Over the past few years, my relationship with the places in which I live has changed. As a 20-year-old college student, this is perhaps one of the normal and perspective-altering aspects of growing up: expanding my understanding of a location in relation to myself. Moments where my place of residence shifts from being where I reside to a deeper part of my identity: home.
As a second semester Freshman in college, this happened, quite to the surprise of my parents, when I unconsciously mentioned one evening at the end of my Spring break that I was going to go upstairs (to my room) and get some packing done before I went back home the following day.
Home? My dad had asked, a silly smile spreading across his face.
While my parents found this quite funny, I was caught off guard by this slippage of nouns. But it was true. Kenyon had become a space in which for this moment in my life, was home. A place that was challenging, supporting and expanding my perspective and understanding of self.
Three days ago, I stood on the South side of the London bridge photographing the lights from tall business buildings reflecting into the Thames. Casually chatting with a friend who was leaving for Winter break the following day, I mentioned that I had a lot of packing to do back at home before my Cleveland flight out of Heathrow. I had, of course, meant Exeter, but it had happened, again, unconsciously. That word home, so abstract, and yet so profoundly comfortable.
When I move to a new place, I intentionally work to make it home. Even though I am learning to travel lightly, I fill my bookshelves with literature and photo books, immerse myself in the community, and find “that” coffee shop where I celebrate each week with tea and scones. Yet, while this is my intention, I felt surprised, slightly uneasy, and also excitement at calling this place, that was once so new and unfamiliar, “home.”
But it is. Exeter, England is now also home: an addition to the college of spaces that have at different points in my life become and (many) still are, places in which I feel safe, known, and play a role within.
For this final photo collection of the semester, I have curated images taken on the Night Bus on my final evening in London before Winter break, the same evening the conversation above occurred. A night of cold rain and fog that smudged the windows. A documentation of light and time as I rode back to the hostel.
