The Place I'm Thinking Of

The past is distant

My memories are in a far away place

Getting further by the moment

After the visit to my childhood home

During the long drive back

I look into my rearview mirror and see my hometown in the distance

There it is—was

Small and far with a haze that makes it look fake

Like some immense illusion

It’s the same when I see a sight for the first time,

Like a mountain or ocean or canyon or some random skyscraper against a some random skyline

The things you see as screensavers

Because that's all you can really compare it to anymore

When I gaze into that rearview mirror, I catch myself searching

I find my hometown, the one I see now, is a lesser copy of what I knew

A place no longer retaining the gravity of my memories

Is that the place I think it is? Was I ever really there at all?

Maybe the place I’m thinking of is just a bit further

Just beyond the horizon

Because this, what’s before me, isn’t right

Incomplete

The emotional response isn’t clicking

The illusion fails

And now it’s just a screensaver

‘this file cannot be found’

I keep my eyes on the view in the mirror as I drive

Still searching

This view of my home was a perspective I never saw while being there

It’s bizarre

Yet I know it

I know all about it

I know all the facts and experiences of it

All the information is catalogued like a photo album in my head

But something’s not translating

I can’t tap into the same feel of those moments anymore

Maybe not so much like a photo album then

More like picture files and document files

The things stored on the virus ridden flash drive I have somewhere

That little lifeboat

The digital ark that survived the entropy of the old computer I stopped updating

The computer I left withering like a house now haunted with whatever ghost files weren’t saved somewhere else

That flashdrive would carry what I needed

Or so I hoped

As I hoped something would be carried in my mirror

Now I’m not sure

Now even that flashdrive is old

Too outdated to be plugged in anymore

Incompatible with today

Like my memories of my home

Their feel

Illegible hieroglyphs

Information so close yet still lost

‘this file cannot be read’

I stare at the reflection,

The last remnants of my home,

Trying to soak it in before it’s all gone

Burning into my mind

Lapping up every last detail and rushing to store it somewhere that won’t be lost

Because I realized that there was so much that slipped away over the years

I need to take a moment

Connect to it, be captivated by it, relive it

Just so my memories have some, any, foothold in the present

Anything to anchor them in something other than dissipating ghosts in distant clouds

I remember my home.

I remember the smell. The way the light came in.

I remember the early mornings and the late nights and being the only one awake.

I remember being alone. I remember being together.

I remember the times blurring. I remember that moment clearly.

I finally reconnect

I retrieve a memory

I find it and return there

But I pause

That not the way it was—is

Something isn’t the same

This place in my mind doesn’t match what is—was

It’s different

Or I’m different

It’s wrong, rewritten

Changed

Changed by time

Changed by me

‘this file has been corrupted’

I’m only vacationing in my memories now

Despiste it all being different and wrong,

Past compared to present, present to past,

I know I’ll never get this close to it again

I’ll only have my stories left, which is all I ever really had

That’s all memories are anyway

That’s all home is,

A place you find those memories still living

Any place those precious dreams of the past hold

Through foggy night or clear day,

Or a long drive,

They hold for bit longer

As that old coputer withers on

I miss so many things

And I wish to return to the home I see in my rearview mirror

But that is not the place I think it is

The home I know is a far away place,

Getting further by the moment

So I chase my thoughts, chase my memories, chase myself

And I start all over again

This is a reality I can’t escape, not even as reality escapes me

Soon this too will become just a memory, a distant place, mostly forgotten

And I’m left with only now,

And the hopes I will remember it fondly

‘open new file’