Home is home, be it ever so humble.

[KB.]

"How is business?" "When are you coming back?!"

"I miss you."

"I wish you were here."

"You have no idea how glad I am you are back."



"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to"

~John Ed Pearce





Let's just call it a working vacation. I wasn't gone long enough to call it a move. The longest move of my roaming career was followed by the shortest. Knoxville, the first time was my record for shortest at three months; I beat that by two months and a week this time. The reasons for coming back are varied and my all my own. I was too far from my center. A four hour road trip is about all I want to do these days, and St. Louis is four hours from here, three if I feel like it. It was seven to eight from Knoxville. Too far. I'm close enough to visit which is all I think I should do at this point. I missed people a hell of a lot more than I expected to miss them. I was bored.



"Home is home, be it ever so humble."

~Proverbs



I've never claimed I was anything but a fool. The definition of futility is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. I've been doing this **** long enough to know when I made the wrong choice; I may not always pay heed to that knowledge, but I did this time. It bothered me to leave a good friend of mine in Knoxville, one of my best friends by far, but he understands, like good friends always do. I am sure he knew it had more to do than with me just being bored out of my thick skull.



I make too many declarative statements, don't I? I believe them when I say them and they are fact when uttered. They stay that way until the sun goes down and rises again. It isn't a lack of commitment; it is just the commitments change. I am sure I'll make one here before I am done.



People with family, wives and children, they say, "I wish I could live like that. I wish I could pick up and pack everything I need in the back of a car and just head out with no strings attached." People who have just started their personal memorial to the likes of Kerouac ask me questions about the best way to do what I do. People, whose feet are tired, metaphorically speaking, look at me with a sentimental gaze that quickly turns into one of, "I'm glad I'm done with it." There are always strings attached.



I look at people with wives and children and I say to them, "I wish I could live like that."

I look at people just starting their rambling ways and I say to them, "Be careful if you decide to do it, it turns into what you are trying to get away from before you know it. It messes a lot of **** up." I look at people who are done and I say to them, "It's nice to wake up in the same place, next to the same person, every day." That wasn't a question it was a statement. Declarative.





"I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long

A man needs something he can hold onto

A nine pound hammer or a woman like you

Either one of them things will do"

~Ray Lamontagne



My friend Jacob, who I was living with in Knoxville, asked me if Clyde was real (have you paid attention). He told me he figured it was some alter ego of mine. Clyde is real; I have picked Clyde up on the side of some lonely road too many times for him not to be. He is real to me. Clyde told me he had been walking for what he figured was the better part of forty years, biblical almost, he told me I was the only one who ever bothered to pick him up and give his tired feet a little rest. I saw Clyde this Labor Day as I made my way back from St. Louis, Soulard, the center of the universe. He knew something was different this time. He told me as much. He quoted The Great Gatsby, "everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it".



I chuckled a little bit and agreed with him; just glad to have the company on the drive home. I told him I had written about him in a few of my stories, and he asked if I thought people would believe him real; believe in the circumstances of our relationship. I told him it really didn't damn matter as long as I believed.



He told me he was going South and that he wouldn't be back for a while. He waved as he walked away and never looked back.



People measure their lives in the wrong ways. They use man made measurements of time and distance. "I've been doing this for ten years." "I've been a thousand miles from here." "I drove for hours."







"We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others."

~Goethe





Clyde,



I figure this letter will find its way to you eventually. I have no idea where to send it to so I will start with New Orleans and leave instructions to forward it to Houston, St. Louis, and then back to Tennessee if it hasn't found you by then. I thought about that quote from Gatsby and I really don't want that to happen; things are hazy enough these days as it is.



The clearest memories are the oldest sometimes; almost like the time and distance makes them easier to focus on. There have been a lot of places, faces, and circumstances to keep up with. The stories help some, they help a lot. Therapy and all of that. The stories always end up replacing the truth in some way or another. It is like taking a favorite piece of furniture that you just can not bear to get rid of and sanding it down, looking at it, and applying a fresh coat of varnish to it. Stain it? I suppose there is nothing wrong with that. Makes things forever more interesting; the confessions of an ordinary man to borrow a phrase from a friend.



I suppose someone will find their own truth in the telling of them.



I hope you find a place to rest for a long while. I really don't want to see you out on that lonely road again. As bad as that sounds it is more of a blessing than a curse to you. Stay down South for awhile and get warmed back up. The chill stays in our bones too long these days. You ain't getting any younger either. Now if you want to visit and take a short ride up I-55 to St. Louis every few months I have no trouble with that. If you want to make our first trip back to New Orleans together sometime next year that is fine as well. It has been too long since we've done that. We can even go East and visit a good friend of mine from time to time.



I'm not going to pick you up and the only destination is "some where else". You are going to have to do better than that. You may have company the next time we decide to take a road trip and then things change. You and I could go anywhere we wanted; and we did for a long time. Things change, eventually, hopefully. Hopefully.



You take care of yourself and always remember I enjoyed the trips and the stories we shared over a cold beer or twelve. I enjoyed the stories about the people you've met and the places you've been. The amazing people you got to spend time with. I appreciate you listening to mine. Get warm Clyde, rest those tired feet, and find something to hold on to. I'll let you know when I decide to head back up to the center of it all.



I'll leave you with something you should read and think about.



"Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better."

~Thoreau



KB