  Every time I come here I’m instantly aware that this is most definitely not one of the many houses that I grew up in. It’s not my home, though it is very much a home. And this is odd because it is my mother’s house. I guess it is true, we can never go home again. You know what I mean. I moved habitually when I was growing up. I never went through three grades start to finish in the same school, always trying to stay one step ahead of the debt, the price of pride and four kids on a single mother. She refused hand outs, she refused to quit, always looking for something better, trying to better us, to make our lives easier. And they got easier after I moved out, leaving to join the Army and change the world into my world.
Mom finally moved in with her long time boyfriend, taking the rest of my siblings with her, and though it’s always been comfortable when I came home, I’ve always noticed that I don’t have a bed of my own, or a closet, or anywhere to keep the boxes of stuff that are sitting in a storage room. It’s something that’s contributed greatly to my belief that I’ve just been wandering around these last five years, the realization that most of my ‘stuff’ the anchor of my existence has been in boxes and always a significant distance away. And yet, despite never having lived here, in this house, or even in this state, it is exceedingly comfortable.
The guest bed is nicer than any I’ve slept in for quite a while. I know my way around. I know where all the boxes that house my stuff are. But, in the year that I’ve been away, it’ll be a year tomorrow morning, so I shaved a pair of days off, the house has changed, emphasizing the feeling of unfamiliarity. Where there was carpet, there’s now hardwood floors; the dishwasher has been replaced; walls are painted; shelves appeared where none were before; there’s a hardwood shed in the backyard; a new truck in the driveway; and on and on and on. And one of the other changes, for another year, I’ll be leaving on the second of June, again. I left the second of June last year. Maybe I’ll do it next year, just to maintain the trend. I don’t know, I don’t think that far ahead.
These last few days I haven’t been thinking that far ahead. But I’ve been working diligently at this being alive thing. Time in the city, time in Vancouver, time in the air. Lots of time, all written down and experienced, so that when I get back to Texas tomorrow I can type it all out, work it all out, and display it all, my North American Bohemian Tour, or as I’m tentatively calling it, Bunburying . I figure I’ve got enough there, where, with a few more crazy vacations, I might be able to work a short novel out of it, something like a jet-setting On The Road .
I think it would be an apt tribute, I’ve been finding a great deal of people who think along the say paths, if not the same principles of the Beat Generation. It’s probably time that the rest of the world realizes where not the MTV generation, we’ve got our own voice and it has nothing to do with TRL. 
