Je vais returner en Aout...

One of the harder things about going back to the USA for a visit is remembering that everyone who's still there has changed at least as much as I have. Harder than that is realizing how much I've changed. You may be amazed how little cheese I eat now. Harder than that is the undeniable reminder that relationships require contact. Living on the other side of the world from all you grew up with and everyone you've known is, on the whole, not that difficult. The difficulty is in trying to connect and maintain all those scattered parts of youself; keep track of them, choose them, enjoying them.

People are always more than a few words could ever convey.

But the hardest, of course, is deciding on my own how to divide the time and choose the places. How to box in the opportunites, and to find the faces.

I'm comin' in the end of August. In some ways, a home-coming, for sure, though only a visit. But to use the word '帰る' is still so hard; My parents' house is one I've never seen, my Sisters' is, well, my sisters'. My friends have moved around, added family members, a few extra pounds or lost some hair. Mostly we're all the same, though, I think; close is close enough; the details don't matter. People often ask me here when I'm going home; It's so hard to respond, in Japanese. Home? Well I don't have a house there, and I do have a home here. And there, I don't have a place to go back to, just things, and people, and memories. Well, I don't have just ONE place to go back to, anyway.

I knew that would happen when I came. It's a feeling that in some part I've always had, ever since we moved within my memory. I've always been new, somehow. I'm never quite native. And, I suppose, that's part of why I came; because, in the end, I knew that I could. For me, though human as any other, it wasn't such a strange idea, to start over once again being a total stranger.

Alors, je vais returner. See you when I get there. And to everyone else, 大丈夫よ。勿論戻るよ。帰る事は　いつも冒険の最初の所で来るでしょう。Most new adventures start when you're just trying to go back. (-_^)/