Drawing night happened after JG and I did the Art Walk. On the first Friday of every month in Richmond, all the cool galleries have openings. Some have snacks, some don't. Some you go to because they have snacks, some you go to in spite of the fact that they don't have snacks. So, we looked at a bunch of art (word to Travis Robertson and Nonesuch) then we came home and made some guided meditations on paper. I meditated on the advertising tactics of Liberty Mutual Tax Service; Jeff meditated on a boat stuck in a tree. Etc. Drawings 1 & 3 by ET, 2 & 4 by JG.

I have been home for exactly two weeks after being away from home for about six weeks. "So, how is being back?" I love it. One of the goals of such trips, for me, is usually to make me feel better about where I am when I'm not feeling so great about it, and it has yet to not work. Where Richmond was once feeling alienating, it is now a place full of friends; where it was once cold and crappy, it is now Spring. The latter is verifiably true and the former is definitely a little rose-colored, but nevertheless I am in the mood to put some energy into the world rather than let myself get sapped dry. May it last at least until the summertime!

Also, I am now a person who has visited countries in whose languages she is not fluent. That's not something I could say before. The isolating, bewildering feeling of being for the most part clueless about what is happening is a new one. A good one, though! What a good thing to learn to deal with. Feeling out of your element makes you both understand other elements and appreciate your own element when it is near. I knew I was near my element as soon as the plane came out of the clouds over Baltimore and all I could see were miles of suburbs, stripmalls, roads, rectangular divisions of land. I felt instantly comfortable and at home, and then quickly guilty. The sprawling alienation of American culture! This is what I longed for? YES. After two weeks in Europe with everyone in small apartments and small cars, most roads narrow, cities with confusing layouts, highway signs with half as much information, it was all I wanted: SPACE. Grids. All the information I needed communicated obviously and instantly to me. Instantly, because I was tired of a casual, patient European attitude. I had things to do do do, and needed what I needed right then then then.

Yes, revealed to me most of all while out of my element was the nature of my own impatient and claustrophobic element. The cause of my neuroses is less clear; I'm no psychologist. It's probably no more complicated than I can guess, and all the insidious hallmarks of American ideology are simply manifesting themselves through me in obvious ways. As radical as I ever claim to be, I have seen my own visceral Americanness and have to recognize that I can never understand all the ways my culture influences the way I think and feel. How irritating! I want to be in control, with pure impulses untainted by conditioning! Well, that'll never happen. Might as well start off with the need for Control as the first thing to go. Let this be a lesson I learn from my experiences as a foreigner: things will happen in their own way, without your understanding or control, if you let them.

I have more complicated feelings and reflections on this matter, but can't really go there. Have I ever gone there for more than a few paragraphs? I'd like to think that my gift is not for elaborate explanations, but brief vignets that nevertheless try to cut to the heart of the matter. Always a journalist, never a novelist. Nurture your strengths and ignore your weaknesses, that's me.