Home: Or the Story of my Dizziness
A personal and poetic exploration of universal feelings of fear of the unknown, change, travel, homesickness, and belonging.
Almost nobody is immune to fear. Fear is expression of your vulnerability in a vast, uncontrollable world. Fear has a function. It is an evolutionary adaptation that governs how you act when faced with danger and is part of a healthy survival mechanism. But fear can also manifest itself in the absence of obvious dangers, holding you in its grip as you seek to avoid all manner of imagined threats.
This is the affliction Dorien de Wit contends with in all kinds of forms. And she is able to capture feelings of anxiety with incomparable skill. She views them from all angles, making them palpable for the reader. Home is a personal and poetic exploration of the fear of travelling, fear of large spaces, of being far removed from home, of suddenly losing the ability to see, of illness. But Home also invites the reader to experience the opposite of anxiety, feelings of comfort and safety. De Wit finds these positive feelings chiefly in her vegetable garden – it seems appropriate, to find rest in nature and working with plants and soil, with the earth where everything begins and ends. Home shows that body and mind are one, how closely mental and physical suffering are connected: ‘What came first, the fear or the dizziness?’
De Wit relives memories, calculates the distance to the Pioneer 10 space probe, puts her fears to the test, goes travelling after fighting the urge to stay at home, swims in freezing water, travels on Street View, follows Alice down the rabbit hole, studies the body’s vestibular system and delves into history. The fragmentary nature of this memoir, the lucid, poetic language and her boldness are the most impressive aspects of De Wit’s style. And paradoxically it is her boldness, her fearlessness and grit that allow De Wit to embark on this impressive journey.
