6 in the morning

I wake up everyday at 6AM or sometimes 4 AM and I wonder where I am. I don't hear birds, or the rooster, and I panic; then I feel blankets and sheets and realize I am not in my bed, house, or old life. I am in this new one--that is neither mine nor is not. It feels as if I pressed pause on this life--but it continued and I am joining again, in the middle of was once mine just--different.

When the plane took off, the first time I left the African continent in two years I cried. What did I leave behind there? What did I take with me?

I walked through a supermarket, blinded by it artificial glow--dazed by all the choices, I saw a mango. I picked it up and held it and cried-- this was not my market, this was not mango season, it was over--really over.

It needed to end it wasn't mine, and after two years of trying, it still wasn't mine. I carved out my life in that school; and though I built up in the lives of my students, I was just--different.

Being here is really hard, exciting, new, different, sometimes I just want to run. Run away from the questions, the cold, the things. I want to run to a place that's quite and sunny where my head doesn't chatter with car payments or job opportunities, where it just is.

Everything here is so nice, clean, conformed, I feel too worn in it presence. Everything is easy but nothing is simple. How can two just different places exist on the same planet?

Maybe I will go for that run, see where I end up.