I think of the mountains of my lost homeland—I've backed away far enough for them to fall below the horizon, to be corked by flat land. There they remain, aging green with growth and snow-capped seasonings.
I miss them and know I must accrue this feeling of distance before thinking of returning. Those heights I wished for—nothing but a cry for snow.
I must be confined elsewhere to age my gratitude like fine wine, so that when the day comes to return with an independent spirit, the land of my birth will feel more native to me in its recent novelty than it ever did before I had lived only there and nowhere else.
Who am I? A question anyone can ask in the first person. Home is where action centers your sense of self. Where your identity is so weighted that even the strongest prevailing winds of thought cannot budge it.
Oh great expanses, still only tentatively claimed! There remains a spark of wildness on your lands yet capable of reigniting! Even if no accelerant myself, I promise to never again douse you further with timidity. If I ever be your prodigal.
Oh child of fate, even you rebel against your good luck as one inevitably does with their parents at a certain age. That those closest to you set you apart, made you uneasy. You took the first chance to escape to packed urban centers, veritable factories of anonymity. A guilty stream finding solace in the outlet of a condemned ocean. Ah! Is there time yet to reverse that playbook flow?
I bought it, I bought in—Oh mountains, I had to look away from you to go ahead with the task of leveling myself. But it wasn’t just that, maybe only in retrospect. I took to the people and began to find myself assimilated. Friends, none of us are "the people"! We are just tempted to lose ourselves there in turn! An idea promulgated by our lowest instincts to keep us from our higher choices. Our streams become packaged in bulk, unidentifiable, and salty. We look away from ourselves—and this is only to keep hydrated!
I grew among mountains and looked up to them. Their bearing was an inspiration to become mountain-like myself. First, we imitate our idols, and then we create space so that our imitations may seem more than what they are—the middle part of the journey to originality is old imitation in a new environs, where you believe yourself to be the bearer of something new. It is this belief, which is at first almost entirely false, that finally gives rise to actual true originality.
And that was why I moved away from the mountains, so that I could aspire towards mountainhood in some human form without being seen as a mere replica. But, oh, I never became a landscape anyhow. I miss them.
Someday I will return, with something to stretch out. With my own honest share of the independence that originally drove those westward. I had to go East to learn the meaning of the West. I had to lose what I was given to realize I had it at all, and that it was worth creating again. What was once a gift received will someday be the gift I give to myself. But that day must be earned. Easy victories are like cheap wine.
To be human is to continually wrestle with creeping ingratitude. It is unwise to cut corners in big picture fermentation processes. We are so wired that it is difficult for us to fully appreciate those gifts that do not completely intoxicate us upon being received. Paradoxically, the strength and length of endurance of this intoxication generally depends on the quality and amount of sober work done in its lead-up.
And so, my homecoming will remain corked for now. May the mixture strengthen.