Notes on viewing my hometown from a remove

albert - August 17, 2010 @ 6:12 pm

an update for the renegade.

The air is always the first thing you notice when you get off the plane. It strikes you with the force of 27 years remembered as you walk across the jetway. It’s totally different. It contains an order of magnitude more heat but that’s not all; it smells of a world that’s always slightly damp from the humidity, you can feel the people, the plants, the houses and streets that you grew up with. it crackles with potential. It feels like home.

Showing up at night is best because you listen to the crickets sing as you walk out of the terminal and go up the escalator to the parking deck and again as you walk from the car up to the door and the first thing you hear in the morning when the sun wakes you is the songbirds. The birds have such pretty things to say.

It’s hot but the heat is not as intolerable as you’ve allowed it to become in your head. You just develop an eye for shady spots and walk slowly in a kind of shuffle, without hurry, observing the world as it goes by.

The name of those bright pink trees you lived under all those years without ever learning it is “Redbud”. They’re the ones that grow purple-pink flowers right out of their trunks like the blossom over the ear of an island girl.

clearing out old draft posts…

1 Comment »

  1. “Home is home, be it ever so humble”

    Comment by Matt — August 22, 2010 @ 4:37 pm

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