Born on a desert island

Like a powerful swirling turret that spirals into a tight knot of violent singularity, I feel the tides of this small town closing in.

To truly find good writing, I think it must come from the heart and there has been an increasing and steady weight tugging at mine. Although I love and honor the close community that spawned me, it is undeniable that the longer I live in this small town, the smaller it seems to get.

There is no such thing as ambiguity for any resident walking down their main street here. In this remote place of ours, a random encounter of arbitrary insignificance will quickly enough become one of recurring consequence.

Walking down the street you’ll pass an acquaintance and depending upon your last parting impression, you may receive a greeting of friendly casualness or an obligation of awkward courtesy.

It can sometimes be difficult to do a thing openly because so many other people’s considerations would take effect. My country boy philosophy tells me this: the less you splash the water, the easier it will be to catch a fish.

It may feel like we were born on some deserted island, but I’m pretty sure that the discontentment in one’s life is rarely a mere product of their environment. So naive and eager to desperately cast off, I set my sails a top a dark sea in the middle of the night. It’s no wonder then that life’s currents have taken me to and fro, yet for all my blind determination, I’ve washed back up on the same shore.

I doubt I’m the first person to lose my way and settled out back in my home town, away from it all - all the places I never really got to see. My flaw I suppose was being too concerned with what I wanted to get away from and not focused enough on where I was supposed to be going. Small towns sure don’t go easy on a person’s past with so many people so intimately involved. It can challenge one’s ability to discover their own identity, strangled by the social stigma that ridicules diversity and embraces tradition.

Like the stale taste of a communion wafer and with just as much piety, our giant family of small community has our best intentions at heart. Although I’ve always been one to favor more exotic flavors, I appreciate the thought.

Despite all its faults, I will still live in a place that sells produce and fire wood along the roadside. Businesses supported by a tin can and the honor system. People know one another and a sense of trust that’s quickly evaporating from the world still lingers on here. Our curse and blessing is that we keep doing what we’ve always done and as the world has turned, we continue to keep our doors unlocked and pull each other out of snow banks. The change I have sought would destroy these miracles that survive in our modern age of liability, suspicion and profit.

So here I am like so many other making the best of what I’ve got. The older I get, the more I understand the value of small community – but I don’t think I can ever forget the faults. All the things that shouldn’t have happened in life, did happen, but what happens next, is entirely up to you.