CURE-ALL //

Part 1- Home

When face to face with lightning, rain, and mammoths, the earliest humans receded into caves. They lined their mouths with torches and squatted, sharpening flint against the flame. Within three walls they learnt to paint stories of their triumph over nature - fear receding in the shadows. There was comfort in the warmth those torches gave.

Because they reminded them of the wombs in which they took life, the early humans chose caves with the softest walls. There they entered at twilight to be reborn at dawn. Behind our headsets and passwords, we're still prey, climbing from rung to rung on our way to becoming apex predators. Behind the accoutrements of the modern age, we still recede from our predators within the safety of home.

It’s within our walls that we tell our stories, paint our pictures, recede. We shrink away from the cruelty of outside - where our predators lurk, shapeless, shadowy, ghosts of our own creation, moulded in our own image.

Like those early humans, we crawl out every morning, yawning, glassy-eyed to greet the elements with trepidation. From the moment we get out, we can't wait to get home. At noon, as uninvited hunger preempts a socially acceptable lunch hour, we can't wait to get home. At three, as we shuffle through our pockets for loose change, we can't wait to get home. In our taxis, amidst our honking and our rushing and our maneuvering past one another to get indoors, we can't wait to get home. Home is where the heart is, home is where we feel at home.

Home is a ghost of our own creation, the cave, its lowly ancestor, recreated from a lost memory. Our predators have become nebulous, our prey has come to be served on china. Is it any surprise that our idea of home is just as nebulous? Is it any wonder that home is no longer just somewhere to lay down our weapons, lick our wounds, share a quiet dinner with family and friends? Is it any wonder that when we search for a home, what we find is crockery?

Our appetites have grown insatiable. Nothing that exists without us can comfort us. No walls can shelter us, no roof can protect us. Home lies within us. It isn't three bedrooms, a dog, a staircase, a backyard, a loving family, carefully selected art, teaspoons and tablespoons. It's an ideal we chase. It's a time and a place, it's a figment of our imagination.