Ed Davis

Ed began his writing career over forty years ago, pausing in boxcars, under streetlamps, and in hobo jungles to record the beats and rhythms of the road as he caught freight trains and vagabonded around the Pacific Northwest and Canada. With a unique style, often compared to John Steinbeck and Jack London, that Kirkus Review calls “. . . powerful; beautifully written, well-observed and effective.” Davis invites you on adventures, real and fictional, that will stay with you long after the last page is turned.

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The Place That We Come Back To

    This is where we live.

    No two of us see its textures with the same eyes, hear its rhythms with the same clarity, or feel its happiness, heartbreak and hope with the same intensity—yet we each do know it, and no one knows it better.

    This is where we live.

    As many of us came to this place as left someplace else, but whether we landed here by design, destiny or default, something about it has made us stick.  We may be held by the closeness of a friend or a lover, by the anchor of family and the past, or because we like it, love it, or have simply gotten used to it.  Some fought hard to get here, and struggle constantly just to stay.  Others, here from birth, may never have known anywhere else.  But few, if any, are anxious to leave.

    This is where we live.

    We do not know everyone we see on the street, and most of them do not know us, but we are familiar to each other in a way that makes us something less than friends, but considerably more than strangers.  Our closest neighbors often seem entirely obscure to us, and we honor their anonymity as much as we value our own.  Yet we do notice their lives going on around us, and we’re mostly grateful that they notice ours.

    This is where we live.

    And this is where our friends live.  We don’t necessarily have a lot of them, we don’t necessarily see them every day, but they’re here, and they’re close, and we feel better for it.  The times we look forward to are often spent with them, and they’re just as often in the times we remember.  We laugh with them, and worry, and willingly mingle our tears and triumphs and pains with theirs.  We have other friends in other places, friends we love as much and miss even more.  They are the friends we tell our lives to.  These are the friends we live our lives with.

    This is where we live.

    And it’s just the way we like it, just the way it’s always been—but it isn’t, and we know that, and we wish it wasn’t so.  We don’t resist change as much as regret it, and if we could turn the clock back many of us would, back to the very moment we arrived.  We remember what the air felt like then, how the sounds were clearer and the colors brighter, and the way a simple evening breeze could sometimes break your heart.  We remember it, and miss it—until one morning we open our old eyes to a new day and realize that it’s all still here and always has been.  The only things that no longer change are those things that no longer live, and this place is very much alive.

    This is where we live.

    It’s where our children grow, and our work gets done, and our evenings pass with our lovers in our arms.  It’s the place that we come back to and the place that we lose people from.  And each of us understands, in a way that we seldom acknowledge but can never deny, that this place would not be the same without us, and we would not be the same without it.

    This is where we live.

    This is home.