"Talk bad about the...[D-town]...and I'll bust you in the fucking mouth"

There is no way to really return. There are carefully designed arrangements that provoke many of the same emotions of those long-ago nights in which we destroyed and rebuilt ourselves. There are intoxicants and a shared sense of music. There are genuine laughs that originate somewhere intangible and echo out amongst the ancient brick and rusting cars.

There is no collective of human beings I feel more comfortable with then my tribe in Detroit. No band of misfits I could possibly be prouder to fit in with. But of course things change, that was the nature of the beast to begin with: a dozen hard-headed kids in eternal flux. From our numbers we have produced beauty and truth, and we have embraced ugliness and pain. We have suffered violence and addiction and heart-break and watched sunrises with the dread that we may have to one day plan for things. And now we are all sort of on some brink . . .some of us allowing ourselves to get too old to resist, others diving in with the ambition to change everything by will alone. Some of us etching our turmoil and joy on the universe with abandon. All of us understanding, profoundly, that we have only this instant in which to connect with ourselves as we wish we were.

I don't bear any gifts on re-entry. The best thing that I can bring back to this junta is that I have somehow grown, and that I am willing to share the nature of my metamorphosis and enjoy the change in Them as if it were my own.

I love this city. If you've never really been there, there is no way you can agree. It is filthy, and dangerous, and at times ugly, and cold, and sparse and difficult. Weakness here, and not physical weakness but weakness of character, is stomped into the pavement. You live by bravado and cynicism, and the contradiction of compassion and callousness. People in Detroit don't give a shit about their 401(k) or their blood pressure or their credit card debt; because they've all seen the end in black and white and crack cocaine and crumbling brick and the panic inherent in gunfire and old black women pleading to you, some stranger, for their life. Where I live now is like an amusement park compared to my spiritual home. Here in Boise we pretend that everyone has a decent job and that God Blesses America and that our fellow-man will always play by the rules. The D is the jungle; and we're all warriors in our own way, and we know that every single second is lived on borrowed time, and we know that if something is worth obtaining in life, it is worth dying for.