Grass: Pt. 2

When I returned, they were cordial enough and less well-armed.
"Do you have any pot?"
"I do.  I brought some with me."
We broke out my bubbler and my baggie.
"Is this Kind bud?"  They asked.  "And why has your pipe's color not filled in yet?"
"I'm not sure and I just got it."
"I told you we got another head." said Mitch to Jay.
I kept up this charade all summer.
I was by no means poor.  I drove a 2 year old Chevy Prism that I had gotten a really good deal on.  They said I should park behind the house instead of in the front with the neighbors and guests but I never did.  Maybe I liked the barefoot walk down the gravel driveway.  Or maybe I just knew better than to get too comfortable.
Its sad to think about when you're wrong.  At this time I always used to say nothing matters because we are only small bits of life and that ultimately what we said or did is not important considering how vast the universe's expanses of time and space are.  Now I can easily say everything matters.  These small bits of life are all we know and are.  The universe isn't so vast when you think about it.  I've never been anywhere but here.
I missed July 4th as I was home for the weekend.  Nonetheless, the illegal firework display was still impressive.  This is my most cherished.  This is why I'm alive.  To appreciate this beauty.
The lights, the chirping of innumerable unseen insects, the companionship of this moment.  If it doesn't matter then why is it still so vivid?
My housemates always talked strategies for playing the Virgina State Lottery.  One person they knew had won by picking the same number repeatedly.  But in reality, these people would never escape this place.  Mowing lawns, repairing pianos, getting high.  What else?
I never understood this.  I was enamored with the perfumed air and the mist rising from the field during the magic hours when it is all but dark.
To them I represented a youthful entertainment.  A kind of manic energy to break the monotony.  I write all this now, a decade older so as not to forget and try again to recapture that energy.
When the time comes, do any of the memories, forgotten or not, make any difference?  Does the sound of a banjo outside my open window at night still ring in my ears?  Yes.
The last night I was there, I asked them "Is this house haunted?"
"Yes."
"By who?"
"By the people that lived and died here before us."
I wonder if they still live there and why.  I saw Kate some months later in the Fall.  She had left too and wouldn't say why.  I could drive out, try to find this ghost house again.  Would it still be there?  Yes and no."
Its funny what the mind picks and chooses to keep.