"It's Too Late To Stop Now"

Well, I made it to Ozarks and back in one piece, despite my best efforts to fall asleep at the wheel several times there and back. I think next time, I'm going to try to get more than four hours of sleep before I get on the road.

Though I wonder when the next time I go to Ozarks will be. Things have been odd since I graduated. During the first several trips, it felt as though I'd never left. I arrived, I settled back in to my position within the group and went with the flow of things. But ever since about graduation last year, it's been...different. Each visit makes Clarksville feel more and more alien, more distanced from me by time and experience. I'm not saying I'm bigger or better than the people at Ozarks...far from it, in many cases. Rather, my path has diverged now, and is meandering in a different direction. Granted, I'm not exactly sure what direction it is yet, but I feel more like an outsider with each visit.

It doesn't help that people keep leaving. In July, we said goodbye to Chris and JP, who headed to Seattle. James soon left for Fayetteville. Heather left in December. There are about four or five people still at Ozarks for whom I care deeply enough to want to visit, and one of them's in France right now. I saw the others over the weekend.

But for perhaps the first time since I gradutated a year and a half ago, Ozarks didn't feel like home. I've been feeling increasingly like an outsider, but it was always negligible, subtle; this time, it hit me full-force, and it saddened me.

I know we always have to move on and go our own way. I just wanted my way to parallel my nearest and dearest for a bit longer. Every trip back has always been suffused with a slightly wistful, bittersweet tinge, but this time, it was almost overwhelming. Maybe it's the fact that three more of the people I visit are graduating in May. Maybe it's a rememberance of things I should have said, and now may not have the chance to say. Maybe I'm just ridiculously nostalgic. Whatever the cause, I'm rather depressed now, and it feels as though I've reached the penultimate chapter in my relationship with Ozarks. I'll probably only go there another time or two between now and when Clif graduates, if I even get to attend his graduation. I don't know where I'll be this time next year, or even where I'll be this summer. The future is so uncertain, except that I know that Ozarks is rapidly becoming a part of my past, not a part of my present. I don't necessarily want this--like I said, there are still people I care about deeply there and want to see--but I'm not sure how I'll be able to actually see them.

I'm not really articulating these thoughts very well. There are people and things on my mind that I can't really express, proving yet again how form forces certain restraints upon content. Few things are certain right now, except that I'm desperately missing my friends, and it feels like I've suddenly lost a home.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Van Morrison, "Caravan (Live)"