[Spoken]
It was a beautiful fall November evening, it was going to writing in my book, and I drove back to my neighborhood where I grew up, looking for uh - I still don't have a fucking clue. But uh, all I know is the streets were dead empty and the whole place looked like it'd been locked down since 1955. My corner church was silent and unchanged, no weddings, no funerals, I, rolled slowly another 50 yards up my block to visit my great tree and it was gone. It'd been cut to the street since the last time that I had drove through. So I got out of the car and I looked down, and there was a square of musty earth that held the remaining snakes of its roots on the edge of the parking lot. So I reached down, I picked up a handful of dirt and I just kinda ran it through my hands, and my heart sank like, like a kid who suffered from irretrievable loss, ya know, like, like some, some piece of me was gone. Um, I don't know I guess I, it was just it had been there long before I was, I assumed it would be there long after I was gone, and I liked that. It, it felt eternal. It was at the, it was at center of our street and it had rooted our neighborhood for so long. So I sat there for awhile just cursin' the county and listenin' to the sounds of the evening come on and I looked again and I realized it was gone but some, some essential piece of it was still there, the air and the space above its roots. I could still feel life, and soul, and the light, my childhood friend there. It's just that its leaves, its branches, and its massive trunk were now outlined, shot through by evening stars and sky. But my great tree's life couldn't be ended or erased so easily, from this place because it's history. And history matters. Its imprint was too great, it was too old, and it was too strong, it had been there too long, to be done away with so easily. It had stood witness to everything that had happened on these small streets beneath its arms. All the joy, and all the heartbreak, and all the life. And when we live amongst ghosts, always trying to reach us, from that shadow world, and they're with us every step of the way. My dead father's still with me every day and I miss him and if I had a wish, oh man I - I wish he could've been here to see this. But I visit with him every night, little bit, that's a grace-filled thing. And Clarence, I get to, I get to see him be with Clarence a little bit every night. And Danny, Walter, and Bart, my own family, so many of them gone from these houses that are now filled by strangers but the...