Place

You can’t go home again is a fine title for a book and is surely true on several levels. Change is as fundamental to our reality as anything – going on millions of years now.

But on a human scale, if you have personally been to a place and carefully looked around - lived a little in that place, even if only momentarily - you will find that when you return, although much has possibly changed, the essential nature of the place will reveal itself again to you.

If you do not experience this deep sense of place from time to time, you are missing something as fundamental to our reality as anything. Human beings have been connected to places going on millions of years now.

You can belong to places on the earth.

You start by looking around where you are. You will begin to see the place. Much of the process will happen below the level of your consciousness but you will begin to notice things. As you live for a time, only passing through, as we are, even in a place as simple as an alleyway, trashcans for décor, a sycamore tree might become a landmark for your coming and going or perhaps even merely a crack in the pavement.

For me a bigger place is the river – the Kaw – particularly the stretch around the bridge connecting downtown Lawrence, Kansas and North Lawrence. I have been writing about the river for some time now and I am farther from recognizing all of its elements and characteristics than when I started.

But I know where I am when I am there. I belong in that place.

You need only to become more aware to come home.