My dearest penelope,

I have never been so glad to be back home in recent memory. No slight of course to your hosting. It felt as if I had not been gone that long. Or as if it was a place I frequently visited. Such a testament to letters and pictures to breed such comfort and familiarity to a place. It is possibly a credit to the expansive nature of time this trip also or all the twists and turns that made it stretch so far. Perhaps it made me a little thin. I don't know. I don't think that was quite it though. I got all the sleep I needed, I had time to myself, my own adventures, my own splurges and withholdings. I was fed and watered regularly. But I found with relief my former life- the moon overhead as the bus rolled me home. I had tried not to count the minutes as we traversed and seeing the worm moon was a happy grace. There were small mercies to every difficulty, the screaming kid that needed to be sedated, my spacious seat and good movie to watch, dad locking me out of the house but someone to bring me home and the dogs to wake him up. I love california. I love being home. I had never thought my 'being at home anywhere' could be a negative, but perhaps wunderlust needs to be built up until the longing has you itching and gasping so that you can leave a place for a month, months and think nothing whatever about coming home to your own desk and bed, so aquainted had you got and how much you wanted to be elsewhere.

But this time, oh desk, i missed you, oh garden! how in bloom, how at the tip of take over, oh purring cat! oh car!... that or some grief sends you in need of rescue, of familiarity, of recentering and retreat. And I'm glad my home is that. That i look at the mess fondly- to love again my lists and my routine. And here I go yoga, and swimming and necklace making...

It is highly possible I could be emotionally allergic to certain places. I will have to see. For instance I had el pollo loco and there i was with a light rash and hives and it just looked from the mirror that my chest was reddish as if i'd been in the sun but under the magnifying mirror it showed the pattern of discontent broadly and quite plainly. Sometimes it doesn't take much and sometimes the toxicity builds until your joints hurt. I always think, whenever my heel hurts, that my colon is unhappy. Muriel said that to me once. Heel pain is linked to the colon. So whenever I step, I say, oh colon! behave! stop your aching! What have i eaten! What have I done to make you sooo unhappy! And believe it or not, there may be a correlation. Sometimes it does not take much to signal that something is deeply wrong and has always been.


But as it is, I'll send this letter off for now, out into space for you to receive. After all I have my lists, and things to return. I'm out of hangers also. And lolly needs a bath. This is how I found my garden- on the verge of takeover. Somethings need to be watched closely lest the vines choke all the other plants in their wake- but let that go. More later.





m.