Never Leaving Home

I found these two quotations transcribed on separate index cards and am pleased to juxtapose them here.

Mothers may weep goodbye or wave their sons into manhood with patriotic fervor, but they cannot prevent them from going. No need to. No matter how far a son may travel, he will never really leave home.

Never will man find a woman as able, as willing, to give birth to him again.

[From Phyllis Chesler About Men]

And now for the almost obverse view:

But sons grow up
imaginary ones as well,
and perpetual children are tedious

[Thom Gunn, "Selves", The Passages of Joy]

Ursula K. Leguin once published a lovely book plus cassette tape entitled Always Coming Home. And we conclude that our relations are not so much about place as about process.

And so for day 686
29.10.2008