What do you do?

[phantasm]

This place, it's not the same as I used to know

It was one thing when I was a child; now that I'm an adult it's become something a little bit more

Perhaps better, somewhat...

The action has heated up, perhaps two or three degrees Fahrenheit

This place is emanating a little light

But nowhere near enough, by my estimation

Confined to a small bright spot in the center

The light isn't like a light bulb,

it's a coherent laser beam pointing up at the sky

There's not much it's affecting around it

Yeah, we have more than when I was a little kid

But even what little was there at that time in my life,

my family scarcely ever participated in it. It was unimportant

to my parents.

The arts can be a beautiful thing. If you're looking.

Yeah, maybe this place has changed for the better since I hit adulthood........

What do you do with a heart that was formed in a place with more rust belt industry than with beauty?

My mind was calibrated to not seek much beauty in the town around me, it was no use in my childhood

There wasn't much beauty around me, so I lifted up my eyes to the stars and tuned in to Star Trek.

For better or worse, the town I was born into has shaped who I have become.

The town I grew up in no longer exists in reality, but it still exists inside my head.

[anirbas]

*CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!*

Wonderful and universal. The towns we all grew up in no longer exists except in our heads. You elucidated that longing beautifully, Phantasm!

[phantasm]

What do you do when the ideas about your environment

no longer match the reality that exists in your environment?

How do you learn to desire the new stuff that's good?

How far out of your way do you go to demolish the version of your town

that really only exists in the confines of your head?

I would like to say there are more good things about my town

than there were when I was a child growing up in suburbia.

I want my home to change for the better.

What if that goodness and change leaves you behind,

just because your desires don't match the new reality around you?

What are you supposed to do then?

[darkness0within]

Totally agree with anirbas on this Phantasm.

Time moves on and what we once knew fades from view in the real world.

But I do think beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But more than that. There are things we see in life that, as you eloquently wrote, have profound effects on us. even a rusty old car or bit of discarded machinery can bring back memories and emotions from the past.

Unassuming, but a powerful write my friend.