Fernweh - a German word referring to the feeling of homesickness for a place you have never been to.
How does one feel homesick for a place they have never been to? It could be that they've spent a considerable amount of time second-handedly experiencing the place through pictures, narratives etc...and start to build a personal sanctum inside fashioned in the likeness of that place to retreat to when times get tough. When that place becomes increasingly ingrained in your consciousness, you begin to long for it in reality as well. To actually be there, to experience it with your own senses, and to most importantly assure yourself that dreams and reality aren't that separate after all. After a while, longing becomes a sort of desperation as if you're struggling for air. You start to absorb pictures and other materials almost feverishly as attempts to stave off the desire to reach that place. And in the process, it mistakenly becomes home since going to that place seems more like returning to it, more like giving yourself relief.
My personal sanctum is not a single place, but a world all to myself. A world sewn together with different places that I would travel to easily.
In one place, I walk a golden yellow-carpeted wide road between rows of trees with light filtering through the autumn leaves alone almost like the one above in Showa Kinen Koen. At the end of the road would be a little wooden lodgehouse with a cosy fireplace, wooden shelves filled with books, a tidy kitchen and pantry with fresh groceries, a cupboard with a collection of all sorts of tea in neat little jars, fresh flowers in a vase on a side table, blue curtains flapping in the wind...
In another, I'm walking along green mountain ridges overlooking a vast ocean with azure skies overhead. I'll sit at the edge and watch the horizon where the waters stretch endlessly towards as I feel the breeze on my face. This looks like Matengai in Shimane, and like Gran Pulse in FFXIII!
And in yet another place in this world, I'll be treading through snow piling as high as above my ankles, watching as my breath forms cloudy wisps as I exhale. The world here would be pristine white all over and the skies would be a clear blue. I'll walk on and on alone, drinking in the quiet yet majestic view around me. Then it would start to snow and I'd stop and stare at the white bits floating down for a while, before slowly making my way back to my little wooden house where I'll sit near the window with a cup of hot tea and a book, keeping warm by the cosy fireplace.
This is how part of my sanctum would look like, if I could create it in reality. A world where I am the only person enjoying the beauty of nature exclusively. It won't be mine, still, but it doesn't belong to anybody else too.
However in reality, home is still where your loved ones are, beyond just places and locations.
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