Where we grow up puts such everlasting marks on our lives.
Growing up I was aware of family tensions and yet clung tightly to the belief it would all be okay one day.
The great and glorious “some bright morning.”
I was an unwilling participant in most of the day to day chores of the farm. Feed the dogs. Okay. Feed the chickens? Too scary. Fill up this water trough. Okay. Go in the cellar and get a canned goods. No, there’s snakes in there.
Many of my childhood requests were disregarded. Reasons given first and foremost: Money, and then a litany of practical reasons that escaped my young understanding.
The scenery from my youth are like beautiful backdrops I keep in the photographer’s studio of my mind to pull out when the feeling is right.
One such favorite memory is looking at the Milky Way on a crisp, moonless winter night. Never good at plotting constellations, just happy to marvel at their existence.
Let’s roll that one up and pull down the next one.
The haunting feeling of a field, covered in heavy snow on a moonlight night.
For ages was a Christmas commercial for Stetson cologne and it struck a chord in me: the cowboy in his denim jacket, his horse’s tracks making a heart in the snow.
I think of the song “Where have all the cowboys gone?” But then again, what would I do with a cowboy anyway? Let’s not let our “daddy issues” cloud our existence shall we? And yet a “dad” is half of who we are, literally in the sperm donor sense. Heavy stuff to have floating around your teen brain as you pass a boy in the hall at school and note his denim jacket and the faint whiff of Stetson cologne.
Let’s pull down a few other backdrops.
The promise of spring. Planting time. Waves of grass. The smell of mowed hay. Petrichor. The smell of a good meal. Wood-smoke. Tobacco smoke.
These are scenes of earth science that we (society/civilization) have assigned a biological narrative. Looking back over this scenery, let’s put on the “anything can represent anything” glasses.
Reproduction, sure. But let’s put on the caveman glasses: safety in numbers, tribal unity. Someone is there, taking care of things: food, warmth, shelter, etc.
Like I said at the beginning, I don’t think of home as home anymore.
But I appreciate the beautiful backdrops I have to visit when I feel like it. Addendum: I have five boxes of photos to go through, but I don’t want to feel those feelings at this time.
Infinite Monkey Theorem 