Now I am happy returned to my home, fleeting as it is, let the faithful be rewarded. Here is an update. (And let us rid ourselves of Dick Cheney, at least in this space .) My budget flight with Air India gave me some pleasant surprises. It was the largest airplane I had ever been on, a 747 with an upper deck, accessed by a staircase we passed on the way in. At long last, a flight with first class, which I had begun to suspect only existed in the movies. After some research into first class, because I couldn’t believe that executive class was the best thing there is, I discovered why people dedicate their lives to making money. It’s a different world up there, where people sleep comfortably and drink and eat gourmet meals and probably don’t even feel turbulence. That reminds me of a line from 100 Bullets , in which a bartender asks a slumming pub-crawler how it feels to move through life without any friction. I, of course, will be relegated to coach for a long time yet, but since I hav
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Janice, don't get too worried about me. I can't always seem happy and spirited, especially if this blog is going to be current and honest. I've chosen a life that is often frustrating, and I'm realizing certain truths about it that I've always denied, such as the fact that I'm not really as good as I thought I was and it's going to take a lot more time than I had imagined. But I'm happy with what I have been able to accomplish.
France has been great. I'm not always doing it right--I spend an awful lot of time dithering inside the apartment. I probably would have seen more of France if I'd just come on a month-long trip instead of this year-long sabbatical. But I have the opportunity to live the life I've wanted: writing, reading, watching movies.
I do miss certain things: friends and family, convenient meals, and movie theaters and a TV screen bigger than my 12" laptop. But this trip has been great for stripping away those illusions I've had about me being a wunderkind. I have a better idea of what I need to do, and only struggle with actually doing it.
It's amazing how little I can do with a large amount of free time. Sometimes the burden of everything I want to accomplish is so heavy, I just put it all off until the next day--or the day after that. But I'm learning all the time what works and what doesn't.
Anyway, I hope to put something new up by tomorrow, and I'll try to step up the pace a bit.
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