The Road And The Sea
I've spent the last several days exploring the catacombs of my previous life.
Since returning home, I've felt oddly out of place and out of touch.
Storefronts stand derelict and melancholy, the zest I was familiar with absent and dead.
I'd hoped portions of my old life would be comatose rather than deceased, but it seems as if they're either expired or reincarnated; there is no middle ground.
As I pen this, I'm sitting at the pond behind my public library.
I'm enlightened, yet embarrassed, to admit that, upon my entrance, my eyes teared up and I had to catch my breath.
This hasnt happened anywhere else here; not in the house I grew up in, Barnes and Noble, 24 Hour Fitness, or even my beloved Marina.
My parents redecorated and refurbished the house, and an enormous, spacious memory foam mattress now occupies my bedroom.
The aforementioned shops and haunts have either been vacated or transformed.
Stepping into Barnes and Noble here, the one I used to loiter in from the nascent morning until well after dusk, reading 3 books a day and writing poetry, has been redesigned and uprooted.
Walking in for the first time in 3 years, I was uncertain of whether I was back home or in Hawaii.
Only seeing the ancient painting of William Faulkner glowering down at me served to reassure me that, yes, I had indeed arrived.
"What are you doing, Son? Start writing!", he seemed to yell.
"Yes Sir.", I responded.
Family drama and the disintegration of relationships once believed to be ironclad and irreplaceable somewhat spoiled my homecoming.
In their absence, however, new life has flourished, and the seeds of a love long ago planted are beginning to sprout.
I'm gazing out right now at this beloved pond.
The water is a cross between cerulean blue and a murky green the color of moss.
There's a solitary wooden square in the center.
Its constituents have been aged by the Sun's heat and the constant barraging of the water, and solidified birdshit dots it, lending it a kind of plebian, vigilant character.
I recall coming here as a child, my cousins surrounding me as my Grandfather cast our baited hooks out, before settling back into his lawn chair.
The world that moment belonged to it long gone, existing solely in my memory perhaps.
Yet that does nothing to dilute its potency.
The road and sea beckoned and shouted, and I answered in spades.
Now I can finally relax.
I just need to remember how.