Go home

I went back to my "growing up" place over the past weekend and came to the distinct realization that it is technically impossible to return home. Not physically, so much as the wake of memory always will come in stark contrast with the rippling water of the current day. Firstly, memories are always fragments, shards of a distortionary mirror. This means that, though I'm fairly certain that I indeed did go to that birthday party in that large looming apartment building on the hill next to the tunnel, my recollection of it is foggy at best and distorted at worst. And I also experienced the further effect of that distortion over time, by reliving a series of memory chunks at the time when I would pass semi-familiar locales. These are not ordered linearly or even ordered at all. But the memories that did manage to surface were all very crystalline in recollection. Often times, the memory was only a millisecond or two (like the birthday party in the larger building) or longer, like sitting on a porch talking with a friend. Though, mostly the images remain much more cemented and easier to recall. I wonder if sound is harder to recall than image? I imagine that there are studies about this somewhere.

I also realized that I was very glad to leave the home city. It never felt like a fit to me and in returning, I had this imprint further reinforced. Though, I do miss the quirky, odd, safe haven of my childhood home. It was a tan stucco ex-barn building nestled off and inaccessible from the street in the middle of the city. I have never seen a home quite like it and may never see it again.