A return to innocence...

I return home today, home to the great, sprawling Central Valley of California, home to the flat termitical desolation and eternally deep familial wellspring of love and strength - the emotional geography from which my soul will always be molded.

Half a year since I've seen my parents, and I'm tired, spent and hungry though flush with new love and an alluring horizon; nothing quite fills my empty spaces like being a child again in my father's arms or an infant resting on my mother's thin shoulders. I dwarf them now, physically, but their understated power lies not in muscle, sinew, or bone. Their singularity, rather, lies in the ethereal strength of compassion, the elusory compelling nature of infinite love. They are my Gibraltar, my touchstone, my archetypal landmark a winking lighthouse far above turbulence and obfuscation.

I return to them today and to the embrace in which I'm free and pure, thoughtless and innocent.

-tn

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