We try to make sense of things that even the most sophisticated people inquirers or interventionists would struggle to dig up. Who, for example, can sufficiently explain why as a child I was always drawn to locales outside my own? Stitched in my mind are images of my 101 Dalmatians birthday party and bed set. I just loved that movie. Maybe it was the polish with which Roger Dearly pronounced “Pongo.” No doubt it was Pongo’s townhouse. (I once had a stuffed animal named after the character.) I vividly recall watching the film and being so charmed and so settled by the sense of propriety I’d begun to associate with the British, or what I would come to realize was a stereotypical depiction of a particular set of Londoners, the kind I would impersonate as fifth grader in Mr. Bowens’s theatre class.

So it’s no surprise I lived in Manchester for three years. Having moved back to the U.S. last August, I’ve thought about England every day, such that my reaction now to a British accent is one of endearment rather than mere fascination. And according to Emanuele Coccia “it is only ever through the meditation of a home that we live in a city,” as stated in his book, The Philosophy of Home, which I encountered at UNITOM, an independent bookstore in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, the Brooklyn of the city. “Living somewhere,” Coccia insists, “doesn’t mean being surrounded by something, nor occupying a certain portion of land. It means embarking on a relationship with certain things—and with certain people—that is so intense that it makes happiness part and parcel of our breathing.”

I’m from Dallas. My folks are there, save for extended family in nearly every other corner of the U.S., and Portugal. I’ve had other homes, too, and in a rather expansive sense of the term felt at home in other ways. Let’s linger on this a bit, the idea that broadly conceived “a home creates an intensity that changes our way of being, and everything which forms part of its magic circle.”

I’ve lived in Texas, Ohio, the U.K, and now New York City. In these places I was raised to have a Southerner’s formality, politeness, courteousness. I learned from that characteristically clear and even eye of a Midwestern writer, whose regional roots lie serviceably at the cultural fringes of the mainstream. I acquired a Brit’s sensitivity to language and order, and I arrived, I want to say preternaturally, with a New Yorker’s zeal for what many believe makes living here worth it, with all its hard-won conveniences.

As is true for where I live, I must be comfortable in my clothes. How I feel, look, think. That’s meant an aversion to anything too slim, ironically, as I’m five foot eleven and 165 pounds give or take. Studied disharmony—taken right out of the Belgians’ playbook—is preferred to matching. (For all its social rewards, I know I’ve missed my mark when told I “look nice.”) Yet I have no desire to stand out for the hell of it either; I suspect this tension influenced my exploration of creative pragmatism.

Most important is the psychological contentment I have in my style. A bad outfit can ruin the start of a day, and I’ll spend the rest trying to reverse it with one too many culinary indulgences because, well, something’s gotta give. To avoid that I always try to throw in one feel good piece, an old faithful like a loafer—the stabilizer of my outfits. I feel more myself in them than in any sneaker. Plus they age well. Except for a pair of green New Balances, black Sabah mules, and Birkenstock-style sandals, the footwear in my wardrobe consists of penny loafers.

At this transitional, stimulating, seemingly unpredictable moment in my life, my loafers also do a kind of triple work. The first is no different from years past: the indescribable delight I derive from wearing the style. Then there’s the opportunity to use my clothing to propose an idea, the possibility of someone seeing me in a loafer and reconsidering, or simply considering how they can be worn…with, say, your most casual sweatshirt and shorts (instead of a sneaker!), as I do—and as inspired in part by Princess Diana’s jumper-shorts-sneaker looks. Third is the familiarity I feel wearing new residue onto a thing that’s traveled from one geography to the next, from one home to another.

Coccia tells us that “through fashion, we are endlessly redesigning our idea of domesticity.” Indeed, “every garment designed and stitched together is the material expression of personal comfort in a place that is not the bedroom, the bathroom or the kitchen: it’s an idea of happiness that has become inseparable from our body, that can follow it everywhere.” I won’t give up on sporting loafers around New York, hard as that can be. I picture myself on the train, GPS-less, certain as the other passengers appear, my soles at ease with the bumps, slips and sticks.