Home

It was a sad realization, but I don't go 'home' anymore. I go to my parent's house.

My 'home', the place I grew up, no longer exists except in lackluster photos and memories best left buried. Oh, the tragedy of growing up, growing apart, growing. To be the people you are now you can't be the people you were then, and thus those people are dead and gone. All of them, murdered by children and careers and college and boredom. New people rose from the ashes-- sometimes better, sometimes worse-- and the ashes scattered in the wind.

Sure, in West Tennessee the places are all still there-- the woods and the bridges and the houses and the roads. But the energy is gone. They don't hold mystery, grandeure, excitment anymore. And, when revisited, they're never quite like you remembered-- always smaller, more beige.

Nothing is as futile as buying into your rose-hued nostalgia, and that is a lesson one must learn through experience. Sure, I realized that in a hazy, intangible way years ago, but now-- cut loose and wandering-- it became absolutley clear.

It's too late to drag everything that was out into the light of what is. It's best left in trunks and satchels in closets to be pulled out occasionally and viewed through eyes tinted with the cynicism of the present. You can't go home again. Nothing natural has roots and wings.