.:Dreams and Swords:.

The Land of B-Town

I am currently typing on the hotel computer at nearly 1:30 in the morning. A bunch of semi-drunk family members a busting up in the hall, preparing for something in the conference room. There's a sickening sweet smell of beer lingering in the air as doors keep slamming shut all along the hallway. In the distance country music is playing off of someone's radio.

Ah, there's no place like home.

Most of my life I've moved up and down California. I've hit every major area of the state - the back hills, the urban cities, the cookie-cutter land of suburbia, and the rolling fields of farm land. There's really no place for me to call a hometown, but the closet thing to it is Bakersfield.

Much has changed since I moved away for the last time about seven years ago. There are times I look around and wonder where everything is. Then, there are times I remember the streets I walked with my friends during the summer time, using the change we found in the couch cushions to pay for slushees down at the corner market. Or the junior high school from hell that nearly killed...literally (long story).

There are so many memories I have tied to this place. It is a graveyard of past mistakes, heartbreak, and humiliation. Yet, I keep coming back. I travel back out of love for my brother, for my sisters, and even for my father. This place that could have eaten me alive, for some odd reason, I come back to it hoping I won't feel the same sense of pain. Most of the time I can not revisit those places in the back of my mind. Its when I leave that everything floods back.

I don't know why I'm writing this. There's some many other things I can write about since my sudden trip Friday. But as I sit in front of this strange, unfamiliar keyboard I find myself pouring out this small river of pain that dwells inside me. Maybe, one day, I'll figure out what the hell it all means.