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Home has always had an inexorable pull for me. If you’ll bear with my tortured metaphor, consider it a spiritual solenoid. Home is like a length of rosy copper wire wound around my life, and I a small iron core. The more I’m shuttled through this mortal coil, the stronger home’s magnetic draw. The attraction strengthens as Thanksgiving approaches, as my mind starts signaling for Exit 76 and cruises up the bypass towards my hometown, and memories buried by fresher accounts burgeon and resurface. I miss threatening to throw someone off Jellico Mountain, our local shorthand for karmic retribution. All your crimes are laid bare from its heights, and the universe will regain balance as you tumble down the steep embankment. Ne’er shall they find your body.
I miss the long, long, long, long line at Papaleno’s, which is a distinctly unexpected flavor of homesickness. I’m a junkie for the spike of adrenaline that comes when I’m three people from the counter and have yet to think of the menu, and the banter that passes while waiting with friends forms the foundation of relationships as rich and complex as a slice of the Mountaineer. I miss morning walks and soulful talks with Mom. I miss seeing deer in the neighbor’s yard. Another odd nostalgia: the acute shortness of breath that accompanies the initial ascent at Indian Fort. A less odd nostalgia: sighting Lexington from the West Pinnacle; the unburdening of the spirit when you rise above the treetops and see your country from a fresh point of view. There’s one image that always comes to mind when I think of home. In the foreground, the spike that juts from the roof of my high school; farther away and atop a ridge, the steeple of the college’s main building. The setting sun drapes the sky in ribbons of deep orange and violet and casts the twinned towers in perfect silhouette. However, when I return home, the spires don't actually align like they do in my mind and the colors are never as saturated as I imagine them; this tableau, however compelling and persistent, is pure fancy. I know this. I am rudely awakened to this fact every time I go back, yet the image remains and I do not seek to unseat it. Perhaps it is an idealization. Perhaps it is woven from whole-cloth. I would rather see the world in vivid and striking tones than live in a reality smeared with a mundane wash. It does me no harm – on the contrary, my admittedly Pollyannaish perspective charges every morning with a thoroughly hopeful undercurrent and excites me to greet each day. I recommend it. In the words of the Prince of Denmark: "For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
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May 2020
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