I am back, and already I am planning my return... This thought is a looping soundtrack buffered with the hum of an old fan and in between the very un-vacation like chore of cleaning my new apartment, and suffering from hallucination-inducing jet lag and allergies. I have several hundred photos and quite a few journal entries to process over the next week. But right now I am just trying to adjust to being back "home" (not so homey when it's your first real day inside of it), scrubbing grime, catching up on endless vmail/email messages, and mentally preparing for tomorrow's harrowing (but I'm sure entertaining) work day. I sense all sorts of emotions battling each other to dominate my mind and heart, but I simply feel exhausted and for now that wins out. I smell like lysol, green dish soap, and sun baked cement. My dress is sticking to my skin and it certainly is an unavoidable reminder that yes, I'm back and yes, it's another summer in which I will need to hustle up an a/c unit pronto... While walking back and forth searching for cleaning supplies in my new-but-not-so-new neighborhood, (I lived here briefly in 2004 -- the typical transplant) I let the familiar omnipresent static of honking horns, smells of food wafting from carts, the rumbling of the subway above my head, the clack-clack-clack of passing bicycles, pour through all my senses and I felt like I was being gently pushed through a tunnel, flushed from Paris and it's endless delights back to this place that even after three years is still sort of a novelty. A photo printed on a creased postcard. I'm back - not "home", but to the fifth place where my things are kept and where my friends make plans to meet when I feel better. "Home" in NYC, more familiar now than the place I grew up in but still a place that I wrestle between loving and hating, sometimes from one hour to the next. The typical transplant.