Back for almost a week, and my mind is already keeping time to the familiar rhythms. Familiar and yet strangely alive. I know this place. Put me on any corner and I'll know where I am. Give me a bike and I'll get anywhere you can name and probably beat the traffic. I've practiced this piece until every note is under my fingers, and now I'm ready to have a conversation with it.

Returns always seem to take longer. That flight over Iceland and Greenland and the infinity of northern Canada takes forever. The sun crawls in the sky and you're suspended in a bubble letting time flow over you. I read two Mario Puzo novels, and found myself a bit too far into the deep end of his cold, hard world of severe pagan justice. We came in over the Mackinaw Strait and I felt an inexplicable joy at seeing a land feature I recognized, though I have only seen it on maps.

All joy is divine, but there is something particularly sweet when it is unexpected. And more than a little bit frightening. You've laid hold of a live wire. You've struck against something down deep. Maybe it's just a whale, and maybe it's something outside the realms of your knowledge. It's not fear -- you know how to deal with that. But how can you love something you've never seen? It's something about you. It seems to cut you off from everyone around you. The place and time aren't designated; it's not a celebration or part of a ceremony. The message is for you, and it has something to do with what you are and no one else can be. Words are useless. It's not a matter of knowledge, but a failure of the structures of your thought. All words are the product of joint experience. They are inescapably abstract, and you need something particular. You've got to walk that lonesome valley by yourself. Strange, too, that walking it gives you so much love to share.