The magical return to home is never to be underestimated! Suddenly all that insinuates our complicated entirety is blended together uniformly. No doubt we confound ourselves that enough of the wallpaper persists; that our erstwhile estrangement from family and friends is rejuvenated by unforeseen elemental features. Home sweet home is a quixotic yet realistic opiate.

In the distance – directly in the line of sight from my desk in the drawing room over the balcony to the verdant fields beyond – is nestled among the towering undergrowth a dilapidated tiny barn, its windows shattered and empty, its stained roof tilted out of shape, it isolation conspicuous, its struggle for survival manifest. Yet in spite of its equivocation and imbalance it sustains a reminder of times more pacific, perhaps not unlike the myth of familial sociability which once distinguished it. Surrounding the mournful image are Nature’s creeping ostentations of weeds, bushes and trees which will no doubt one day surmount and consume the once fertile narrative beneath it all.

Illustrative of the myriad of circumstances and happenstances which decorate our unwitting engagement with life is the wide and flowing Mississippi River that leisurely drifts by, gently touching the shoreline, pronouncing its singularity from the burgeoning meadows by the contradiction of variances of yellow, green and blue.