Groundness

No one knew where the turnings would take him. Not above, not below, though maybe just to that point where sinking, sputtering, the world would spin and ebb and flow and he'd travel just that like--half in and half out, bobbing along in the currents circling a full earth. Many were like that, adventures that is, like that full circle, or full Y, drifting that way then rounding back and moving off again to return years later to familiar waters, old haunts, packed ground trod by the footfalls of a million others and yet beneath it all still recognizing his own faded impressions upon the soft ground.

It's hard to make yourself return. It's hard to retrace and recover ground you thought you'd never lose. What is it that makes us yearn for the old patterns of our thoughts, the ruts we thought we had finally pressed on and over, the ones where we had worked up the courage to climb out of the trench and force our feet over contested ground, the bullets whizzing and popping over our heads. How do we make ourselves look back down that hill once gained and see the bodies we left behind, the ones we said we'd never leave, even if we had to drag them over miles of enemy ground? Sometimes we look back and see our own body lying there and are glad it died, glad it left itself among the thousands of others who also fell on that hill, on that battle ground. Glad we could let our souls leave the once occupied shell that we thought we could never leave, never escape.

Pushing on made him feel better. Better but with that tinge that always starts in the bottom of the gut and works its way to the edges of temples, raising microscopic hairs like the planting of a flag on newly captured ground. Missing, if for nothing else, familiarity.