Hindsight

(Final cleaning before summer vacation.
Tahara JHS. Picture dated July 17, 2003)

DVD today: Tomb Raider.

Amber was in town, in SF. She called me and it felt like having a phone conversation from my apartment in Kitakyushu. The moment was suspended in time, I felt like myself a little more. I asked her what she’d been up to and we compared notes on our feelings about being home. She’s just on vacation, though, and is returning to the fray next week.

I suppose I will have to live vicariously for this new school year in Japan.

There is a quote from Soderbergh’s version of Solaris that I find relative to my current experiences. George Clooney’s character Chris Kelvin says this:

“Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now… unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything.”