Back home last evening, after six weeks traipsing around Portugal and Spain and Southern France. I wake up in the early morning here and fall into my old rituals…opening the house to the day, black coffee in the quiet dark, thinking forward to the coming hours, wiping down counters, absorbing my books and art and instruments.

I think of the sense of alienation, of exclusion I always feel overseas, of being different and not belonging, of being unrooted. And then of the comfort and sense of place that surrounds me here in such a few short seconds. We are creatures habit, of home ranges, and routine and ritual, of simple and common and repeated actions…every bit as much as the creatures of farm and field and forest. It is ironic that I cannot be satisfied with that.
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