Georgia on my mind

"...and still in peaceful dreams I see: the road leads back to you."

-'Georgia on my mind', Ray Charles

What is home?

It's falling into the arms of the people you love and holding them thight for a long time. It's being among your family and friends and looking into faces you saw so often, that you could draw them even with closed eyes. It's laughing about the same old jokes you used to make before leaving and sharing memories, which seem to happen long time ago, even if you have just been away for three months. It's singing and dancing along to your band playing the songs that you know inside out and feeling the pulse of the music again, more intensive than just listening to it by your headphones. It's all the things that meant and still mean the world to me. I believed that it is just the place where I used to live for many of years, where I grew up, where I went to school. Where my family is, my friends and where I play gigs with my band.

But coming back here I realized that home is also the green cross on the hill over Rustavi. It's the taste of Kindzmarauli, my favourite georgian wine, which I use to drink during cooking in the evening so that I feel like an old lady in the mid-50s. It's the smalltalk with the women at the bazari and the baker who passes me warm fresh bread with the hands full of flour. It's trying to read the writings in georgian letters on the street. And also nearly falling down in the Marshutka as it stops. It's making plans with Karola about what to cook next time meanwhile hearing Pierre singing in the shower to Alicia Keys. Getting hugged by Duba and being called:'Patara Gogo'(=georgian for 'Little Girl') by everyone. It is a few simple things, so simple that they happen every day-but especially this kind of things can make you feel at home.

I don't know what home is. Maybe it is a special place, a person or just a way to feel. Maybe it's a smell or a taste. Maybe it's a bar, a face, a voice. Maybe it's none of these things or maybe all. But perhaps this doesn't matter,because something here makes me feel close to be there, at this place called home.