Home

I recently returned from a short vacation in Las Vegas. I had a good time, but what I enjoyed probably most of all was returning home to Roanoke. This was a surprise to me, a very pleasant surprise.

For years I have toyed with the idea of moving somewhere else, most likely out west. I've been traveling since I was a child and I've always loved California and Nevada. They are beautiful states with so much to see and do. Often I hear the call of the Pacific and I long to return to those beaches. I love the feeling of walking up and down the shore at Pebble Beach, my feet sinking into the mass of smooth stones. Every step is like a foot massage. The waves come in and when they pull back the stones clatter softly together. I miss driving up into the Sierra Nevada mountains and seeing all the different biomes. Deciduous trees and beautiful green clearings give way to conifer forests and high desert. There are natural hot springs in the desert and beautiful lakes cupped in the hands of the mountains. I love it out west, I always have.

My love of the west is further fueled by how much it contrasts with what I'm used to. I grew up in a small rural area in southwest Virginia and a lot of the people here have not been very far out of the state, if they've been out at all. From the people who have lived here their whole lives I get the sense that they are either not aware of what it's like outside of their small community or they simply do not care. When I've talked about moving out west some people have wondered why. Why move so far away? What's the point of going out there? Much of my motivation to move west comes from my aversion to the closed mindedness of the general population here. Living in Rocky Mount felt like reverting to the mentality of the 1950's. People are openly racist and homophobic. The most important things to the community appear to be high school football, southern baptist or holiness churches, and gossiping about the personal lives of everyone in town. When I point this out I'm often told that people are the same everywhere, moving out west won't get me away from shitty people.

I know that is not true. From traveling to different places I've seen just how different they can be. The mentality in San Francisco is very different from the mentality in Chicago. People in Alaska have a noticeably different culture from people in Florida. To say that people are the same everywhere is a very broad generalization. Surely there are shitty people to be found in all 50 states and there will be prejudice wherever you go, but that does not take away from the incredible variation in communities around the country. I became enamored with the idea of moving out west and immersing myself in a culture that was more open-minded, more progressive, and, as far as I could tell, happier.

People in Rocky Mount are miserable. I don't know what the reason is. It's probably a confluence of factors. What I do know is that the average person in Rocky Mount is unhappy with their life and they do not want anyone else to be happy either. They revel in the failure and tragedy of others. There is a morbid obsession with watching the lives of others fall apart. I can remember being a child and going over to the house of my step-dad's parents. They owned a police scanner and it was always on. They would be watching television or eating dinner and all the while the scanner would be crackling and beeping, the electronically distorted voices of police officers constantly reporting things from the mundane to the criminal. These people liked to know immediately when something happened in the community. Often times they would hear on the police scanner about a car accident and they would drive to the site of the wreck to see what had happened. As a child I didn't have a point of reference to compare this against. To me, this is just what people did. As I got older I realized how utterly bizarre it is to go and see a car accident as if it were some kind of attraction.

I've often felt completely out of place here. Though I've lived in this area all my life, I was raised by my mother who is an Italian from New York. She would tell me all these wonderful stories about living in the city, about how different things were. Some of it had to do with the time period (the 50's and 60's), but most of it was geographical. I'm sure that life in Rocky Mount in the 50's and 60's was vastly different from life in New York City during the same years. My mother taught me that just because a lot of people share the same ideas, that doesn't make them correct. I was shown from an early age that prejudice and bigotry are horrible things and the racism that people in Rocky Mount are so comfortable with is deplorable. In addition to the values she instilled in me and my siblings, we also reaped the benefits of my father's job with United Airlines. My parents were divorced when I was very young, but my dad would come and visit regularly and take us on vacations every summer. His flight privileges allowed us to fly for very little money. We went to New Zealand, Hawaii, Alaska, California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Florida. We flew to big cities and drove out to even larger deserts. I was amazed by the ancient redwood trees of California and the active lava flows of Hawaii. Traveling like that from such an early age (I was 5 years old when we flew to Hawaii) was a very formative experience for me. My childhood and adolescence were enriched beyond measure by those experiences. I saw that this little pocket of land tucked away against the Appalachians was extremely sheltered and closed off from the rest of the world. It was as if there were an invisible barrier along the border of Franklin County and these people were superstitiously afraid to cross it.

