slow down where it hurts

same place, different writer

I’m writing this from Rockvale Writers Colony, though by the time you’re reading it, I’ll be home. I sat on this porch two years ago and tried to find the pulse of my voice after losing it. Now I’m here again, in the same chair, not at all the same writer. How does that saying go? You never step in the same river twice. I am back again but not the same, and the work is not the same either.

Nothing heals me like a solo road trip on rural highways, and last Monday’s drive felt like coming home again even though I was driving away from it. Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” came on from my shuffled playlist just as I crossed the Tennessee River with mountains in the distance, and it was a moment so perfect I smiled wide in the car all alone and felt some spark I don’t want to forget. This place is just as beautiful as the last time I left it. I’m sitting on 67 acres of rolling farmland in middle Tennessee in a nineteenth century farmhouse with pre Civil War hand-hewn wooden beams, original flo…