I flew back to the tundra yesterday morning. Today, I’m groping my way back to semester prep in a wandering and stumbly way. Last week was intense and elemental: the first time I was with someone as they died, the first time I held human ashes in my hands, a shift to being with my parents in a familiar yet quite different sort of way. It’s hard to turn away from all of that and back to figuring out which week my class will cover industry applications of Facebook and if that comes before or after social tagging. But one does what one must do.

As always, the southern land pulls at me in unexpected ways. I still don’t know the answers to the questions I was asking in this entry three and half years ago. The landscape I was raised in is so poignant each time I return to it, and this bit of that old post is still true.

I would not be surprised to find that I am made of river silt and humidity, coming as I do from the Arkansas river valley. The thought of tiny whiskered catfish moving slowly through my depths seems natural rather than freakish.

Eventually, I might know what all this means. But not today.