
"The young are always threathening to leave home as soon as they realise that there is a great big world out there beyond the garden wall where the grass will be greener. Young or old however, when we run away, we are usually running away from self and consequences.
I remember the first time I left home. I was five years old and had decided that three days at first school was long enough for me and that life was too short to be stuck in a stuffy classroom from 9am to 3pm. I managed to travel about three miles before some interferring adult turned me into the police. I was seven years old when I next packed my case and took off for the hills. I found running away to be easy, but it was not knowing what to do next that usually brought me home. I sneaked back upstairs and unpacked in the hope that my mother hadn't noticed me gone.
Paradoxically, the more I think about it, the more I realise that 'running away' is a kind of 'unhealthy stillness' and that it represents an unwillingness to move on with one's life.
In fact, it could be argued that writing is a form of 'running away' from the realities of life, and perhaps it is. Perhaps all authors are little more than experiential burglars; petty thieves with vivid imaginations who are unable to write more than half a dozen lines before starting to make things up.
As my dear mother used to tell me when I was a child, 'Billy, home is where the heart is. Your home resides in you and like a tortoise, you take it with you wherever you go. You can never run away from home because you can never run away from yourself.'" William Forde: January 26th, 2015.