We are refugees of our steel cities, and we are awakening to the grim realization that we are far from home. We have lived as if we were lords, conquerors, separate from nature. And for meal we eat the plastic manna of regret. But the shofar-player has sounded his ram’s horn over the hilltop, and the taratantara of this keen awakening brings mutterings of soft hallelujahs.
This is our exodus, and we must move by day and by night – but mostly by night, for we move not in order to be found in a different place…in some land flowing with milk and honey, but to be properly lost and profoundly disoriented – and thus to recognize for the first time that the present is the future we have long sought; the stranger is the messiah we have long awaited; these ordinary moments of melancholy and transient joy are the extraordinary days we invested in – the golden years we polished in our imaginations, the heaven we praised; the plaintive dust that clings to our shoes is the philosopher’s gold we once contrived; and that we were and have always been home.
