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[
//:the neilds:// ]
: "It's okay to be mean to the evil people
who make life unbelievable, but try to be nice to me . . ."
[
vermont
]
Went home to Vermont this weekend and realized something, shared by my brother: there's a confidence about family and home. It says, "Everything is fine; they are always there." Dangerous. You don't realize what you miss until you see it again.
I fear not living in something new and fresh; a large city, perhaps, for just a while. A small, confusing apartment with rooms you don't realize are there until you decide to use up space you haven't yet used. But it occurred to me: there is something about Vermont, maybe it's the seasons, that always seems new and fresh. A new town could ease my psychological fixation. In that mental movie of mine, I can see the poetry in writing amidst a Vermont landscape, a shadow on half the hills, a bright sun highlighting the others, and me, scribbling madly in a cellar by kerosene lamps. My grandfather turned 80 this weekend. I saw my brothers, my sisters, my cousins; I heard news I had already known, some that I had not. I met new cousins, babies, children. The ones I already knew had already forgotten my name, face, and "coochie, coochie, coo"'s. I promise myself one more time that next time, they will remember.
I love the idea of [ reading ] on the couch; of helping my mother in her garden, putting new white pine siding on the house. Of bringing home my new furniture, staining it outside on the stones to dry in the fresh Vermont air so that when I do bring it to the home I live in, with someone who reminds me of home, I can always smell Vermont. Me and him: our noses pressed against the newly stained wood.
beam me up, scotty
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the online journal of c.m. roberts: