Coming home.

Having been in the pristine, crisp and tidy world that is my little bit of Maine, I'm struggling to find peace with my native city on the edge of the swamp.  Upon first coming home, I was resistant and really kind of angry about having to adjust to an environment that is loose and unkempt in so many ways. It is an amalgam of light and dark, often so twisted together that one feels so happy and so sad at the same time. Some of this has to do with my own history with the place, but much of it exists in complexity of the social and political fabric, a turbulent history and a landscape that longs to be wild. I realize that so much of why I'm addressing this here has to do with a strong desire to sort through my own complicated thoughts and feelings about this place . The hypothesis being that if I can write about it some kind of clarity might bubble up in the process.

This morning I took a bike ride in Audubon Park. It is hauntingly beautiful with the twisting oaks and the lagoon covered in a soft green blanket of scum . The ducks walk around with a happy insouciance that makes me laugh. The golf course shimmers in the early morning light as I ride my bike around a loop that takes you from St. Charles Ave. to the river and back. It is so lovely, but not in a bright and cheerful kind of way. Like the city itself, the park has a softness and a sort of droopingly poignant beauty. I feel my heart lifting towards the sunlight coming through the trees and in the same moment I feel a sort of heaviness in my chest. If I'm not careful that heaviness can pull me down into a sort of muck that I have a hard time climbing out of. I'm trying to stay in that middle ground between the light and the dark with curiosity and the hope that something profound is on the verge of opening up.