Walking along the sidewalk, day old snow crunching under worn boots, and he is crackling with energy. The city around him is filled with wonder and life, and he can feel it pouring into him, each passing second another moment closer to what he remembers being.

It wasn’t so long ago that he was so close to what and who he dreamed he could be: bold and adventurous, cautious but unafraid to step into darkness with only the enbers of his cigarette to light the way. There was a passion in him, one that drove his life, pushed his writing and his music, gave him dreams. And he hadn’t realized that all that had slowly slipped away from him over time, not until he walked the city and felt it pulling him inside. That unique thing that he had held, what he had always felt had defined him, had been bled from his system, drops at a time, so little here and there that he had never known it was happening.

Rear-view mirrors, though, are wonderful things.

A billion stories run through his head, and he doesn’t even bother wishing for pen and paper. Lyrics pour like a flooded river behind his eyes, chord changes filling his ears over the cacophony of the traffic and the people, and no instrument in the world could suffice. And none of it fazes him, because he knows that there is plenty more where that is coming from, and in time, he would capture what he was supposed to capture, pulling the tales and songs from his head like fish from a stream.

Once again, his heart and his head pulse with passion and fire, and he smiles, huge and carefree, feeling a bit like a child in the womb of the world and letting that feeling wash over him, tearing away the old dead skin that had kept his self from the sun for so long.

And he sees her, as beautiful as he had ever imagined, more beautiful than he ever could hope to dream, looking exactly as she was supposed to even though he had never defined her clearly. He feels her fingertips on his forearm, brushing across his skin featherlight, slow moving arcs of a cold fire that light up his nerves. Her voice is everywhere in the city, echoing the sweet, exotic notes of her orchid song, and without even trying, he calls her laughter into his mind, and can’t help but smile, even wider, completely unconcerned with anything in the world.

He’s glad that she’s a part of the city, this city, the city that calls him so loudly that he can’t believe he ever ignored it before. He thinks of finally getting an inherited coat, and finding hundreds of dollars stuffed in the pocket, forgotten and found. Could things get any better for him than finally finding his home? He thinks that maybe they can, and are.

Home is where the heart is, he thinks, and maybe he’s gotten lucky enough to find both. And if not, if it all falls apart, he thinks, at least he knows that he’s back on the right road, and headed toward the dreams he never meant to quit chasing.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
-Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, � 1952