Blast to the Past

I'm home. Home as in childhood home. Childhood home as in the town in which I was born and raised. Town as in Boulder, Colorado.

And what a town it is! Wow. The mountains, my invisible friends, are so god blessed beautiful. They put everything in perspective for me; Iowa lets me feel big and important under its low-hanging sky; here, though, there is no illusion of grandeur on my part. Only awe and wonder at what our mother can create. Such glory. Wow.

And then there are the people. The people who knew me when I was half the mass I am now, and smaller! The people I recognized as a part of myself before I knew how to spell the word 'of' (uv?). They have the ability to put me back in places past, to remind me of who I once was. Each returns to me a unique piece of my whole which I lent to them long, long ago. He makes me feel the feeling of my first crush, she makes me feel like the free-wheeling, friend-dealing little monster I was, they make me feel sheltered and awkward and stoned, she makes me feel profound in my utter ignorance, he makes me feel beautiful and wise and loved and in love, he makes me feel like a cynical, arrogant, punk-ass bitch, she makes me feel like the big sister I never was, and the list keeps going on and on. These are my ghosts of Clares past. The value of this trip lies in realizing them, solidifying the apparitions haunting me, remembering the armored suits of feeling I once lived in and reexamining them. It's quite fascinating, really. A valuable life reunion.