“It was worth it just to see it, hear stories about it, and touch the water. We’ve all had friends who took us to illicit places, after hours or under the influence, right? But what does it mean to reestablish the whole of your life, cut loose from all you knew? Not led by anyone, not comforted by the familiar, or even thrilled by the unknown. Just uprooted, because the structures that once held your life together, albeit by a shoe sting, have washed away. You no longer belong. Your very presence has been questioned, your validity, rejected. Now acorns fill your shoes, and foxglove stems criss cross the free byways, blocked, as some comet flames out over head, and in the heat of summer rain, you succumb. Not the beautiful submission to your lover’s desire, or even on your back, combing the stars of your endless youth. No, the business of the world is like a prison where you clang this way and that, bumping against bars & walls and emptiness. Only simple things bring a dram of peace. Like the dirt that you work, hour after hour, shaking it from the roots, dusting it from tailgates and wiping it off your sweaty face. Who am I, you wonder, bent over the nozzle at the gas pump, a stranger in your own town, never seeing those you used to love, as if trickery at large could have so easily felled the tree of your friendships. I won’t forget my exile. I won’t forget those who let me sink or swim alone. Because as my brother Bryan Blanchette suggested, I had perhaps brought it upon myself. By asking for strength. And trying to be more. And standing alone in every serious gale, as if my life depended on it. Instead of saying: enough.”
