Three Roses

Posted by Joe Deegan (Waterville, ME, United States) on 22 October 2008 in Plant & Nature.

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow I will be 23 years old. It seems like my last birthday— spent with a few friends at Senunas’ Bar and Grill in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania— has nothing at all to do with this one deep in the heart of Europe. I’m tempted to take a backward glance at myself, sitting there on a bar stool in my college town, contentedly smoking an Alec Bradley. But I won’t, for fear of home becoming arbitrary.

I can feel the process beginning already, like a movie set being dismantled one piece at a time. North Main Street, Union Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, North Franklin— they’re all just cardboard bricks and paper sidewalk. The courthouse and the Susquehanna River are poorly written fictions. Being out of my context has left me feeling like the rest of the world surrounds it now, threatens to drown it out. Every place isn’t any more than just someplace. It’s like a line from a song I love: “trading magic for fact, no trade-backs.”

So instead, I intend to put away these thoughts for the next few days, as well as the looming question of where, exactly, my next birthday will find me.

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