"What is home?"

" (...) I suspect, has less and less to do with a trip into the past and more and more to do with a journey into our future, where people will have to think of home in more and more imaginative and nonlinear ways. The classic story of the exile's return—intrinsic to the human condition, some would say, since Adam and Eve (or the Buddha)—has gone virtual. And when I think of bringing all the pieces of my home into one place, I may think of an airport (where a cousin is at gate 43, a school friend is just coming through customs and I can get the magazines and foods of almost every one of my homes). "What is home?" someone asks me. I pull out from my pocket a picture of a longtime partner. I speak of the Benedictine monastery to which I retreat four times a year. I think of the English language, my companion for every moment of my life. I cite the books and ideas and loyalties I take everywhere I go. Home—the need for solid ground—is as vital as it ever was, but now more and more of us are obliged to find it on the move. For millions of us, the journey becomes the destination. And a part of us—at sea, in the air, in passage or in passageway—wishes that there were a simpler way home." [Pico Iyer in "TIME Asia"]