Childhood: No one told me I had a choice to like where I was or not. Live in the moment from big city to small town to overseas and back–but family is the center.
Family and friends, returning to the center.
Adolescence: We gotta get outta this place! Escape from the suburbs, break out of the family cocoon, start a real life.
Young adult: Dive into where the conflict is, where change must come, in the heart of the beast. Work, study, work, proud to be close to the ground in every city neighborhood. Dance. Suburbs are dead to me.
Settling down: Neighborhoods are the center. Travel into heart of the city less, travel into the countryside more. Bird watch, preserve urban creek.
Midlife changes: Move to small town, enjoy outdoors and less traffic. Constructive member of society. Travel more.
Retirement: City centers interesting but too much concrete, too crowded, world ecological overshoot. Travel for reunions of family and friends, returning to the center. Everything fundamentally fragile, including me.
Khati Hendry
Thanx Khati for your always thoughtful and touching take on the prompt.
We’ve followed you around the globe it seems!
We’re all fragile, aren’t we wherever we go!
As Elvis sang, “Home is where the heart is”.
This is quite an insightful and quick overview of a life trajectory: one that I find rings true for me. It would be fun to find a popular tune (as you offered in your comment) for each section of the writing. I guess you did already offer, “we gotta get outa this place,” which was a song by the Animals. For the child, maybe we could begin with, (at least for your adventurous family), “Come Fly with me.” With lyrics such as, “Come fly with me, let’s float down to Peru/ In llama-land there’s a one man band and he’ll toot his flute for you
Come on fly with me, let’s take off in the blue…”
Thanks Dale. It’s always second nature for me to identify almost anything with a popular song–but I do find that what I think is popular and well-known becomes increasingly obscure “as time goes by”.
Do we actually remember how amazing was his voice!
Search You Tube for Elvis’ last performance, UNCHAINED MELODY.
I found a 1977 version from Rapid City–I didn’t realize he played piano! He was also really f***ked up, but pulled out a strong performance anyway. They have an Elvis festival every year in Penticton that is quite the event–I went once and all good fun.
Nor did I know or remember that he played piano. He was quite sick at the time obviously, but I think that performance of Unchained Melody was so moving and masterful!
He had talent!