I was listening to the Bruce Springsteen song from The Rising over and over today as I dusted.
When I was young, I wanted to leave my family, had to go as far away as possible. I was going to explore. Now I think of my thirty-year voluntary separation from them and wonder if it’s time to wander home.
I’ve been retracing my steps this past month, pacing a neighborhood, circling and returning to locations I’ve already visited. And I find new corners in them.
Maybe the city of my childhood also has a new face to show me?
Not only the deadare missing, mourned terribly
But the living too
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If you wondered it, even if it’s an inkling, do it. Wander home.
Steph,
Well, I did last May, last Christmas, and the April before that. I’m having a hard time contemplating anything more radical, like moving there, even if just for a few months. I don’t know why I can’t make up my mind.
Usually when I can’t make up my mind it’s because I’m fighting a sense of obligation. I feel I should do it, but something is telling me that perhaps it’s not really what I want. It’s not always so black and white, of course, but sometimes it is, like this: if you have to ask yourself if you’re hungry, you’re not.
That’s a really great point about fighting a sense of obligation. Though sometimes I think the obligation I feel is to stay here, where I have a writing community and other friends, and not do something like rush home.
Still not sure.