Friday, October 31, 2003
New Friends and New Old Friends / Home and Away
One of our day's most popular writers, wrote (approximately) that you never make friends again like you did when you were 13. He's right about so many things and people (including my wife) rush to buy and read every word he writes but I think Steven King is wrong; that new friendships can be formed at age 63 as well.
While I'm disagreeing with famous authors, I'd like to tell Thomas Wolf that you can go home again. (In this case, my disagreement is with the public perception of the meaning of his title.) The character in his novel, You Can't Go Home Again, was an author who wrote about his home town in a way that enraged the citizens (sometimes mistakenly). Wolfe (most of his work is about himself) was poorly received back in his home town, and most of the book is about traveling elsewhere because he feels he can't go home again. The title became a catch phrase and it is time to understand his book is about not going rather than going home.
You can go home again, I say. Some of the people you reacquaint yourself with will be gracious, some will be fun, all will be interesting. You can become friends with your old buddies and some folks you knew slightly and you can make new friends even at 63. I won't go as far as Tom Morgan went in his poem collected in Not of Our Time (ISBN: 0-9623094-0-0) but I'll end this with a quote from it:
You Must Go Home Again
You not only can
You must go home again
Retracing the steps
To where a life began
This trace of life
Is the proper synthesis
For how it all must end...
comments:
Wouldn't it be a sad thing if we couldn't go back home?
I don't believe I ever left it for I carried it in my heart as a lot of us do. There's something about "home". It may change in many ways but in our minds eye it's still the same
It's like the old friend we haven't seen in years, there's changes in their appearance but inside they're the same friend we once held dear and just as dear are the new friends we make along our later years.
Enjoy reading your thoughts and feelings
from dhunley210 - 11/13/03 6:34 AM
While I'm disagreeing with famous authors, I'd like to tell Thomas Wolf that you can go home again. (In this case, my disagreement is with the public perception of the meaning of his title.) The character in his novel, You Can't Go Home Again, was an author who wrote about his home town in a way that enraged the citizens (sometimes mistakenly). Wolfe (most of his work is about himself) was poorly received back in his home town, and most of the book is about traveling elsewhere because he feels he can't go home again. The title became a catch phrase and it is time to understand his book is about not going rather than going home.
You can go home again, I say. Some of the people you reacquaint yourself with will be gracious, some will be fun, all will be interesting. You can become friends with your old buddies and some folks you knew slightly and you can make new friends even at 63. I won't go as far as Tom Morgan went in his poem collected in Not of Our Time (ISBN: 0-9623094-0-0) but I'll end this with a quote from it:
You Must Go Home Again
You not only can
You must go home again
Retracing the steps
To where a life began
This trace of life
Is the proper synthesis
For how it all must end...
comments:
Wouldn't it be a sad thing if we couldn't go back home?
I don't believe I ever left it for I carried it in my heart as a lot of us do. There's something about "home". It may change in many ways but in our minds eye it's still the same
It's like the old friend we haven't seen in years, there's changes in their appearance but inside they're the same friend we once held dear and just as dear are the new friends we make along our later years.
Enjoy reading your thoughts and feelings
from dhunley210 - 11/13/03 6:34 AM
