HOME

I'm no longer living in a house I already moved out of. Listen to my song Stand On My Own for the lyric reference. Yes, I am referring to my own lyrics. It just happens to be my best mode of communication, even better than this. Sorry, not sorry, as the kids say. 

I was born in December of 1978. My parents were living in Queens when they adopted me. They brought me home in February of 1978. We moved to North Brunswick, New Jersey, in December of 1983. That house became my home of 36 years. The year or two I spent in total living single anywhere else? They don't count, trust me. This past year, I moved in with Maggie, the girl who saved my life. She is home when I am homeward bound. As for the residence itself, it is an apartment she had already made a home of her own. The beautiful thing I am realizing is that the longer we spend in this place, the more I am learning how to create a home. From here, we will learn how to do it again in some other place. She has the jump on me when it comes to that.

Part of the challenge i face is getting anyone other than Maggie to understand just how far I've come. When I created the logo for Outside Looking Out, little did I know that the kid orbiting the earth was really me.

Re-reading an earlier post entitled Re-Entry, it sounds as if I had it all figured out. Perhaps I did. But as I have recently come to realize, the process I am describing does not happen overnight. It certainly doesn't happen in the span of time it takes to write one of these. I stand by my choice of metaphor, though. Do you know what happens to an object in re-entry? This is what happens to a spacecraft, according to HowStuffWorks.com:

"Spacecraft re-entry is tricky business for several reasons. When an object enters the Earth's atmosphere, it experiences a few forces, including gravity and drag. Gravity will naturally pull an object back to earth. But gravity alone would cause the object to fall dangerously fast. Luckily, the Earth's atmosphere contains particles of air. As the object falls, it hits and rubs against these particles, creating friction. This friction causes the object to experience drag, or air resistance, which slows the object down to a safer entry speed. 

This friction is a mixed blessing, however. Although it causes drag, it also causes intense heat. Specifically, shuttles face intense temperatures of about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1649 degrees Celsius) [source: Hammond]. Blunt-body design helps alleviate the heat problem. When an object -- with blunt-shaped surface facing down -- comes back to Earth, the blunt shape creates a shock wave in front of the vehicle. That shock wave keeps the heat at a distance from the object. At the same time, the blunt shape also slows the object's fall [source: NASA]. The Apollo program, which moved several manned ships back and forth from space during the 1960s and 1970s, coated the command module with special ablative material that burned up upon re-entry, absorbing heat."

Imagine how a human would fare, metaphorically of course. What would make it worth going through that? HOME.