My most triumphant return

Hello sportsfans,

            Sorry for the long absence from my incessant blogging but so much has happened. Firstly, my beau made a triumphant return to my home during his leave. Everything has been filling with chaos. I found out that my student loans are too high for me to finish my whole year left to my degree and to my surprise I wasn’t as disappointed about it as I thought I would be. I wanted to be better than what I was and maybe I would find some sort of validation but it the validation I crave isn’t one that can be bought by a degree.

              I might not have a degree but it doesn’t stop me from picking up a book or taking a few online courses. I might be knocked down for the moment but things are going to change. So I guess I’m semi stuck but I’m still making head way. In the meantime a small yet bizarre circumstance has left me wondering. I’ve lived in this small little burg for going on almost ten years now. Outside of my city living way I moved to the seemingly calm and quiet Boonies.  Literally, actually. I really hadn’t thought anything about the quiet demeanor of the town or the occasional degrading elite attitude. Every place tends to have one of those.  Or a lot of those but regardless I came to love the little town. It had everything I needed. Peace, quiet and amenity.

              It was something I thought I needed in my life. I had thought if I left the place where all my problems were located, then my problems would dissipate. I wish I had the wisdom to realize that no matter where you went, your problems would follow you not because you wanted them to but because they are a part of you.  They always will be. As I see it, everyone gets cut and everyone can heal. The difference is how deep you allow those scars to get.  I wasn’t aware enough to see how deep my scars were or even why they were so deep but isolation was the key to my sense of heaven and hell.

             Along my path of healing I’d heard a number of different urban legends involving this small town. Underground tunnels, mines equipped with mole people, something called the devil’s cables and shanty towns around the area. I’d written them off. Honestly, with standing the possibility of underground tunnels the myth I had heard were pretty much laughable. Laughable- up until last week that is .When longtime residents and law enforcement started talking about the dank under belly of Boone my ears peaked.

              This was new. The tunnels connecting the buildings had eventually been walled up. How did I know that? I’d seen the bricked up exits. In not just one building but two others with in the same vicinity.  Another fact is that they could be exits for the businesses below.  The former buildings are also marked by bricked up features. I had always wondered. Why where they bricked up? What businesses were there and why? But as usual, life gets in the way and those questions are quickly dropped in the junk drawer to deal with the next impending disaster.

               I tend to focus on the weirdest things. Typically having to do with paranormal. I enjoy being able to rip a myth and find its roots. Why do we mystify the strangest things? I’d like to think that every myth, legend and  paranormal experience has roots in actual events. Or in the roots of events long since passed.

I was sitting on a plain picnic table swirling a mixture of hot chocolate mix and Folgers coffee. I’ve never been a morning person so my coffee was important. Did I care about the brand, nah. Did I care about strength and quantity? Yup. And this place had plenty. A quick movement of my hand and my cigarette became lit and the day became suddenly better. “The residents” (or shall I name them) became engrossed in the topics of the under belly of Boone. I typically tend to brood over a book and my writing projects. More recently, it is putting together stories about life. But lately, I’ve been haunted by a sense of writer’s block and self-consciousness that only seems to bother me on occasion. I guess I lose my balls or something. I took a swig and picked a word out of the conversation, Devil’s Cables.

                According to resident one, the Devil’s Cables are located next to a very large cemetery where a biking trail now resides. A trail that I had walked many times to get my stressed worked out. I had seen this mysterious bridge well over a hundred times (pictures to be posted) and had never understood why there was a bridge with no pathway above it or near it. There had even been a few points where I sat down and I had reflected there. I had considered that maybe the bridge there for aesthetic value but at the same time I had questions. However there had been a large part of me that had always wondered. Regardless, it too landed on the back burner.

               But recording to my sources that place had host to various activities involving ritualistic murders, KKK meetings and other strange happenings. But all the residents kept digging deeper. Typically I’d dismiss that idea that anything that was going on right beneath my nose. But let’s face facts shall we? Stranger things have happened to me. As I took a long sip of my coffee, they continued and my interested . I had to know more about everything. It was like it took hold of me. I took a deep haul off of my cigarette and began to ask questions. It was your typical, who, what when and when. As my break turned toward the end, it left me with more questions than answers.

             I’d started reflecting. I knew this had to be research and now I am the journey to find information.

Duality

                I remember the car ride to Iowa very well. I was smelly after 16 plus hours but so many valuable things happened along the trip. This made 16 plus hours bearable in the eve of the December months. I can be impulsive and my heart is wild to the core. I didn’t bat much of an eye lash for moving to another country. My hidden family credo had been: “Home comes from within.” Home wasn’t in the money that was recklessly dumped into furniture or the four walls of a shambled home on the out skirts of a blossoming inner city. No, home came from within.
                 I lived a dual life. One half of me wanted to run wild in the wood like a time honored priestess paying homage to her bygone god. While the other half thrived in the masses of the concrete jungles like a bohemian artist living off the cultural prison of their own design. The only way I could find true release was to keep at least one of them well fed and catered to. But everything comes with a price. Cities are great preying ground for social predators and as the numbing news came to show, it was.

                For those of your out there that don’t understand what I’m talking about let me just fill you the same way my abnormal psych teacher informed me. Your brain can only take so much. After prolonged exposure to stressful stimuli, your brain eventually becomes numb to it. Every day there would be talk of stabbing, murders and hold ups. My brain grew its buffer like an unnoticed callus. It’s tough to feed your inner wild child with a buffer in place. Through a series of long winded events I came to live in America’s best kept secret, Iowa.

                Sure it had its down side. But don’t all laid plans of mice and men? Here I found the solitude I craved so deeply. The dualities of personality were coming to a revolt. Here, there was no concrete jungle to feed my inner Bohemian artist or place that was safe enough for me to howl at the moon. What was a girl to do?

                In the lonely, cold nights, I would look outside and I would feel comfortable. It had been noticed once that when anyone put me outside I could calm down easier. Only a few weeks had passed and I was beginning to feel “unconformable” in my new “home.” I worked hard to make sure that nothing where I was staying changed. I didn’t know how long I was going to be there but none the less I kept my bags packed. For months, I kept my things in a grab and go order. It was easier that way.

                I yearned for my concrete jungle, the subway systems, and the loud and rowdy restaurant that only authentic Greek restaurants could acquire. But here I was in the opposite of what I had grown to know. It was the fresh start that I had always yearned for and now that I had found it or rather attained it, something in the heart of my soul felt disconnected. Everything external seemed disposable and I couldn’t identify anything I could connect to. The revolution inside seemed to rage louder every day. My inner self was growing more discontent with the day.

                But that is when the strangest thing happened, I simply looked outside. It came to me in a gnarled fog like haze. It twisted arms reached toward heaven like demons homesick for the loving grace of god. Weathered indented inlay of bark wrapped itself around the contorted figure like finely fitted latex boots. They stood centennial over the land in a fashion that the British guard could only envy. The revolution quieted and stilled itself. I didn’t to touch them or get in touch with them.  To view them for the art that they are gave me a sense of piece. It fed both side of my personalities somehow. The trouble inside quieted. It was outside each day that I woke and everywhere I sent.  But I didn’t just look outside, I became the outside. Where were answers to my sorrow? Would I ever be able to sate both demons inside? Whatever the answers, I know they are in the trees.