Funny, my first book Grand Central Winter being centered on the years I lived on the street, I have been exhaustively asked to speak on home-LESS-ness. Now, being asked to consider it the other way around, it occurs to me that the word homeless is something of a misnomer.

You may be without a roof over your head but there is always some bench, some alleyway, some patch of earth, some part of the city to which, when all else of the day is said and done, you return. Living inside of a constructed box is, after all, a rather recent event in human history—an anomaly in the way of things, if the carbon dating that puts us on this earth a billion years ago is to be believed.

Given this, what more fundamental definition of the word "home" is there than "the place to which you always return"?

Copyright © 2007 Lee Stringer. All rights reserved.

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