When I moved out of my mom's house I found a little place in Rocky Mount with a roommate, a friend of mine. We stayed there briefly and then moved a little further north to Boones Mill. We were right next to the interstate and halfway between Rocky Mount and Roanoke. We were close to our families but could go to the city without having to drive very far. I liked it more than living in Rocky Mount, but I still thought often about moving away. Eventually I got my own apartment in Roanoke and lived there for a couple years. It was nice living completely on my own, yet I still wrestled with the idea of moving out west. I could never make up my mind and eventually I moved into a beautiful house in Roanoke with four other friends. I love our house, I love living there, but still there was a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that I need to move out west while I still can.

Over the years I've thought a lot about why I want to move out west. The core of the attraction is the cultural differences. People seem more accepting out there, more open-minded. They don't seem to be as hung up on racial division or issues of sexuality. I often think that if I moved out west I could meet so many new and interesting people. I also imagine there would be so much to do, so much to see. There are activities I could pursue and communities I could be a part of. I could steep myself in the culture of the area and make connections with artists, writers, and free-thinkers. I thought that if I moved out west all these possibilities would be open to me.

Slowly a realization began to dawn within me. I realized that I was thinking about all the things I could do out west, but I had not thought about the fact that I hadn't even tried to do those things here in Roanoke. I came to understand that these things were not so much failures of the area, they were my failures. For a long time I had equated Roanoke with Rocky Mount. I had made the same mistake that I condemned in others. I had assumed that people in Roanoke were the same as people in Rocky Mount, that there wasn't any major difference and that this area was just as full of ignorance and intolerance as my home town. I must admit that I felt pretty stupid for completely missing this obvious mistake. I began to wonder just how much I had been depriving myself because of my own assumptions.

After living here for a few years I've learned that Roanoke is actually a pretty diverse place. There is a somewhat sizable geek community here and opportunities to play games like Magic the Gathering or even tabletop RPG's with other gamers. There are a lot of artists and crafty people doing all sorts of interesting projects. Also, Roanoke is a very open minded place. It is surprisingly gay-friendly and there is a very large and comfortable gay community here. The people are fairly relaxed and no one is in a rush to get anywhere, everything seems to move at a comfortably slow pace. This city actually has a lot of the things that I want, but I have not made a concerted effort to participate in and enjoy these amenities.

When our plane touched down at Roanoke Regional Airport and I stepped down onto the runway I was greeted by the cool moist air of a spring night in Virginia. We walked into the small airport and there weren't very many people inside, most of them were from the plane we were just on. As I waited for my suitcase on the luggage belt people smiled at each other and no one seemed ill at ease. I walked outside and even though the bright light of the Roanoke Star on top of Mill Mountain was hidden behind a layer of clouds, I smiled just knowing it was there. And I smiled because I realized that I was home.

Home.

This place is home to me now and that is a surprising feeling. I've spent so much time thinking of Virginia as just the place I was born, a temporary waiting room for my life. I kept thinking that one day soon I was going to pack up my belongings and drive out west to start a new life with new people and new experiences. Now I'm the one asking myself the question that others had asked me when I talked about moving: why? I have built some wonderful relationships here with some really incredible people. I can see my family pretty much any time I want to. There are things to do and new sights to see. There is a community of artists, writers, and gamers. This place has everything I need. What's more, I like it here. I like pulling into my driveway at night and seeing a small family of deer in my yard, watching me from a short distance away. I like the changing seasons and the rolling hills. I love the smell of the spring air and the sound of cicadas in the summer. I love the bright fire of the autumn leaves and the dark gray solemnity of winter. I am now happy to say that Roanoke is my home.

I may move somewhere else some day, but if I do it will not be because I do not like it here. I no longer feel the need to escape this place because I no longer feel trapped here. So much of our happiness is derived from how we view our world. I now see that I had painted my world in dark tones that it didn't deserve. I'm putting that way of thinking aside now and I'm looking forward to enjoying everything this city has to offer.

The Secret Doorway

There is a secret doorway
Under lock and key
That reveals itself in the midnight hour
But only ever to me

I pass through unnoticed
And disappear completely
For a few sweet hours
That stretch into eternity

Beyond that arcane portal
A universe of my own
Unlike the day-lit world
This one feels like home

Through its hidden valleys
Behind its many doors
Up the secret stairway
Down to the ocean floor

This world is my own essence
It knows me through and through
It harbors and it heals me
It cuts straight to the true

So far beyond the shores
Of the Earth so mundane
Free from doubt or worry
Free from strife or pain

No distance could you travel
Nor stone overturn
To find this hidden garden
Where nightly I return

It is there that I may flourish
And bloom eternally
I lay down all my burdens
I know serenity

But when the clock winds down
And brings about the day
To the flesh am I returned
The passage fades away

Throughout the sun-baked toil
Of empty drudgery
Many hours spent in longing
For the turning of that key