Odd

It feels odd to be on my own again, to spend a day without talking to anyone—face-to-face, that is, e-mail and telephone don't count; to be hearing German instead of Spanish or English; to be sitting instead of walking; to be in a city which is known to me, with no immediate prospect of leaving it; to be listening to traffic noises instead of the wind and birdsong; to have nowhere to go.

It feels odd to see around me normal people going about their dailynesses with the usual blend of self-absorbtion and blithe oh-the-unimportance-of-it-all, rather than the purposeful directedness of the pilgrims (whom we were not).

It feels odd to have to think about w*rk again, suddenly to have deadlines and targets instead of leisure and a very active kind of slothfulness.

It feels odd to be in the well-known squalor and disarray of my own home, the home of my making, rather than the clean, pretty and comfortable hotels (and L's apartment) of weeks past.

I am not particularly happy here.