
I feel a bit like this about Kerrville, Texas, where I went to high school.
Each time I return, there is less and less of that kid who, once upon a time, wanted to live there forever.
A town growing dimmer every time I see it…
The only constant about Kerrville, TX is the rate at which my youth disappears.
I have said that the trip back is difficult, and it is—difficult in a way that magnifies the ordinary ambiguities of sentimental journeys. Going back to California is not like going back to Vermont, or Chicago; Vermont and Chicago are relative constants, against which one measures one’s own change. All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears.
-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem