It's been a long ten days since that first flight across the country. My ears have hurt. I've eaten more good food than I have all summer. I've stayed with my relatives in a city and a place that I love, and felt more at home than ever. If I didn't have a job, if I had enough money, if I didn't have a fiancee who'd want me to think it over, I'd have stayed. And it's been tiring. The time just flies by too fast. Way too fast. Pictures prove that not too long ago I was the kid that everyone gawked over, my mother's first, some sort of genius. Now I'm twenty years older, still some sort of genius (although I just don't see it), a romantic and an early alcohol snob. A connoisseur of the good things that are never handed to me, but instead the ones I have to work for. And I've been disgusted at people. Again. As always. No surprise there, right? Some people just don't have a clue what the good things are, and that sometimes growing good gardens involves trying. A cynic would call my vacation running away. I call it escaping. I got a chance to escape to the place where it all started for me, and every chair, couch, bed, footstep felt familiar, and so easy to slip back into. I still wish I were there, and I wish I could stay. If I could stay, I'd forget what I could and never remember it again.