If I don’t come home again it won’t be because I haven’t wanted to, but because I’ve found my way.
I find it easy to sometimes lose track of the way back, the signposts if you will. I presume it’s not a conscious act, but who can be sure? I often fail to notice them, even though they may be shouting at me from the side of the road, loudly, and in brilliant color. Something about missing them that appeals to me, to my need for anonymity, I suppose. When I was younger, like many, I had a need for recognition and attention. Having achieved a moderate degree of it I wished to be invisible again. It’s familiar ground for me now. It’s peaceful here, and it happens to be the only place that I am able to live comfortably. I need the quiet, and the isolation, more often than not. It enables a sense of order for me, where everything makes sense. It’s where no one can find me. It’s where I am able to find myself. That doesn’t happen in the larger world, in the vast landscape of cultural cul-de-sacs. I only find invasion there, invasion of the I-me-mine, the genetically re-designed, the publicly refined, invasion of the fake opinions and phony agendas, invasion of the bogus protocols and unspoken expectations, invasion of the social monitors, invasion of the common beliefs, invasion of the status geeks.
They do OK in that world. But I become disheartened. It drains me of that essential lifeblood. It seeps out quietly, unnoticed even by me, until there’s very little left. Only then do I understand what’s happened. Only then do I know that I have got to get away from it, from them. Before that it was just a case of wanting to. It has now become necessary to my survival. It becomes perpetually imperative that I return to a moderate seclusion, a modest invisibility, to the safety of a dependable solitude. I do that now, as I am able. Being alone is, in fact, the only place where I do not feel alone.
If I don’t come home again, it won’t be because I haven’t wanted to, but because I’ve found my way.
