I am dealing with a bit of "out of the woods to chaos as usual"-ness myself. Technically I only took 2 days of vacation to go to Utah, and you'd think I've been gone for 6 weeks. I guess the plus side is, when I'm out of the office and am not able to fix things pronto, I'm missed. (missed=job security) Okay, so now I'm here... sort of. I think I left my conscious self on a river somewhere. I'm cruising through on autopilot, but my mind is elsewhere. Still sitting in the door of an open tent, awake early enough to witness a brilliant Venus rising, and then watch the acrobatic air-show of bats in the pre-dawn glow. Still floating past Anasazi ruins, Betty's boat glides up next to mine and she says, "What an amazing people. I can't wait to meet them." (It takes a moment for the weight of what she said to sink in, since the most recent traces of the Anasazi are some 500 years old, and I just smile and say, "Yeah".) It felt weird to put shoes on this morning. Even my Chocos sat in the bottom of the boat the whole time. I've been barefoot for 4 whole days. I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but its probably the longest stretch of barefootedness I've had since I learned to walk. The smoothness of the hardwood when I walked in the house last night felt strange, foreign... unnatural. In the shower last night the dirt was streaming off, revealing my true color and it made me wonder about a person's true color. Once upon a time wasn't everyone's skin the color of the earth they lived on/in/with? If so, what is my true color, exactly? I live with concrete and smog, oil and rubberized asphalt. No wonder I wash myself daily, hourly, with almost obsessive compulsive compunction. As if I have no desire, and perhaps even a phobia of, being WITH this city-place. Compunction. That word just came to me as I was writing. It wasn't until I had finished typing it that I realized I don't really know what it means. So I looked it up: [–noun 1. a feeling of uneasiness or anxiety of the conscience caused by regret for doing wrong or causing pain; contrition; remorse. 2. any uneasiness or hesitation about the rightness of an action.] Compulsive cleanliness is so ingrained in the American culture ne c'est pas? Could it partly stem from a subconscious culture-wide "anxiety of conscience" over the mess we've made of the post Industrial Revolution era... that we are now living in/with? Hmm.