A Return to the Land of My Birth 2 comments

27 Mar 2008 @ 05:18, by Jeffrey Trenton Crace Not really. I wasn’t born in what we Ohioans call “the county.” In fact, I lived only on the edge of it from the ages of seven to twenty-four. Yet, it is in my blood…and I forgot. I live in the city now, which might be a misleading notion in that the population of Springfield is only 65,000. I mean, how big can a city be with such a tiny population? But now that I am here, I pretty much stay here. The looming houses in my district, the whisking of traffic, the sirens from the nearby hospital all press in on me. I sort of enjoy the feeling of mass that it gives me. Now I recognize that my new home cannot compare to my home in “the county,” with its fruit of colossal space and near-silence. Space so big that my loneliness felt all right to me—it almost felt natural there. At any moment I could pedal a bit on my bicycle and be in a place where no one could think me crazy for talking to the horses, to the cattle, to myself. No one could see me cry and beg forces as-yet-unknown to guide me through the chaos that up that point was_my_life. I felt lucky in the fall when the fields were void of corn and I could gaze mindlessly for miles, sometimes spinning in circles to try and achieve a panoramic view; sometimes sitting cross-legged in some empty field, smoking cigarettes, brushing off the curious insects as they tried to ascend my body. I have to admit it was difficult to perpetually appreciate the beauty of how the Midwestern sky met the land—it could become a mere fixture if one did not take it always as something new. There was one road, long and straight for miles, forest on one side, vegetable fields on the other. I wish that road never ended. I wish I could ride it forever, forever in the company of my friends the cows, forever sweating lightly under the lovely summer sun. There was the lake, her Spirit so present and bright I could sense her life even in my days of youth, my days of darkness. She was there in a way that my mother never could be, no mother ever could be. She didn’t mind my company, she didn’t mind it at all. She even allowed me and my friends to windsurf her waters. Today I found myself once more at the edge of her waters and I suddenly obtained the full truth of something Geoffrey Filbert told me in conversation: everything is a delight. I admit it’s true: I have discovered a divinity beyond my wildest childhood dreams but I have failed to notice that my blood runs hot. Has my love affair with erasure ended? Hardly, although I recognize that I do want something very different than my desire to see it all disappear. I never liked wearing hats but I feel an affinity for them growing. I hear wedding bells… O God I am not like you In your vacuous black, Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti. Eternity bores me, I never wanted it. What I love is The piston in motion— My soul dies before it. And the hooves of the horses, Their merciless churn. And you, great Stasis— What is so great in that! Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door? Is it a Christus? The awful God-bit in him Dying to fly and be done with it? The blood berries are themselves, they are very still. -- from “Years” by Sylvia Plath

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