In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.
You can always go back to the place where you were comfortable, the place where you're from.
I love where I'm from. I love the landscape because it is so beautiful, and I also love the people of my community, the people whose stories I'm trying to tell.
For me, a relationship with a place is very fundamental. When you're moving - when you're leaving your life and the place where you've lived on a semi-regular basis - you tend to connect the sense of your entire life to that place that you've left.
They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself.
When I lived in Hong Kong, I felt that Hong Kong is my family.
Seattle is a place I've lived only a couple of years, but I feel like I've been adopted by this city. It's like a hug. I've been recognized on planes, in the airport and by cabdrivers. I don't get that anywhere else in the country.
When I was old enough to walk home alone from school, I loved seeing our house from a distance. It sat on the corner of South Muirfield Road and West 4th Street and had this proud, majestic look. But I rarely went through the front door. The back was more dramatic.
The sentimental view of anything is apt to be ridiculous, but I feel that I have been unusually sensitive to the issue of place since I was a little boy.
For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.
Each of us is born into our own mysteries but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!
As someone who has moved around a fair amount, I wondered what it would be like to stay rooted to one place, one community.
No, I love it at Chelsea. I've been here since I was 14, and I'm 28 now. All my friends are here, so I'm going to stay for ever unless Chelsea tell me I've got to go, which maybe one day they will, but for now I'm definitely staying.
After living out of a suitcase for years, it's a feeling of peace to wake up in the night and know where I am.
