beginning the journey home

When I was five years old, my mother picked me up in her arms and sat me down in front of her on the kitchen bench top. She dallied for a moment, putting some grocery bags aside and looking generally uncertain. After a bit of this, she eventually crouched herself down and brought her eyes to my level. She took a long breath and politely and hesitantly, she asked me:

 “PJ, what would you say about you, me and your brother going on a holiday without daddy?”

At the time, I had no idea what she meant. I was more interested in my new socks, which were black and patterned with bright green, globular ghosts and a couple of cheerful skeletons in top hats.

homing: a prelude

What is home?

If you were asked to describe home to someone for whom that concept was completely alien, what would your answer be? What words would you string together in a sentence, a phrase, if you were asked to articulate the human meaning of home?

“What does home mean to you?”

This is a question I have been asking people across Australia for the last five years

on the reason for this blog

This is a space about home. About why we need it. What it is. Its plumage and profusions. The shapes, dreams and fears at its literal foundations. It is also a journey of home. It marks the beginning of an idea, and the rough sketch of a larger body of work to come. 


I have opened this space as an embarkation point for an odyssey. And this is a declaration of sorts; a way of holding myself to a realisation and a promise. It is from here that I will put words to a journey that began long ago, and that I hope now to chart out. The methods are multiple. I will be going back in time, around the world, into the present and out into the speculative. 


This is a space about home...A cartography of human desire.