home

time to go back to school! and it's not leaving home that makes me afraid. i also get this feeling on leaving school at the end of the year, or LA, or hong kong ... i got it on leaving DC. and after all, home is certainly not the place. i will come back here over and over again. it's leaving that makes me afraid. it's passing. things passing. people passing. time passing. and i've always been afraid. the day i turned nine i cried as we sat around the cake. i cried because turning nine meant that i had only one more year before i could never -- NEVER -- be a single-digit age again. oftentimes i tell that story laughingly. but it's a marker of fear ... the first time i realized this longing for the present and past that i always have. this is something that is supposed to set in as you get old ... and i had it as a child.