Our Town

It is... jarring to return here.

It is currently around midnight my time, on a humid and frankly uncomfortable summer night. And I'm sure any of us from the US know what a tumultuous time it has been these past six years. I feel for context, it is important I say that I work at a drugstore, and have since late in '17. So as this pestilence blanketed over us, I was in a strange position - not the front lines per se, but adjacent. I am endlessly grateful I have not contracted covid, and tha my family has been spared, but it still lingers, Damocles above our weary necks. Perhaps most absurd of all about the situation is how it now remains a footnote, a blip, a background hum beneath the bombast of modern politics. We stand horrendously dvided, furious, and exhausted.

Exhausted, we are EXHAUSTED. Drained, the color gone, the blossoms long since wilted and whithered. I will not go into the particulars, as I'm sure we all know the major woes, and frankly I'm resistant to share much more of my personal flapping. But here we are. I joined this website, this sinking Galapagos on the edge of the internet as a little middle school goblin. What were you all, younger, older? When you came here for sanctuary, did you know how ill-fated this obscure novelty would be? Or were you like me, foolishly hopeful, thinking maybe, somehow, we could continue this website into perpetuity, find a tributary of new users to keep this land alive? I planted endless crops on this salted soil where nothing could truly thrive, and was proud of the noxious sprouts that I brought forth.

Logging in was an absurd experience. My custom background, only visible on my end, is the same shade of orange I used for everything in middle school. The warmth of my adolescence. The main icon in the upper-left, however, is gone. I search for words to say and all that stares back is "Sorry. This image is currently unavailable." Perhaps I should know, and perhaps buried deep I do know what was there. Perhaps I came here for some scrap of that innocence or nostalgia, I truly cannot say. But it lingers, unchanging, unmoving. A warp in the illusion, enough to snap me from the trance. Bruised, violet and coarse. Even the seeming stability of the digital era, it too must degrade.

And so here I am. A twenty five - soon to be twenty six - year old man. Out of high school, out of college, seeking steady ground in an endless maelstrom.

How old are you? Twenty, thirty, forty or more? This is rhetorical of course, I'd rather not boil the kettle further. I rather like the illusion, putting the same young faces to you all I did in the golden days. This play area is still standing, and I shouldn't be surprised to see these familiar structures. The words we etched beneath the plastic slides remain, weathered scars of our silly titillation. I feel it's only natural to mourn that weeds have overtaken the swings, that the chains have rusted and the grass has not seen tending in years. But even as these weeds scratch my fingers I can feel the polymer seats familiar roughness, and hear the familiar songbirds of my youth. Is it absurdist to mourn this heap where we once played? I can't read my old writing here for more than a line or two, I hate my wimpy art of the day. I cannot tell if I crave a joyful refuge or a void in which to scream. I cannot put words to what I want, I simply desire some vaguely-comfortable mass.

I name this page for a folk song I remember from my youth, and have a far greater admiration for now. If as with so many things this link goes stale, the song is "Our Town" by Iris DeMent. The song is a simple, heart-wrenching ballad detailing an old woman's life, written as a metaphor for the death of the American small town. And I never lived in a small town, I've been blessed enough to live in suburbs since I can remember. Despite that, just a few short months ago I lay in bed at 3AM, listening to this track on constant repeat, crying to myself. Not for this website, not for the early internet, not for my childhood home, all things I missed. I cannot say what truly crushed me. But it felt the only fitting option for this self-fellating purple prose I now pin upon the rust-addled gates to our former playground.

I truly don't know what lead to my arrival here, home again after 15 years, gazing upon the dirt imprints our sneakers left all those years ago. Our lives tangled, and then we part. It's the way of the world, it's no special tragedy. It's a perfectly normal occurance.

The kids are all grown up. Fuck it all.

- Zoo977