Going Home

They say you can't go back home.  It's never quite how you remember it. These days nothing really is but, I thought I would give it a shot.  Challenge a few memories with reality.  A lot of my life catapulted into action from my days at University of Montana.  

Radical mind-shifts that birthed MTV, Apple and the Logitech mouse.  The average cost of a new house was $92,000. We bitched when a gallon of gas crept to $1.00.  An IBM 30Mb hard-disk, mono-monitor with a whopping 512k of memory sold for $1249.00. The Iran-Contra Affair hogged the news and the "USSR" withdrew from Afghanistan. Things have changed.  

Coffee has changed! Don't know about you all, but I can get overwhelmed with coffee menu options. Nobody just orders coffee anymore. Now it's a "Reserve Hazelnut Bianco Latte", with additional shots and options. Uhhh...Give me a minute to think. It takes longer to say it than drink it.   In Missoula, there were two major student hang-outs offering endless refills of harsh, dripping black caffeination. The AppleTree for all-night exam cramming and Butterfly Herbs on Higgins, for debating the world's problems. If I remember right, back then, we had solutions for everything.  The AppleTree is gone. Felled by time. No more midnight coffee-cup pyramid challenges and textbook flirting.  

But, Lo and Behold! Butterfly Herbs is still here. Freakishly enough, it hasn't changed. From the squeeze-in wooden booths to the wall of loose leaf teas.  I can hear the past whispering around me.  Forgotten names and faces float back from memory.  The coffee shop is still here, but they are gone. 

Driving around Missoula I am caught between confusion and, recognition.  A cityscape that has morphed.  Unfamiliar, even as I  turn corners finding spaces that echo in my heart. A mental jigsaw of pieces that don't quite fit this new puzzle.

Going "home" is a journey of the heart. Ghosts only we know, follow us.  We explore, seeking something beyond the brick and mortar. The intangible spirit of our past.

A sense of our evolving past self that formed who we are today.  Questing to find answers in a world that has changed so radically. Who were we? Who are we now?  My second cup of coffee brings warm comfort but no answers.  I am alone in this idealist past.  A clutch of students crowd in armed with IPhones and laptops. It has been good to be back. Home has changed and, so have I.  That is how it should be. 

Thanks Montana. You are beautiful.