Notes from the small pond: Away

When you’re away, the things you thought you’d do but didn’t before you left seem monumentally failed because, in truth, you could’a Got-R-Done, and you didn’t because you didn’t and you make a thousand excuses for not performing and you erase 999 of them and admit that your only excuse is You and the lack of You and that feeds the diminution of your self-esteem and you recognize the bumper sticker on a passing ‘81 gray-striped, black Mustang, saying: “I hate days when I have to do stuff and see people,” and you giggle and sip your latte and then realize that it’s you that feels that way, along with the losers and interlopers and prison occupants, all with their philosophies and compositions, Mendelssohn and Rimbaud and Dostoyevsky (for starters).

And you shove down your throat the paper and the news and the Truth and the Everything that doesn’t line up with your away-ness when you’re not there because the fantasy is that if you Were There, there’d be Something There that could’ve made the difference between what is, what is becoming, and what will ever be.

And then you’re still not home.

But the Devil is. Lying, stealing, crouching and killing.

And you’re out dancing while your mom is home dying. You’re out working while your wife is home working harder. You’re out thinking about home while your kids are home thinking about you.

Away is away.

Here isn’t.

Parnell Thill is a Cloquet-based author and marketing executive. Winner of a Minnesota Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest “Columnist of the Year” award in 2017, his book, “Killing the Devil and Other Excellent Tricks,” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and local booksellers.