Home and Howling
July 13th 2009 02:56
Saturday night, I went to a party.
A house warming party, for my best friend.
I had to go South.
...Do not, ever, try to figure out my directions. I am deliberately confusing, manipulative and paranoid. I am not where I say I am....
As a little kid, when I lived towards the South, I used to gaze South. And sometimes, when we took picnics up to the lookout - even FURTHER South - I'd get wildly excited. I'd look further over the South than we could go - the rock face stopped the road - over the hills, to the far off lake, the valleys, the trees. I'd imagine being there. Far, far South.
I actually, moved North. I moved so far North, closer to the grime and the sea than I'd wanted to be. I still went home, to the old stomping ground, sometimes. From there I could look at the Southern hills that had housed me as a child, remember what lay beyond her. I could envision the cold, the peace. It got to the stage that just a little drive out to those hills was enough to drive me to wild excitement. I no longer visited the lookout - where I could see the far South - but even a trip to those hills that were my childhood home was enough. As a teenager, I'd look up towars those hills and feel like they were calling - cometome cometome cometome come to me.........
but then I went North. And my visits were few. After time in the North, I moved to the old stomping ground, and I was happy enough there. The hills were all the right shape, the South wind blowing right over me, blowing down the taste of home and the whisper of the mountains.
But then, I had to go West. Home of the sun, heat and red earth. I consoled myself that the mountains were still in view - the far off spine was actually closer to me now than it had ever been.
But these mountains did not sing. They did not whisper. They did not call. Beautiful though they were, and holding such promise, connected as they were to my beloved South, they did not call. There was no pull.
Then a friend took me for a drive, and we did not just go to the old stomping ground, where it whispers......We went past it, towards my childhood home. Like I had passed some kind of barrier suddenly I could hear the screaming, leapt in my seat as though that magnetic pull thought to wrench me from the car and drag me South. I didnt fight it - I never do. If I should be magically transported it could not be my fault, or choice. But of course, they cannot perform such magic. They can, however, howl.
And this they did, as if mountains had arms with which to reach, something grabbed into my chest and I heard the calling now as a high screaming, howling through my bones and jerking my body, making my soul shriek in horror at this....This command I could not obey, though I wanted to with all my will.
And as we drove home, the spine at my side, getting ever nearer, I heard the call get fainter, and disappear. Mountains these be, but they are not mine, they do not love me. I love them, for what they are, and the fact that if I placed foot upon them and followed, they would lead me home. But I now knew I had gone in the wrong direction.
So much time passed. And I believed that even though I had always wanted to go South, I could fight this unrealistic urge with my adult mind. I would buy where property prices and conveniance bade me too. That was the smart thing, the adult thing. So when I knew I had to go back to the old stomping ground, in full view of the childhood home, I wasnt worried, I barely thought of it. South is a dream like the glittering sky castle. To be admired and loved but perhaps, never found.
As soon as the land began to rise about me I knew it was no use. Like a fool, a 30 year old child, I tell you, I chased the view of the South all over the car, raising and dropping my head like dogs do in cars, desperate to see just a little more........
The house, nestled deep in the heart of the stomping ground. I watched the sky drip deep purple exultation over the party goers and I tried to be invcolved, I tried to raise my excitement, but I was as if meditating, slow and quiet, eyes fixed upon the South. Burning yet again those forms of mountains upon my eyes, read it deep there so it may never be forgotten. It was like a keening, within me, and within them, a cacaphony to deafen me utterly if I could not fulfill this, this command, within the South and Within me.
The next day he sky was painted, dark and light. I followed the clouds with my eye and saw further South it was clearer, the brushstrokes more elegant and beautiful. I saw they day they enjoyed. All seemed well, as we turned for home.
Huh. Home.
As the car turned its back on the South something in me screamed, worse than ever before. The mountains reached and so did I, but as usual, I could not obey. It was as if some black, horrid, muscular thing lived between my skin and my flesh, and it began to thrash. All else I kept quiet, my voice wanting to howl, my muscles wanting to run, but this thing inside me was determined to show all how upset we all were about this. It thrashed like fire inside me, lashing skin, whipping at flesh, making my skin and lesser limbs twitch. How ca I turn away from it, when it causes me this pain? How can anyone not notice I am nearly crying and howling in pain? How can a mere direction and its skyline affect me so?
But it does, and did. I mourned, while my body tried to thrash, tried to obey my innermost will and the command of the southern air. We did not. We remained on course.
As the car drew level wqith the now familiar patterns of the West my heart began to cry. Once more, come so close and denied it, denied it. The black thing within me, under my skin, still it thrashed and lashed. It cried out, as we drove through the Western air, "Doesnt fit! Doesnt fit!" And for years I have been trying to make it fit. Now I see it will not. Now I know....
That I can truly be happy in the South, that it will be nothing else for me ever I live. The mewchanations of Life, they do not help me, but plots must be hatched. It must change, for I cannot endure the madness of mountain magnets any longer....
