Really a bit unreal..

The smell of late is so wonderful. I call it the smell, but it's more like a feeling. A memory that's disconnected from my brain and pervades my entired being. Floating freely from cell to cell syncronously to my elation. I don't understand it, but I get that feeling now and again, regardless of the circumstances and I feel a bit disconnected from myself.

And that's how I've been feeling. Everything at once feeling a little bit unreal, even as I take pleasure in all of it. I have a wife.. a remarkably wonderful wife. A wife who I love more than my own life. She holds our child.. who is a mystery and wonder to me. A child I've yet to meet and even still feel connected with. I have a cat.. something that I never thought I would be able to do. I love cats, but the cat is really my wife's companion when I must be away.

And I'm again leaving the place I grew up. I've done it before, and felt quite alien. I know that you think I'm talking about my last visit to Australia, but I'm not. I actually feel quite at home there. No, I'm talking about when my family chose to leave after 14 years at the same house in Newton, for a bigger place outside of a town called halstead.. only 8 short miles away.

It might as well have been a new continent. One where I was revered.. held in much higher regard. And disconnected. It wasn't long before I made new friends, but they didn't know me. So I became mysterious, even as I held nothing back about myself.. these strangers still knew nothing of me. How I grew up, played in the alley with the neighbor kids. Picked a fight with a boy half my size and lost. They didn't know that I liked climbing trees or why. They didn't care to call me up to see if they could meet me halfway and go exploring. They had thier own lives, and I was only a small part of that. The new kid.

The place was big. Lots of me time. No more bullies. Lots of respect.
I played my horn alot in the fields. I think my best friend was my dog. He was the most brilliant dog anyone could hope for. He would listen to me and know just how to respond. He would welcome me home every day. I didn't appreciate him nearly enough. It always seems that way. Those in our life who are the most reliable, consistent, meaningful ingredients to a well lived life.. those are the ones that are only secretly revered. Those who get no notice or gratitude.. those are the people who bless us all. And oh what a feeling when they finally discover thier role. Tears don't describe the feelings well enough. They are as vague as they are moving.

So now I'm doing it again. I'm going farther away.. and yet I feel I already am. I feel like I left home a long time ago, and I'm just saying a long goodbye to the family I love so much. I hope my new family embraces me. I don't expect my own to be replaced.. by no means can anyone take thier place. They're the only ones left who know the Len and Yen of my youth. A priceless archive of memories from one who cannot remember without member to recant his-story. Though I recognize my good fortune to own the gift of the present, I know it will too[,] soon be past.

English is a beautiful bastard language, isn't it?
-len