Place

I never really gave much thought to place in this world. At least not in the way it was introduced to me today. It is as if I were suddenly given a whole cornucopia of thoughts, visions, and impressions of myself to look at from a different point of view.

I am used to thinking of myself as the person I want to be, or strive to be.  I generally think of myself as someone I have carefully tended and molded and engineered. I seldom, if ever, truly think of my actual roots; of the culture that spawned me whether I like it or not.

Reading these first two paragraphs I already see a sign of that culture, that place.  Cornucopia, the horn of plenty, the rural idea of a table filled with good, solid Americana, mashed potatoes and roast beast, green beans and bacon, Thanksgiving in the Heartland, the time and place where I was born.

The huge round oak table I sought out for my own home was really only an echo from the past. Generations of farm folk. Simple people with sturdy shoes and big gardens surrounded by flowers on the perimeter, but full of sustenance within. Butterflies and florabunda roses, planted in mass profusion along green lawns, not in formal gardens along prim walkways.

Miles of flat lands, dark and rich in the winter, highlighting the firelight that becomes the hub of life when it is cold outside. Verdant mazes of corn and soybeans overhung by red tailed hawks and big black crows in the summer, a reminder of nature's bounty and mystery.

Sweltering summer evenings spent swinging on a front porch swing in the swirl of aromatic pipe smoke and wistful dreams. Dreams that sometimes grew big enough to carry one away to a distant place and strange ways, but never far enough that the roots were severed.