Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go backwards in time- not just to re-live your own past, or to witness this or that historic event or era. But on a more personal level, to go back to the house you grew up in, not only before you were born, but before the house itself even existed. Before all your memories or your neighborhood, with both it's joys you experienced growing up there, as well as the frustrations, and all the sadness, and the bittersweet experience of seeing the it fade and change. I most likely won't be seeing that place very many more times. It hasn't been "Home," really, in decades, even though in dreams, it still is, and I can't help but think of it that way.
But go back a hundred years. I am standing on a grassy hillside. Below me, tucked in a small valley (which is not recognizable) is a small farmhouse and I can see the curve of a dirt road beyond that. That is the only sign of human habitation I can see though. There are no recognizable landmarks. The hill above me with the water tank is covered with brush and scrub but no sign of the Australian trees that wouldn't be planted there until the 1950's, when they first punched the road in and terraced off a big section of the hill. I could be standing where my parents house is, but I cannot tell, since that part of the subdivision wouldn't be built until 1970- 45 years from where I stand. And again, when that happens, the terrain would be dramatically re-sculpted, re-shaped by huge earth movers, and the valley below me unnaturally flattened out, and the cut and filled hillsides made steeper as the newly created roads and flattened lots gash through them.
But now, there are only bare, wild hills, inter-spaced by groves of old-growth coastal live oaks. I can somewhat determine where I am by the position of these trees, covering the slopes of the hills. Yeah, this is probably the spot, or close to it anyway. Hard to tell though. The flat area where the two streets intersect is simply not there, it's just one big gradual rolling hill slope. I climb up towards a small saddle, traversing a low, gentle ridgeline, and wander into the trees. There, finally, I see it- the old, sprawling Grandmother Tree, that old spreading oak, covering nearly a half acre, ageless and unchanging. Yes, I know this spot. Generations of kids built platforms and forts on the branches of this tree, and under it. They haven't done so yet, but perhaps the traces of the native Americans who camped under it, before the settlers, can still be found. I come across some deer, grazing peacefully nearby, where a small spring emerges from the hillside. They do not see me. I hear rustling in the distance and spot a coyote, perhaps stalking the deer. Quail dart into the brush, a large redtail hawk soars overhead. I sigh, a ghost on the wind, a ghost from the future drifting through the distant past, invisible and formless, yet feeling like one with the earth. There are no houses, no roads, no people, save the small farmhouse I spotted back down in the valley somewhere behind me. I half wonder who lives there, and what they would think of the future, when their homesite becomes a vast bulldozer excavation site, and later, an unnaturally flat valley with houses looking down on it.
A landscape that is perfect, nearly untouched, wild, primitive. Long before progress, before the peace, turmoil, joys and sadness that came to be when my house- Mom's house- and someone else's house not too long from now- stood there.
I didn't want to make this post whiny or cringe. But... Today I began to envision just letting go of my troubles, and letting my Domme take control. Let Her be the focus of my energy, wants, fears, and desires. Just surrender it all, mind and body, all to Her. Let Her spank me, abuse me, degrade me, and let Her whip all my cares out of me, so there would only be Her. But that's not very constructive, is it. I do not know any female friends who are close enough or intimate enough to take this responsibility. And if I did- lets face it, they wouldn't be close or intimate anymore, as they would probably dump me like a hot potato. Instead, I'll go back to that place in my mind, a hundred years ago, enjoying the warm, grassy Bay Area hills, with their shady spreading oaks, untouched by the greed of developers, or the ambitions, joys, or sorrows of man.