Why Go Home?

Sure, North Jersey has 'em. The Diners, that is. But really, they've got nothing on the Greeks and the Turks that run a Diner Mafia down here below the Burlington county line, where 295 and the Turnpike run parallel, where you can't get there from here.

I've been living in San Liberal, CA for seven years now and have just returned to my native land, South Jersey, Salem County, to be exact.

In San Liberal, "SJ" did not mean South Jersey, it meant "San Jose", and what a relief it is to be back where there isn't a Spanish name to be heard for miles... well, not until you hit Malaga on Rte. 47, and have a piss-poor root beer float there. They're probably not even aware of Malaga, Spain. Of course, in Spain they write it Málaga. How right they are.

I've also just returned from Spain where I was dicking off for about seven months. I went there in between San Liberal and South Jersey, and then the dollar tanked and, pues, here I be, starting this blog about coming home, to see if you actually can go home again.

I'm not living at home. I have an apartment in my hometown on a street that has a bad reputation. But I pay $300 a month for two bedrooms, f-in awesome. I've got a full-on study in which to write.

I'm a writer. Working on a novel. Working at a hospital in the meantime, putting that Spanish to use in the ER, translating for patients that have been through the wringer: rapes, heart attacks, demons chasing them, puppies with lasers trying to kill them... I've seen, if not it all, then I've seen a lot.

So why go home?

That's the question I'll be exploring here.

Why, indeed.