Cuentos

I visited Irvine last week, I loved the campus, I loved spending time with my brother even more and what I experienced could only be called unheimlich, returning to a place that feels like home yet isn't. While I was driving south on the 405 toward UCI the radio station I listened to as a kid blared "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers, "Heaven ain't close in a place like this...". I sang along at the top of my lungs, embracing a weird kind of thanatos while Los Angeles loomed and called to me amidst a thick cloud of nostalgia, ecstasy and melancholy.

I think placeways connote place memories. I've returned to other places that I once lived and I knew immediately that I didn't belong, that I was supposed to be somewhere else in that time. I didn't feel that in Irvine, perhaps because it's new, I'd never lived there. Or perhaps because somewhere inside I knew it was only temporary; always arriving, différance. It was dreamlike seeing Jared and his family, smelling air roll off the ocean outside of my previous context, eating with my brother and my old friend, reminiscing.

Returning home to my family isn't so much like waking up as it is like going deeper into the dream. It always takes a couple days for the fogginess to dissipate, especially after these short trips. I used to want a career that would allow me to travel somewhat frequently, now I know that, for me at least, it wouldn't be a good thing. When I return home I always only want to hold my girls and my wife and wake up in that place, knowing it is real.