Document Type
Creative Work
Abstract
[First paragraph]
I am standing, only just arrived but already sweating, beneath a late-morning end of July sun, in a newish-looking housing development at the circular dead end of Grossnickle Court, off Biggs Ford Road in Frederick County, Maryland, gazing westward, toward the river valley of the Monocacy and, beyond it, long Catoctin Mountain, hazy in summer. Like you, I might be anywhere but I happen to be here, now, in this eastern part of southern North America, standing where pavement turns to grass and then, beyond, a field of hay, thick, but carrying in its near spent green the inevitable hints of late summer’s harvest brown. "Here" is usually something we take for granted but its simplicity of connotation ever blurs in our minds its inherent insinuations of both position and time. The traveler asks himself, "How do I get there from here?" or, measuring the position of the sun against his fatigue, suggests to his companions, "Let us stop here for the night and resume our journey at dawn." It may also refer to a minute topic or specific subject, as in "Here, I must disagree with you"; yet, more dynamically, it may too demand action: "Come here!" Beyond, in all these things, the word embodies an affirmation of life, of being, now. To the one who, uncertain of our presence, calls our name, we reply, "Here."
Repository Citation
Clabough, Casey. "Here." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 7, no. 2, 2007, pp. 1–8. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol7/iss2/14