It's early morning. My daughter and husband are still sleeping. Our sea shipment arrived from China a few days ago so in the early morning light I can see our happy chair, our giant-beautiful Chinese wedding cabinet, Tully's English/Chinese books (shoe/xiezi, mouth/zuiba), and a photo of the three of us in Shanghai. Despite the sudden presence of these very concrete objects, China feels very far away, as if it were a dream, not a city/country where I spent the last five years of my life. As a writer/human who develops and depends on visceral connections to place, I admit that I have been knocked off my game by this tectonic life shift. I'm doing a lot of thinking/dreaming/wondering/pondering about how to proceed from here...how to incorporate all that I learned/absorbed/witnessed/questioned during my life in China...and how that is going to inform my writing, my teaching, and my life back in the U.S.
That's where I am today. Stay tuned.
