Hello everyone > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:48:18 -0600 > Subject: Re: [MD] another glimpse of Lila > > > Marsha - never heard your thoughts on > The Razor's Edge after you finished it? > > Also - I absolutely agree that every place > I've ever gone to is beautiful - yet my > 'home' turf resonates for me in a way > that is really special - > the smells, the subtle changes in colors and hues > every day that you come to recognize when you > live somewhere a lot - even the heat and humidity in the > Summer, some place where you even have some > understanding of the people you are going > to talk to - even strangers at the grocery store... > there's a feeling to it - a place that someone > calls home.
I live amid cornfields. Used to be the farmers would plant soybeans and maybe winter wheat, you know, to change it up a bit. Better for the soil that way. Now though, they plant corn, corn, and more corn. The farmers are out there in the fields spring and fall but otherwise it's quiet and empty when I walk the corn corridors of summer. I like to walk a couple hours a day when the weather is better. I like to feel the sunshine on my skin and to hear the rustling breeze. I like noticing the little changes happening all around. The pine tree fragrance in the spring, the push of new growth all around, the green flush of summer followed by brown dying autumn, and finally the dead of winter, only to start all over again... The Interstate highway runs at an angle maybe 3 miles to the southeast. I can hear the whine of a million tires if the wind is right. Sometimes I walk over to watch the traffic scurrying by. It makes me feel sad to think I have nowhere to go and at the same time it makes me feel happy... for the same reason. I like walking on dirt roads better than gravel and I like gravel roads better than paved. One road I like to walk is called Shady Oaks road. Huge oak trees grow alongside tall embankments that guard the cornfields from the road. Dozens of squirrels quarrel among the branches and chase one another up and down and all around. On sunny spring days momma birds chitter their warnings at me and sometimes take to dive-bombing my head in efforts to drive me away. On dark starry summer evenings I hear coyotes and their pups howling and wailing in the not too distant night. Often during the short winter days I see wild turkeys prowling the fields apparently in search of left over corn cobs, their heads bobbing as they pace. Deer abound as well though their coats blend in so well I feel I often miss their passing. I am not from here. I am not from anywhere, really. The place I'm from is long gone. My hometown was overrun some decades ago by rich and powerful people who drove up the property values forcing people like me to leave and never return. They built houses, malls and shopping centers and lots of roads and streets with names I don't recognize and don't care to remember. Where there used to be hundreds of people now there are hundreds of thousands. I live in exile. I think I'll never go home again. I think I like it here though I know I really have no choice. The people here are nice enough. But I have no history with them. Some of my neighbors have lived here for 5 generations. They don't invite me to dinner, nor I them. Summers I bring bags of home grown tomatoes to old ladies in the neighborhood but they always turn it down. I guess they don't like me much. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
