Walking past a run-down park, you watch a group of teenage boys playing football. You stop and sit.
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Finally, you walk into the place that you have waited to see come together for what seemed to be an eternity. You close your eyes, breathe in, breathe out, open your eyes, and immediately know you’re home… Finally, it is game day and you’re located in the happiest place on the planet, Doak Campbell Stadium.
You miss this. The college days. This place-- where you are RIGHT NOW-- is so beautiful, yet you find yourself wanting to leave it day after day. You want to stay with him, but don't know how much more you can take. Someday you hope this place will feel like home...BECOME home. Your current home (away from Costa Rica), will become the foreign place. Is that the goal?
One of your favorite pictures from college pops into your head.
You reminisce about this day.....the day you both shared your first kiss.....a game day!
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Suddenly a ball whizzes over your head wwwzzz. You look down at your watch; 20 minutes have passed. The boys stare at you-- wanting you to leave. You keep walking down the street-------->>, but pause when you see a Seminole baseball cap moving through the crowd...? You long for it to be someone from home, that soon-to-be foreign place.
The transitions in this post work very well to transport the reader from Costa Rica to FSU. The flashback plays with time in a way that makes it unclear whether the Costa Rican part is in the future or the present, and whether the FSU part is in the past or the present. This aspect goes along with the theme of "home" - time and place play big roles in defining what or where is home.
ReplyDeleteThe video of the Seminole football game creates a powerful sense of college pride with the chanting of thousands of people. This sense of pride is toned down by the melancholy of the author over their homesickness; this duality is expressed beautifully. The picture also reflects that experience; there are people embracing, prepared for a football game, but the angle is from behind and no faces or identities can be seen. It makes the viewer feel both part of the group and separated from it - which seems to be the author's feelings about Costa Rica and Tallahassee.
The author plays with the format of the text in a way that brings the scenes they write about to life. The onomotopeia of "wwzzz" helps to visualize the pickup game. The "pause " forces the reader to slow down their reading - to pause, if you will. "Walking down the street-------->>" gives a visual of the act that the phrase describes. The emphasis on "RIGHT NOW" and "BECOME" reflects the author's frustration with their homesickness; the words become important and immediate, giving the author's desires more impact.
One thing I would change about this post would be to clarify where the author feels at "home" - Costa Rica or Tallahassee? I interpreted Tallahassee to be their home, but there's a bit of a shadow hanging over that interpretation that could be cleared up with some location specifics.