Spent the afternoon walking around Norway/South Paris. Every street is Memory Lane in a small town like this. Every block -- there's the house where Shannon Scott and I got stoned that one time; That's the schoolyard where Dylan Andrews and I played at night while the new wing was being built; that's the church where my Cub Scout troop held the Pinewood Derby; that's where Bruce Elliott used to live, and where That Fateful Overnighter took place.

I remember the names, the faces, but they're all lost. Gone. Even --especially-- the ones who still live here. Nostalgia bites hard, and I spend most nights every visit reliving fantasies of what might have been, how I would relive old scenes if I knew then what I know now. But now the town is reliving the last time there was a war and a depression (and a Bush), and everything looks dirty and beaten down. This town makes you fat and windburned.

But I can walk farther without getting tired than ever before. I have grown large, far larger than this town can contain, for while they have grown enough to sell espresso at the cafe near the high school, they don't yet know how to drink it.

...

And we go to war. I dearly wish we weren't. If we must, I wish we were doing it with the UN, instead of in spite of it. I wish criticizing the government weren't being equated with lacking patriotism. This all looks eerily familiar.

...

I can't wait to get home. Thursday I'll move to my mother's house. NEXT Tuesday I'll fly home, nail clippers in my checked baggage.

2003-03-18