Flying back to the East coast is always an exercise in mortification of the spirit, given that a red-eye flight back means that I spend an entire night not-sleeping on airplanes, and the early morning flight means that I spend a night not-sleeping on the way to the airport, in the airport, and on airplanes. Three hours worth of time difference doesn't feel like much until it makes you stay awake forever and ever.
And it's funny because the things I have always known seem more and more foreign as more years go around them--my family, all of the mole hills, Spanish moss patchily bearding the trees. Tonight at a bar I went into the bathroom at a bar and came back out with a Southern accent, which is never far from the surface. All of the streets are familiar but what once sat on them is mostly closed. Thomas Wolfe crouches in my skull even though the word 'home' has always fit like someone else's dress.
Still, there is always something about ghosting through the streets of my city in a leaving sort of way when the sidewalks are empty and nearly everyone asleep. Which is my old friend Thomas Wolfe at work again, maybe: "...we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement."
In any case, coming or going, leaving always has been my best side.
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