On Returning

A month or so in Ethiopia. A week in Britain. Another in Glenview. Finally in some time I may be allowed to return home.

The cicadas are deafening and all of the outdoors is so green and luminous and poised to lure me back into believing that I like this place. I would like to be free of it but it is seductive and quietly persistent. I become a sensualist when I return here from abroad. It is as though I've finally been unsheathed. Textures are new and being able to brush my teeth is sex to me now. I am glad to be free of the influences that have pervaded my life for the last year. I feel as though I have recovered some part of my mind. It is cold slate on a humid summer day. Still and reassuring and painful. It makes me strange like this.

I have met a surprising array of interesting people in the past month. Some scholars and philosophers and naturalists and some hardened bastards. But (and this is crucial) I think I have regained my place. I spent part of a day in Chicago with a man I barely knew and tasted the city at night for a time. My senses are quickening, day by day. Soon I know speed will upon me again. But for now being able to experience is a luxury and a necessity.

I saw something today. It was in the sky. Logically I know what it was. My primitive brain could not conceive of such a thing. It lacked effect. It was inexplicable. I need to sleep to dream.