Half-blind homeland

Less than one hour in Nebraska and I've already lost a contact. In my weaker eye nonetheless. Driving's gonna be a blast.

I haven't been home for some time. It's been almost a year since I've seen my parents. Little seems to have changed in the good ole hometown aside from a bumper crop of condos sprouted up all around. That and I don't recall the word "loft" being relevant in Lincoln 5 years ago. Then again I'm not around much.

I am learning to live with separated parents. It makes the holidays slightly awkward. I am new at this, so all you old pros with long-divorced folks bear with me. I try to avoid getting to personal on this blog, but it's the most present thing on my mind aside from the lost contact and I am sure you don't want me to go on bitching about that. But more than my family, my hometown is on my mind.

After being gone a certain number of years one is forced to realize that life goes on without them. And life in my hometown is no different. People get together, people break up, people have kids, get jobs, move away, get married, it all goes on and has nothing to do with you. You are just a part of the town's memory, and not a present memory at that. Your childhood haunts get torn down or revamped, places get renamed, and the food doesn't taste the same. It is hard not to feel sad because even if things have changed for the better, you are no longer a part of the story. Your body is not in the motion of the town and you are at odds with it's ebbs and flows.

Restructuring memory isn't an option, but when the tangible structures change it's hard to know what to go on. To trust in your memories of things when confronted with a new reality, be it the inevitable reality of adulthood where your contemporary eyes show things in a different light than your child's, or the more concrete reality of change. The things you looked at for the first eighteen years of your life are gone or different. It's not your perspective that has changed but the world itself.

Maybe I've just lost focus since my eyesight is down to one eye.