Four years ago this March my then girlfriend (now wife) and I learned by means of urinalysis that she was pregnant. I was 19.

It was by way of gestation, then, that I left Colorado and arrived in California. The matter of how we ended up here and what has happened over the prior years are not of great concern in this instance, for this is about Home, and California does not feel like my Home, merely my state of residence.

Where is my Home? More importantly, what is my Home?

I wish I knew.

I have now what could be considered a dream of American proportions. If I were a Boy Scout, and life a Merit Badge sash, then here would be its decorations at the ripe age of almost-twenty-four: one house (bought), one wife (of almost 3 years), one daughter (3.5 years old), one son (with middle name of Blayde, 1.5 years old), one late model sedan (mine), one late model Isuzu Rodeo (wife's), two puppies of mixed breed (10 months old, but grown enough to eat a Ficus tree), and one career dealing in international banking and foreign currencies (mine, obtained through providence).

Such a decorated Merit Badge sash is typical of the middle aged, not a twentysomething clown. But despite my wife's and my age, we manage to pull off a daily routine that would appear normal by standards of our culture. We take our children to gymnastics class, go to the park, take our dogs for walks, wave to our neighbors, keep our yard presentable, and do other typical American family things. However, scratch the surface a bit and we are not typical at all.

My wife totes our kids around in a vehicle sporting a "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker, and another one which says, "Like a Rock, Only Dumber" over a picture of our President. She takes them to the store wearing a "Fear of a Female Planet" t-shirt. My daughter knows who Anti-Flag, KRS-ONE, Tribe Called Quest, Jack Johnson, and Modest Mouse are (others with a more profane vocabulary will be presented at a later age). They know that there is a war in Iraq, and that we went to San Francisco last February for a "parade" to oppose it. They are growing up with an atheist mother and an agnostic father, while still learning about Jesus, Buddhism, and other types of interconnectedness and spirituality. My wife and I get to change the world first hand by contributing two beautiful individuals who are Aware. My son and daughter are the most amazing people I've ever known.

In light of all this it would seem from an outsider's perspective that I should feel settled and thus at Home. But I do not. I am trapped in this Godforsaken place. We are trapped.

Colorado is where I grew up. It's where I left my memories when I departed in a dash to be with my girlfriend after learning that I was going to be a father. My car was packed so full of dust-collecting things that I couldn't manage to fit my sense of Home. So I left it behind.

Ahead of me was Orange County, CA, a place of nauseating perfection; a place with a movie and television series to its namesake; a place that is not a place for me.

Orange County is adorned with planned communities, and cookie cutter homes; Panda Expresses are its version of culture. Disneyland is its largest resident and most fitting metaphor. People here do what they do because they think they're supposed to, and to keep pace with their neighbors.

Here, children's birthday parties are events akin to the Oscars, and birthday-party conversation must consist of what kind of granite one has for countertops. BMW's, Mercedes, and frighteningly large SUV's are standard fare, usually driven by stay-at-home moms who belong to "Mom's Clubs" and have matching sweat suits to go along with their matching breast augmentations. Everything is made to be perfect.

Colorado, on the other hand, is imperfect, and people's lives are real because of it. In Colorado cars break down in the winter and there are homeless people to be seen. The weather is even imperfect -- it changes! And it isn't alone in its imperfection; it shares this designation with the rest of the world, because perfection can only be attempted through facade. Even the seemingly flawless beauty of nature is imperfect, asymmetrical. A normal human system will reject perfect, because it doesn't compute. Colorado bears the blemishes that are necessary for our brains to function in a healthy manner.

A couple of years ago, a friend visiting me in SoCal laughed aloud when he saw a billboard advertising a radio show urging listeners to "Escape Reality!"

We already had.

But this place of fakeness, of farce; this place that is so clearly the product of misguidedness, a house of cards for those of deconstructing mind; this place that I despise, has also provided me with much to be thankful for. Life's greatest gift, children, has visited me twice since I've lived here. I've managed to find and hold down what most would consider being a great job for close to four years. I've purchased a house. I've obtained many things (I recently acquired a very nice lawn mower, for example).

All of this -- security, stability, materials -- are what we are told constitutes the concept of Home, but I don't feel it. And unless my wife is patronizing me out of love, neither does she. Our minds return to Colorado when we think of Home.

Much of our family is in Colorado (though fewer than when we left), along with many friends who are like family (if not closer). Like us, my wife's parents live in California, and we love their company, but they are native to Colorado too and desire to return. It's almost as if I need to share my life's accomplishments first hand with the people who are important to me in order to verify them. Colorado brings verification. (Upon my own admission I have no friends here because I haven't tried. However, people who are much older and who are concerned with their landscaping and stamped concrete are the batch I have to choose from.)

Anyone who has spent time in Colorado has undoubtedly been captured by its beauty -- the 300 days of sunshine annually, the Aspen trees going gold in the fall, the Purple Mountain's Majesty silhouetted by fluorescent sunsets. This beauty and cohesion with nature is spiritual, reminding us that we share a finite physical earth with other living things. Gazing up at Mount Meeker and Long's Peak renders two seemingly opposite notions, impermanence and perpetuating life, unforgettable. That hunk of rock is there, it has been there, and it will be there, while simultaneously never having been, and being no more. Everything is nothing, nothing is everything. Things make sense.

That awareness can't be achieved while living in the Mecca of sameness, for there is nothing to gaze at. Southern California's got lots of yoga, but no juice. We experience incompleteness living in this place. It feels like we are successfully making our way through life, while simultaneously being unsettled. We are living without Home.

Now, my wife and I are trying to devise ways escape. We are seeking asylum in our native land. Sounds easy, right? Just pick up and move. Ha! The physical logistics of moving are anything but easy to coordinate, let alone actually deciding if moving is the right thing to do.

We are tied to the lifestyle that Southern California has provided. Moving would mean losing my job and its comfortable income, one that allows my wife to stay home with our kids. My job is also very loose in terms of accountability. I don't really answer to anyone, and I can use my day as I please. A new job would surely mean submitting myself to the norm of corporate bureaucracy, which would make me miserable.

And what about my children? Colorado is not their home. They were born here, in California, everything they know is here -- their house, gymnastics, swim lessons, friends, bookstore, and their special car-shaped shopping cart at the grocery store. Wouldn't it be selfish to take them from their home, albeit at a very young age? But my wife and I don't want them growing up in this circus. We don't want them to get addicted to the material lifestyle that is sucking in their parents. We want them to live near family friends, and nature, not in a never-ending sprawl of people. (Sure we have beaches, but have you seen them? Not exactly serene. Huntington Beach has offshore oilrigs dotting the horizon.) We want them to make memories in the same places we have our own. Nevertheless, is it fair or realistic for our children to live the lives we want for them?

Maybe Colorado is simply our castle in the sky, a place for us to dream about better days when the reality of life gets to be too much, our desire being the source of our unhappiness. Sometimes I wish I could forget about that rectangle shaped state and just be. But I can't.

Not to long ago a good friend warned, "Be careful, don't get Californicated, from the looks of it, it's contagious."

I responded, "California brings to mind dust; Colorado dew. They are both contagious."

I wish I knew which contagion to acknowledge and which to ward off, because life is too short to be miserable in the face of such beauty, for Home is merely a state of mind.