I was away for 17 years, if I’m counting correctly. I never intended to go back. But the more I read about “place” and “sense of place,” and the more I thought about it, the more I began to enjoy the idea of returning. If all the best & brightest young people leave a place, what kind of doom does it spell for it? The diaspora of our young artists & thinkers leave behind a kind of cultural poverty in rural America, one that matches the economic poverty. I guess you can say I never really got south Georgia out of my bones, & finally I realized that, and I went home. No place I’ve ever lived really felt like home to me.
