So he was a man that had felt the fissures and movings of the earth at an early age:
His mother sold him at 1 years old.
His adopted father abandoned him for the war.His step mother beat his ass with her liquor bottles.
He moved, again and again and again, leaving behind friends and schools and houses and toys and bikes and trees and deserts, taking only books.
Only books.
Always books.
His hair, always white grew darker.
And eventually whiter again.
He grew suspicious yet Zen like, going with the flow while he urgently scouted the banks for a helpful branch.
What was the river and what was the shore? Would the earth ever stop eroding under his feet?
He traveled, he married, he unmarried. He married again. He fathered children.
He saw his beloved grandparents die; also his father, his evil step-mother, his birth mother, his son.
He travels the world and he collects earth from different places.
What is he searching for?
A drawer is full of these small jars filled with different amounts of dirt from Egypt, from Ireland, from Turkey, from Arizona.
Sometimes he might empty one of the neatly labeled jars onto the wooden kitchen table. He gently stirs it around forming mandalas and other designs. He thinks about where it is from and he tastes it.
It tastes like dirt.
happy father's day to my beloved father,
Wiley Hampton
