Sometimes You Can't Go Home Again

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity”

---William Butler Yeats

The quote above I recall principally from the book ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe, which I encountered when I served in the Peace Corps, along with ‘The River Between’ by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (forgive me for not including umlauts in ‘Ngugi.’ There are two, though I have not found out the keyboard commands to do so yet). I have tried to read The River Between again a few years ago, to perhaps capture the feeling that I got from the first reading, but it wasn’t there.

I think that I am about to start it again tomorrow, but this time I will read it on it’s own terms, let it create memories and associations anew, instead of imposing those upon it that exist in a space and time long past.

In other words, I am going to read it again, for the first time.

Because sometimes you can’t go home again, but that only means that you have to make where you are now, home.