My Favorite Place

I've always found myself conflicted when it comes to my own coordinates.  I don't know where I belong - except that I know I belong in too many places.  I've never been the type to say that my hometown is my "home", and for as long as I can remember I've tried to cling to other places.  For a while, when I was young, I felt like I belonged nowhere else than in Ocean City, New Jersey, at the shorehouse we'd rent with my mom's sister and her family for a week each summer.  I learned every nook and cranny and secret kept in Ocean City.  As I grew, the magic faded.  While I'll always love it, it's not where I belong.

I've always had a place in my heart for New York City.  Call it trendy, call me a poseur, whatever.  I grew up visiting the city and I still live and die with every trade, signing, win or loss of the Yankees.  For years and years, I "knew" I belonged in the City.  I had to have the City.

Now, I find myself torn.  The more time I spend in the more rural areas of New Jersey, the more I realize that I want my drive home to be on a road between cornfields.  I want my driveway to be bumbling gravel.  I want a garden, goats, and my horses in my backyard.  I need a place to get away from "the world".  As I'm getting closer and closer to the real world, I'm beginning to feel some pressure again to figure out where I belong.

Maybe that's why I've chosen to study Geography - a significant piece of my heart has always been focused on "place".

Anyway, this whole rambling was inspired by a song I was listening to this morning, My Favorite Place by Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers.  Here ya go.

i gotta get back to the city
where the sound is the subway at night
all the people i see on the crowded streets
it helps me to feel more alive

i gotta get back to the country
where the sound is the song of the spring
the kids in the town and they're running around
it helps me to feel like i'm free

this is my favorite place
my worry slips away
i could stay here for days and days and days and days
this is my favorite place
my worry slips away

it's time i was getting back home
where the sound is the song in my heart
the places i go, i always know
home is wherever you are.