Home

It's so strange how just a couple of weeks can change things. Right now I'm back at my apartment in Columbia, SC. I catered a luncheon this morning and have a big wedding reception to cater on Saturday. Sunday I'll be moving the rest of my belongings out of my apartment and handing the keys back to my landlord. I miss the fireflies. I miss the mountains. I miss the smell of freshly cut grasses and open meadows. I miss my 4-wheeler. I miss my job. I miss my old run-down cabin in the woods. I miss home.

In just 2 short weeks the farm in West Virginia has become my home. In many ways it's been my home for a very long time but now it really IS my home. It feels like home, like where I'm supposed to be. For the past two weeks I've been full of energy. I've been waking up around 8am and staying awake until around midnight when I get into bed and go right to sleep. As soon as I hit the ground back in Columbia yesterday the lethargy set in. It's fucking 9,000 degrees outside and not much cooler inside my apartment even with the a/c blowing full blast. I've pulled all the curtains closed but that doesn't help either. I have a ton to do but I don't want to do anything. This place saps my energy and leaves me completely unmotivated. I cannot WAIT to leave here. I cannot wait to get back home.

I still have fondness in my heart for my hometown of Columbia and always will. But as much as it is my hometown I've never felt at home here. I've made my peace with this place after so many years of leaving/coming back leaving/coming back ad infinitum. I've made my peace but I can honestly say that I fucking HATE the summer here. Christ, it's godawful. 100 degrees with 100 percent humidity. I just die. I wilt and die.

Give me the mountains. Give me the grey skies and pouring rain. Give me the Blue Ridge mountains, the rushing creeks and rivers, the winding roads, the mysterious fields spotted with deer and millions of other critters swooping, slithering, galloping, hopping along. Give me the star-struck night. Give me the inky darkness. Give me the moonlight and the bull-frog serenade. Give me the washed out roads, the mud, the rocks and boulders. Give me the holy silence of the Appalachian Void. Give me the scream of chainsaws, the violent pop of shotguns, the growl of atvs. Give me the valleys cloaked in cool morning fog. Give me the butterflies in fields of timothy grass. Give me the simple country folk gossiping in the old country store. Give me the ruined family graveyard high on the hillside. The mountain man with no teeth on the farm next door. Give me the solitude of the rugged range of wise, worn mountains.

Sing of the valleys and peaks of my childhood. The eyes of my kin. The cadence and accent of my hillbilly brethren. Sing the Hank Williams Bridge, the Bluestone swelled by Spring rain, the Gauley and the New Rivers pushing rocks through gorges and canyons. Sing the star-speckled midnight, the distant hum Interstate 77, the swooping roller coaster of Highway 19, the tiny towns that garnish my now with sweet and tender memory, the dancing songstress Highway 19, holding her microphone with her asphalt hips swaying around knolls of rhododendron and hollows of poplar and oak. Sing the lush fern crevasses, the moist, succulent earth, ancient and holy as the motor of the truck hums and carries me through space and time. Sing the scarred rock faces, the Indian chiefs, the Native warriors set in stone winking at me from cliffs string along the roadside leading to the place of my birth. Sing the avenues of my childhood neighborhood, Woodlawn Avenue and Woodlawn Cliffs, the tiny house on King Street and my best friends' houses on Springdale and Bishop. Sing Granville Avenue where I once rode my Huffy all the way down with no hands. Sing the snow-covered lawns I used to sled. Sing the wooden floors of the old stone and brick schoolhouse. Sing the convenience store where I purchased my very first can of tobacco, my first high, ten years old, head spinning and listening to rock and roll on my boom box. Sing the buildings of Beckley, the Negro streets of East Beckley, the white columns of the church where I was baptized into the faith of the Christ. Sing the 7-eleven where my father used to buy me Slurpee's and Big League Chew, where we used to stop after my little league games and get baseball cards and candy. Sing the giant pine at the bottom of our yard, five feet around and mighty. Sing Whitestick Creek and the trains rumbling past laden with coal and lumber. Sing the neighbor girls' house across the street, the pale green paint and the upstairs window that used to glow blue from their parents' television set. Sing watching the Boy in the Plastic Bubble with my sisters and Lee Ann and Melissa. Sing the Apple Tree in the back yard and the big rock with cavities that used to fill with water and then become dressed with apple blossoms, the petals white in the pockets of rain water, the sky and branches reflecting the sky of my youth. Sing the taste of onion grass, the shape of hemlock pine cones, the lash of willow branches, the spinning, whirling winds blowing globes of dandelion cotton balls across empty lots at the top of our street. Sing the garages of the retired couple next door, the WWII vet, his wife and son, the knick-knacks, the smell of pine tar and the crumpled wooden floor stained with oil and sand. Sing all of it. Sing every last bit. Every last tiny detail. Every iota and dot of existence and memory. Every treasure yet to be discovered. Every jewel left to be unearthed.