Sometimes on these cool, quiet nights, when I am driving with the window down, I detect a scent that takes me back. There it is, the smell of lilacs in springtime, and a picture-in-picture film is in my windshield, sepia and scratched. My great-grandmother and I are enjoying the garden at my ant-infested, run-down house, which to me was the best and only house in the world. Cut to a patch of dandelions, from which I took the choicest samples to give to my mother as a present. I would blow the 'chuted seeds off the stems when they were ready to fly, back before I knew the difference between flowers and weeds.
Sometimes, on these cool, quiet nights, I sit at my desk and wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Why am I not home? Where is my home? Wherever I end up going in this life, I know there is no going back. "Back home" is just a memory superimposed on some nexus of points; it is a mental projection over the crossing of two imaginary lines on a map hanging on a wall. When I feel foolish I run to it. I try to step into the illusion and I suffer.
Whither will I take my withered roots?
Sometimes, on these cool, quiet nights, I sit at my desk and wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Why am I not home? Where is my home? Wherever I end up going in this life, I know there is no going back. "Back home" is just a memory superimposed on some nexus of points; it is a mental projection over the crossing of two imaginary lines on a map hanging on a wall. When I feel foolish I run to it. I try to step into the illusion and I suffer.
Whither will I take my withered roots?