February 18, 2008

• Internet Island Topic 32.1: You can never go home, or can you?

  "You Can Never Go Home Again"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  July 11, 2005 4:00 p.m. pdt

  
  Memories, sadly, are all that remain
  As an exuberant life swirls down the drain
  Singing party songs and dirges, verse and refrain
  "You can never go home again."

  Home was a house where a childhood was spent
  Upon a hill overlooking the roadway out of town
  The street now is gone, and the memories get sent
  Into oblivion when thrown on the ground.

  Bulldozers have no heartbeat
  As they destroy the realities of youth
  And after years pass, muddied the street
  And lies surely replace what was truth

  Memories, sadly, melt in the sand
  And the spectre of now lies in a cold hand
  Open to possibilities unbound
  But the drear echo of memory makes not a sound

  Memories, sadly, are all that remain
  When the streetlamps of solace still stain
  And you stop singing the songs, and forget the refrain
  "You can never go home again"

  
  Home is where the heart is. Tony Bennett left his in San Francisco, so wherever he was, home for Tony was Frisco. Mine, both home and heart,  has always been "somewhere" right here in good old L.A. County. The physical "place" we call home is usually a house situated on a lot somewhere tangible. We can open the door of our "home" and we can sleep there without too much worry. We probably only started locking the doors about 20 or 30 years ago, cause we all know it isn't as safe in the modern world as it used to be, but for the most part, our home is where our heart can beat strongly and sturdily, and we can sleep, eat, and relax, knowing that there is no place like it.

  Some of us have lived in more places than others. Some army and navy brats have had a life filled with so many homes that for them the service of choice of their parent(s) is more of a home than the physical places they've lived. Some of us have lived in the same place forever. In fact, maybe our forefathers have lived on the same farm or spot of land since the land was first occupied. There are many of us, and we each have a different place or state of mind and heart we call home.

  I have oft proclaimed, like the old adage, that "you can never go home again". The physical place I describe in the poem above is Highland Park, California, where my family spent the time between my sixth and seventh years on planet Earth. When I went back to visit the street on which I grew up, so to speak, I found it was gone, torn up and replaced by an apartment complex. Now that home is only a memory, but the feeling of "home", or a part of it, can be felt whenever I travel around Highland Park, even though it hardly looks like the town did when I lived there.

  I've moved over 20 times in my personal half century. All of those places are in Los Angeles County, in Southern California. When I drive the streets and freeways of SoCal, as I have since I received my first driver's license in 1970, I feel "at home". While on that drive, I could show an interested party dozens of different dwellings in which I've lived, some literally right down the street from one another. Most of these "homes" were single or one bedroom apartments. Some were houses which I shared with roommates. Since my parents died when I was in my early twenties, I've lived in many places, but I never lose the sense of "home" because for me, "home" is SoCal. I'll narrow it down to Los Angeles County, but I feel just as settled while driving up the coast to San Francisco, or down to San Diego. For me, this complete area is "home" because it is familiar. I know my way around.

  Each of us treats "home" a little differently. Lately, for the past five or so years, I could equally call my Xanga blog "home". I spend a lot of time here on Xanga, and I socialize here, just as I have socialized with friends and neighbors in the "real world". My poem was written just a few years ago, as feelings of "home" in the persona of those whom I love began to shrink, as friends and family are forever passing from my sphere of influence. It was first posted on this blog, where a sense of "home" is growing rather than shrinking, as I "meet" new friends and neighbors in cyberspace. They are no less real than those in tangible "space" here in Southern California.

  My heart is here, and so is my home. I have personal "stuff" but I know that all that stuff can be gone in a minute. In fact, the very place I call "home", in the Southland could easily disappear, as we have been hearing for at least all of my life, when the "big one", a monumental earthquake, finally arrives.

  Will destruction of place, or dying off of people, or loss of memory, or any other unseeming and unknown calamity destroy my home?

  Perhap. In "reality", but I doubt it. I could lose everything and still have "home". Home then would be the heavens and the earth. Home would be memory, as long as I possess it. Home is, as is my heart, beating with life, and infusing my reality. It can disappear, and so can I, but my mind and soul will live on, at home, in the Universal, after I physically pass from existence.

  I wrote the poem below in 1971, in high school, when only 17 years old. I had never been "away from home" when I wrote this. My first time "away from home" would be a year later, when I graduated, and attended USC on a scholarship. I still lived in the family house, but spent most of my days at school or work. Soon my parents would be gone, and I moved into the first of many apartments in 1974.

  You might not be able to physically "go home", but home, along with your heart, is always with you.

  
  "Long Road Home"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  1971 (17 years old)

  
  Branches on the trees whisper,
  "Go back home."
  Grasses by the wayside say
  You don't know where you roam.
  E'en the mind beneath yours
  Proclaims you're as stable as sea foam.
  But still the urge for walking
  Moves your feet.

  Swans gliding on the lake yell,
  "Go on back."
  Birds winging through the air say
  You're on the wrong track.
  E'en the mind beneath yours
  About this trip seems slack.
  And still the urge for walking
  Moves your feet.

  Concentrating heavily,
  You find you still can't see.
  You ask yourself complacently
  "What is this thing with me?"
  You wonder most sincerely
  In what way you seem to be.
  Yet still the urge for walking
  Moves your feet.

  The mind, the eyes, the senses
  Cry a weary tune.
  In sense, all truths point to
  The fact that you're a loon.
  Knowledge gives assurance
  That you have to stop this soon.
  But still the urge for walking
  Moves your feet.

  Sweet Jesus fills the horizon
  Beaming with a smile.
  Sunrays spatter from his countenance,
  Shining white all the while.
  He reaches out his hand
  At the end of the mile.
  Here the urge for comfort
  Stops your feet.

  ---

  This is topic entry #32.1 for the Internet Island blogring. The Internet Island is comprised of many different people with one thing in common. We are all human. (Well, two things. We all blog on Xanga!) Check out the blogsite for the Internet Island.

  ---

  And now for something completely different department: I've been tagged by Jane (peacenow) and even though I usually say I don't "do blogtags", I like this one. It might develop into an interesting blog. In fact, I'm going to make sure I've given everyone I "know" a chance to participate, so I am going to "message" this to all my "friends and subscribers" besides posting it on the blog. Here are the tag rules: Solicit questions from everyone about any subject and then tag five more to do the same.

  You get to ask me questions Each one has to ask one question, on any subject, and I must answer. What nakedly personal parts of my life havent' I yet shared? Am I Mr. Know it All, and can I answer questions of any stripe intelligently?

  We'll soon see. Please comment on the entry here for the Island, of course, but you can also ask me your question in comments below, OR by sending me a MESSAGE. I'll pick the  questions I find the most interesting and formulate a future blog entry. I won't "tag" anyone. If you haven't done this yet on your blog, and you want to, then consider yourself "tagged".

  • 8:10 pm
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