I'm still here....

I have left but never for long. Living in my home town was not in my plans but here I am. Merrick N.Y. is not a great place to be if you have a non standard view on the world. Growing up here I always felt foreign and from another time. It could be my upbringing and the influence of my mother’s family but I have always pictured myself living in a more open minded place. Its funny how things end up. I have developed this saying, 'The harder you throw the apple from the tree the closer it lands.' This sums up my growth through adolescence into my 20's. I just wanted out. I traveled around going to concerts and seeing the country  but I had my fill early of the lack of comfort. I guess i copped out. But driving back from California in a van with no heat in the dead of winter while quitting a hefty cigarette habit, not to mention being infested with crabs, was the straw that broke the back of this camel. My wife and I came very close to pulling up stakes and moving to Colorado, a decision that leaves me wondering to this day.

So we moved to Long Beach N.Y. instead. After a few years we started looking for a house. We looked everywhere but Merrick but in the end we found a house down the block from my folks and in a day it was done. We weren't even looking there. Along came my daughter and the rest is history. Time marches on and after 17 years I am now looking back. We have made friends here but something is missing. I believe we all have that. Those close relationships that were forged in times of intense, idealistic, do or die times, where the smallest of issues could be all or nothing in a young person’s mind. I remarked this morning to my wife about the 16yr old drama how it was so easy to put it all down on a thought , worry, love or belief. It was the blinders of youth. At the ripe age of 47 Cat Stevens’ Father and Son rings truer than anything.

Typing this, what is reveled is my missing of the connections that fostered the image of what is best in me. We all have a picture of ourselves at our best. I am working on being in the moment and trying to make this me, the one tying now, the one I like the best. Maybe some of this is lost promise or a romantic view but the me of today left some stuff at some fork that he needs to reclaim from the lost and found.

This is me breathing.

None of this is regrett. I think about this for time to time, today I saw a post on Facebook detailing a friends reading of her travel blog at a San Francisco bookstore… Travel.. San Francisco… Both have been few and far between over the past 2 decades. Time has a habit of getting away with you. I saw a quote the other day that went something like this. I don’t want to live the length of my life I also want to live the width. I do have many things that make my life pretty wide but this subject is lookin’ pretty narrow in the shadow of my life. I guess I can do something about that. I have a bunch of miles. It’s time to get out to Boulder to see friends, maybe SFO as well. It would do Suz and I some good. Its been very hard to put action to words like that, I hope putting black to white helps me get out of the gate and down this path. I could do with sleeping on a friends couch. There are so many scattered over the country and in other countries. Time and motivation has been a big enabler. We used to have these big bashes in my backyard. All of out friends, bands, food drink. These yearly rights re affirmed much of the parts that seem to be missing. Time to resurrect The Fest at Chez Egert. Stay tuned to see what happens next J