I'm BACK?

America is unique worldwide: it is amazingly diverse in terms of people, landscape, and food, it is wretchedly over airconditioned, it is the height of convinence and accessibility, it boasts an enormity of television programs as well as near constant entertainment in a myriad of forms, and even though most citizens don't realize it, wealth and luxery is the air we breathe. North Carolina is unique amongst states: it is every imaginable shade and texture of green, sweet tea flows like rivers from every restaurant and home, and the local accents are like a massage for the China accustomed ears.

So I'm back.

How do I describe the delight of sinking my teeth into anything with refried beans? To what can I compare the freedom of driving over near deserted roads winding through pastures and forests? Is there anything more liberating than the realization that the clothes in the stores might actually fit you? What about the thrill of options you can read at the grocery store?

But I'm forth.

Somewhere in the midst of the glee of being immersed back into a culture that swallows me up like a wave of jelloesque familiarity there are the inner rumblings of the all too understood and disected storm clouds of foreignness. I fit here but I'm differet. It's easy for me but I'm haunted by idleness. I have lived a life based on the reliability of the spiritual due to the unfaithful material yet find myself in the pulsating deception that the material seems convincingly stable. I have changed through a year long refinement process but to all appearances, nothing here has.

Back... and forth...
Comfort... and discomfort...

Back, and forth.
Backandforth.

In a few short weeks it will be back to China so maybe I'll just soak America, the parts that have been redeemed, in while I can. Is it even possible to overdose on the company of dear friends and burritos?

I'm back and I'm forth.