Here

I'm home, in case you were wondering, although you probably weren't. And I'm happy to stop moving for a little bit.

Returning from a long trip and spending a couple days in the jet lag bubble is always a peculiar time. No other time is like this: the strange dreams, the flashbacks, seeing the familiar with a traveler's eyes. It's always in these times that Los Angeles looks most foreign to me.

Maybe this is just part of being human, but I'm struck by how small we keep our lives and how we spend so much of our time getting bent out of shape about insignificant things. And also how selfish we are. And how lost.

And I am struggling to hang on to this clarity of perspective before it slips away and I plug back in to the current that flows along the streets and freeways. It's like a drug, this adrenalin buzz, this impatience, this fixation on the surface of things, this demand for satisfaction, this fragmentation. It blunts my senses and makes me turn inward. And not in a good way.

I find myself cursing the slow and incompetent around me, who are all of a sudden everywhere it seems. I wasn't like this yesterday or last week. What happened to me? Did someone spike my tea? Is there something in this Los Angeles air? Whatever it is, it is a sad state of affairs.

So, if you see me walking around with my shoulders tense and my brow furrowed, if I pull up behind you honking and waving my arms, say a prayer for me, remind me of my own words. Better yet, remind me of the truth, which is beyond and above me, which passes all understanding, which is my only source of hope for life.