Tuesday, 03 December 2002 | First trip back

While I was in Raleigh, there were a lot of people I didn't have a chance to see, and there were a lot of things left to do, but. I did play my first successful game with my two-year-old niece: I put the plastic figurine on top of the castle, and she tirelessly shoved him or her down the trap door, in an unbreakable cycle. If I deviated from that pattern, I was treated to a "no!" and a nasty look. I wasn't about to betray our first connection; I kept feeding her figurines, until some outside force (I don't remember what) finally put an end to it.

And I walked in the woods and I saw more than five stars, more like five hundred, and I went to a party where there was a lake and a fire pit in the backyard, and a DJ inside. And dogs. And I dyed my hair, watched Baraka with one of my parents (while the other quietly slept in a recliner with a cat on his lap), played pool, finished making this website, and I took a few pictures. I went to my first cat show, walked around the flea market, and drove my old car, full of deer and cop paranoia, but fast anyway.

I thought it would feel stranger than it did to be there; actually, it felt natural, sometimes as if I hadn't left at all.

I hadn't expected to have space issues, though; to notice a surplus of room in the apartments and houses I visited, in the fields on the way to my parents' house, on the bench next to the pool table where I was playing, my stuff sprawled out over three feet. It was hard not to feel like I was taking someone else's space by having some for myself.

I slept on the plane this morning, which only sped up the strange transition and draped a hazy curtain over my brain for the entire day.