I use to hate the town I grew up in. Even to this day if I mention my hometown, it generally provokes an unfavorable reaction from people. When your a kid, and parents wouldn’t let you hang with their kids because of your towns reputation, that would sting. Now I am just amused. I can honestly say now that I’m very glad I grew up there, people were real. I am glad that I’ve had a chance to live among polite suburbia too. Being able to compare the two worlds has removed a lot of envy from my heart. It’s not the sugar coated wonderland we imagined as children.
The day is nearing when I won’t have reason to visit my hometown. I find that as I am older and that day is closer, I am becoming more sentimental about that dank little town. I was driving around recently getting pictures of some of the little nooks that I use to haunt…maybe not haunt as much as they were just part of my landscape. There was always such a beautiful loneliness to these places for me, I was always conflicted by them. There is a beauty in its rawness and its decay for me, but there is no time or emotional distance to have mellowed the dark side of that rawness and decay either. It’s real. It’s personal. It’s current. There is no room for imagination, wonder or romance. I remember, I know. There is…was…anger, fear, hopelessness and shame in that landscape. There is a freedom there too, one that is hard to describe. Maybe one day I’ll have words for it.
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