol. The thought of eternal travels entered the realm of possibilities in my mind. And flooded it. I became so mesmerized by the world - home felt so "known" and I just wanted to experience more. Everything and anything. I got distracted, I guess? But also, I shape shifted so much during my travels that I thought going home was going to reset the Self settings to default. It just became suuuuch an abstract thought after so many years. “Home” did. Maybe escaping from time and space was more appealing than belonging.
The central vortex that moves a nomad life is that it teaches you to feel at home every time you look down at your two feet. Shapeshifting as the only antidote for nostalgia. Teaches you that life is happening NOW: that the only way to drink up the nowness is keeping your heart cut open for the unknown. And the high from it feels like becoming the mystery itself.
At the same time, making every place your home makes you feel like you have no home at times. And it does feel inaccessible when you've become so distanced from it. Home feels foreign, to complete the irony. In my case, home became so dangerous, politically and emotionally.
Coming back to my childhood house last year, and eating mangos from my mom’s mango tree felt like a glitch in the matrix for a second. I had plans to come for a month, and ended up staying six months. Every inch of Venezuela’s luminous (and poisonous at times) skin unveiled me. I fell in love with something I've pushed away for years. Not long after I'm back here; THIS “home” portal is more powerful than any other I’ve ever opened.
If I ever thought coming back home was going to reverse my morphing, I could say now that the moment I arrived to Caracas was when the METAmorphosis began. A fractal pattern. How could I forget that a snake sheds plenty of skins.
This last skin I shed was the absolute master of de-attachment: the hardest, most visceral one to rip off and the only one I’ll ever want to keep close; ball it up, keep it in my pocket to remind me that the concept of “home” sheds skins too.
