Singapore.
I’m back in Singapore, sooner than I thought I would be. This whole year has been much of a see-saw in terms of movement and organization. Having no set schedule or routine is one of the delights of living as we do, but weekly curve balls for the last four months are… phew… somewhat unanticipated.
It’s taken me eighteen years to come back with something akin to pleasure; all my life to call it “home.” I arrive in the middle of a jaw dropping scandal in the ruling family, catch up with a friend I haven’t seen in almost 10 years, and find myself unable to eat, a standard response to the equatorial heat which – sadly – never lasts more than a couple of days.
It’s four in the morning, I’m customarily unwilling to sleep. Quiet is precious here. The standard thoughts of this suspended time-place are full of reproach but none of it really matters. Things that consume in sunlit day are ghosts at this hour. The edge of my mind holds things that are suspiciously vital to answering the universe…. if only they would teeter in the right direction. Clockwork jetlag, but tomorrow is a fresh day.
Return is always a process of grieving.
charlene winfred 
You got a seat in the tail section? That’s cool. CHICKEN RICE!!
Chicken rice is Flemming’s thing. I’m all LEAFY GREENS BABY.
(Not that kind though)
Now there’s a POV you don’t usually experience while flying. I’ve reached the age at which you can’t go home again. Now, home is what I’ve created for my kids, who are approaching the beginning of the end of home as they start their own lives as adults. So, going home is a greasing process here too.
Mark, I’m intrigued by “I’ve reached the age at which you can’t go home again.” That sounds like exile. Why can’t you go home again?
Charlene,
Inspired by another of your readers to go back and read all your posts, I worked my way through to this one and saw that you had responded to my comment back in June with a question, to which I never responded No exile.
My mom passed way last December after a long life just shy of 93. Home as defined by where one grew up with parents is no longer there, it has been sold to someone else to now make a home for their family etc. That said, I felt that I could never go home again since my college days. Once I came home from college, it felt like a foreign place, as though things had changed – although most of that change was really within me. I see the same thing now happening now my kids as they start their adult lives, excited for what the future will bring. It’s the culmination of experience and the passing of time, alway forward, never back.
That is very true Mark. Always forward. There really isn’t much of a choice. I had to laugh at yet another one going through my archives. Hehehe.