Discovery: being able to pick up and move from place to place across states and countries requires a degree of finesse that I have yet to achieve. I honestly envy people who flit, peripatetic, in a global foxtrot without so much as breaking a sweat. Less stress, less corticosterone, lower blood pressure, longer lives. Myself: I leave things behind, misplace tickets, get bruised and battered struggling overpacked luggage through crowded airports, miss meals, lose sleep. My first instinct when I encountered these problems in the States was to do the obvious thing and try and get more organized, but somehow it just doesn't work that way. Once flustered, always flustered. Nowadays I make a performance out of it, play the part of the big galoot who runs out of his house trailing important items behind him as he runs for his plane. At least it keeps me entertained.

You wouldn't think it would be such a big deal to me, I mean I'm usually fairly good at holding it together and it's not as if I ever panic or anything or mind missing flights and rides, but there's something about the physical dislocation that gets to me and makes me deeply unsettled. Like coming back here to campus - 3 hour drive, not a huge production, and still I tossed and turned and had a most uncomfortable time last night, only awake now thanks to large doses of caffeine. I really need to have a more zen-like approach in my philosophy of belonging to places - like the eremite in the Anthony deMello story: sits meditating in a log cabin; traveler comes by to ask for shelter for the night, sees that the holy man has no furniture; asks him where it is, gets asked in return: where are your possessions? Tells the holy man: 'All I have are the clothes on my back, I'm just passing through'; holy man replies: 'As am I'. Or something to that effect (people more well-versed in Jesuit writing will no doubt correct me). Anyway, that's the kind of spirit I need to have, water off a duck's back, special providence in the fall of a sparrow, etc.