Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Water worn
Last night I arrived back at my parents' house in Grosse Pointe, the house I grew up in. It's a beautiful place, and timeless in the way that houses and towns on water often are. As I drove in, I saw so many of the familiar things: the house with the crazy bright Christmas display, the cold waves crashing over the seawall, the bare trees scratching at a gray Michigan sky. There is a wash of emotions when I come back, but it is all in grayscale, from the white of pure hope to the black of despair. Michigan is like that, and especially the Detroit area. The tearing-down is real, while the rebuilding is too often a promise.
I'm starting to think about the year I have had; the many places I have been. Sometimes in the past it has felt like being a flat gray skipping stone, bouncing off the water to the next wave, but this year the cuts into the water have been deeper.
As a kid, I loved skipping stones, though I never was very good at it. I loved the made-up science of it, choosing the right rock and trajectory according to arbitrary and baseless formulas that eventually molded to the truth of experience. In my mind, I was the stone, trying to get as far as I could. But the part I loved was the end, when my stone might topple end-over-end, pause a moment on the surface and then surrender to the water, to what is real. It would stop its dancing and dive deep and fast into something new yet familiar-- after all, the stone had been worn smooth by that very water. I kept watching where it had been, a thin, shivering boy on the shore. Then, too, I was the stone.
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I see where all the poetry has gone to your mind and from your fingertips. This is writing which will not let me remain as I was. Bravo and bless you.
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