I could break free from the
Wood of a coffin
If I need
But nothin’s hard as
Gettin’ free from places
I’ve already been

— Jakob Dylan (The Wallflowers), “I’ve Been Delivered”

It doesn’t take much – a song, a name in a headline, a smell – it all takes me back to different places, different times, different parts of the winding journey around the planet that brought me to where I am and made me who I am. As free as that was, the links to the past are their own chains, the places you’ve been forever opening eyes to things you can never be blind to again.

Nothing’s harder than getting free of places you’ve already been, and the dust off the worn boots settles on myriad versions of Plato’s Cave.  A movie to me, they’re snapshots to others who haven’t walked my path. In being free of caves, you end up sitting around waiting to see who makes it out.

If they ever wanted to, if even they could.