Hometown again, Folks.
I’m not sure what I am expecting when I go to Albuquerque. I’ve been going a lot. I’ve been going to look at houses and to see my father.
I can’t quite understand why I want to live there. It is a bit emotionally nebulous to me. I’m trying to figure it out. It can’t be that difficult. When I go back to New Mexico I want the part of me that lives there to welcome me back. He does, but he’s a bit of a ghost now.
The idea that ‘You can never go home again’ is false. You go home every moment of every day. It’s where you came from. It defines some part of who you are, even if you’ve lost touch with who that is.
Even though I know that most of the landmarks that defined my life growing up have either changed or are gone, some part of me desperately seeks to connect with those things. It doesn’t feel like nostalgia to me. I’m not looking to live in the past. I seem to want my past to explain itself to me so I can have a clearer sense of who I am. I don’t long for those times or who I was. It wasn’t great. I would like to have an honest sense of who I was in situations to understand my consistencies both good and bad. Memory is shifty.
Any sense of self is threatened every day by what we allow in our minds. The amount of information and the number of narrative fragments we introduce upon turning on our phone or computer is psychically annihilating. Context is challenging and when you find a way to curate your intake—that is who you are.
Our being becomes a series of triggers and reactions. There is no ground to hold. No matter what struggle you are engaged in, no matter how large, you are just standing there or sitting, staring into a machine that is holding you and your mind hostage.
Frontier Restaurant remains constant. I have been going there since high school. I could always walk in there, no matter how long I had been gone, see people I know and love and make rounds to tables just talking to them. Many are dead now. Many are gone.
I did walk in there the first morning I was in town and immediately ran into some of the old crew, Sam and Enid Howarth. I sat and ate breakfast with them and talked, sorted the world out a bit. It was like time travel. My ghost was alive and with me. Older me and older them being people now. In the world.
My dad’s memories are fading.
Before I left I was looking for my college diploma because I need it for some paperwork. In the process of looking through boxes in my attic I found a box filled with my writing from college. Bits and pieces that felt totally alien to me. I also found an envelope of childhood pictures of my father. I must’ve gotten them from my great aunt.
It was a serendipitous find because I was going to see my father and I could take them with me to show him and see what he retains from his past.
I sat with him and went through the photos. He remembered everything. What seemed most vivid was his memories of his two childhood dogs. The back and forth of the unconditional love of and for animals runs eternal. Human to human as well. We’ve gotten away from that. Distance.
I went to look at a house that was a mile and a half down a dirt road up of old Highway 14. I want to believe that I can live like that. Isolated, calm. It was an oasis, a beautiful little place, secluded. The quiet and the wind was electric and peaceful. I could feel it. Conversely, I felt that it would cause me to lose my mind in days. I can’t sit out there with the ghost of me that lives in NM while I become a new ghost.
I need people. I need a town. A city. I need to see strangers passing by. I need to take the ghost of me home with me.
I’m struggling with a lot of thoughts here. This is probably a book.
Today I talk to comedian Naomi Ekperigin about coming up in NY, Nigerian roots and writing. On Thursday I put down an axe with comedian Orny Adams. Mostly. Great talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
Landmarks.