A house warming party, for my best friend.
I had to go South.
...Do not, ever, try to figure out my directions. I am deliberately confusing, manipulative and paranoid. I am not where I say I am....
As a little kid, when I lived towards the South, I used to gaze South. And sometimes, when we took picnics up to the lookout - even FURTHER South - I'd get wildly excited. I'd look further over the South than we could go - the rock face stopped the road - over the hills, to the far off lake, the valleys, the trees. I'd imagine being there. Far, far South.
I actually, moved North. I moved so far North, closer to the grime and the sea than I'd wanted to be. I still went home, to the old stomping ground, sometimes. From there I could look at the Southern hills that had housed me as a child, remember what lay beyond her. I could envision the cold, the peace. It got to the stage that just a little drive out to those hills was enough to drive me to wild excitement. I no longer visited the lookout - where I could see the far South - but even a trip to those hills that were my childhood home was enough. As a teenager, I'd look up towars those hills and feel like they were calling - cometome cometome cometome come to me.........
but then I went North. And my visits were few. After time in the North, I moved to the old stomping ground, and I was happy enough there. The hills were all the right shape, the South wind blowing right over me, blowing down the taste of home and the whisper of the mountains.
But then, I had to go West. Home of the sun, heat and red earth. I consoled myself that the mountains were still in view - the far off spine was actually closer to me now than it had ever been.
But these mountains did not sing. They did not whisper. They did not call. Beautiful though they were, and holding such promise, connected as they were to my beloved South, they did not call. There was no pull.
Then a friend took me for a drive, and we did not just go to the old stomping ground, where it whispers......We went past it, towards my childhood home. Like I had passed some kind of barrier suddenly I could hear the screaming, leapt in my seat as though that magnetic pull thought to wrench me from the car and drag me South. I didnt fight it - I never do. If I should be magically transported it could not be my fault, or choice. But of course, they cannot perform such magic. They can, however, howl.
And this they did, as if mountains had arms with which to reach, something grabbed into my chest and I heard the calling now as a high screaming, howling through my bones and jerking my body, making my soul shriek in horror at this....This command I could not obey, though I wanted to with all my will.
And as we drove home, the spine at my side, getting ever nearer, I heard the call get fainter, and disappear. Mountains these be, but they are not mine, they do not love me. I love them, for what they are, and the fact that if I placed foot upon them and followed, they would lead me home. But I now knew I had gone in the wrong direction.
So much time passed. And I believed that even though I had always wanted to go South, I could fight this unrealistic urge with my adult mind. I would buy where property prices and conveniance bade me too. That was the smart thing, the adult thing. So when I knew I had to go back to the old stomping ground, in full view of the childhood home, I wasnt worried, I barely thought of it. South is a dream like the glittering sky castle. To be admired and loved but perhaps, never found.
As soon as the land began to rise about me I knew it was no use. Like a fool, a 30 year old child, I tell you, I chased the view of the South all over the car, raising and dropping my head like dogs do in cars, desperate to see just a little more........
The house, nestled deep in the heart of the stomping ground. I watched the sky drip deep purple exultation over the party goers and I tried to be invcolved, I tried to raise my excitement, but I was as if meditating, slow and quiet, eyes fixed upon the South. Burning yet again those forms of mountains upon my eyes, read it deep there so it may never be forgotten. It was like a keening, within me, and within them, a cacaphony to deafen me utterly if I could not fulfill this, this command, within the South and Within me.
The next day he sky was painted, dark and light. I followed the clouds with my eye and saw further South it was clearer, the brushstrokes more elegant and beautiful. I saw they day they enjoyed. All seemed well, as we turned for home.
Huh. Home.
As the car turned its back on the South something in me screamed, worse than ever before. The mountains reached and so did I, but as usual, I could not obey. It was as if some black, horrid, muscular thing lived between my skin and my flesh, and it began to thrash. All else I kept quiet, my voice wanting to howl, my muscles wanting to run, but this thing inside me was determined to show all how upset we all were about this. It thrashed like fire inside me, lashing skin, whipping at flesh, making my skin and lesser limbs twitch. How ca I turn away from it, when it causes me this pain? How can anyone not notice I am nearly crying and howling in pain? How can a mere direction and its skyline affect me so?
But it does, and did. I mourned, while my body tried to thrash, tried to obey my innermost will and the command of the southern air. We did not. We remained on course.
As the car drew level wqith the now familiar patterns of the West my heart began to cry. Once more, come so close and denied it, denied it. The black thing within me, under my skin, still it thrashed and lashed. It cried out, as we drove through the Western air, "Doesnt fit! Doesnt fit!" And for years I have been trying to make it fit. Now I see it will not. Now I know....
That I can truly be happy in the South, that it will be nothing else for me ever I live. The mewchanations of Life, they do not help me, but plots must be hatched. It must change, for I cannot endure the madness of mountain magnets any longer....
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