Caveat: Retracings and Gratitude

I lie in bed during a magical hour that happens only once a year in america. That hour is the hour that appears as daylight savings time is ended. That hour retraces the hour between 2 and 3 am (I think), thus passing twice. It is an artifact, just like all hours, but unlike other hours, its artificiality stands outside of rationality, and instead reflects a sheer cultural obstinacy, I suppose. In Korea they don't have this kind of hour, because they don't do daylight savings time. If they did, it would be an occasion for drinking, perhaps – I mean, more drinking than usual.

I am wide awake because I happen to have just arrived in the US and suffer unspeakably from my typical jetlag.

Insomniac, I have been surfing forgotten fragments of my own past, which our modern era allows so seamlessly that it can be done lying in bed holding a glowing rectangle of glass and plastic and silicon.

I discovered a number of old emails, exchanged with my friends during the aftermath of my surgery 3 years ago – friends who I am now about to see again for the first time since that surgery, notably Bob (with Sarah) and Mark (with Amy). Do they have any idea how much their moral support, embroidered across the world's fabric via fragile threads of internet emails, meant to me? I am so sentimentally pleased to finally be able to see them, and to be able to thank them, and to be able to apologize for the inconstancy of my friendship.

This traveling is hard, and the manifold uncertainties that swarm my mind in these contemplative moments, my eyes wide open in the predawn dark, can begin to overwhelm. It helps me to remember the point: I travel now not to explore (exploring seems such a minor need, anymore) but to retrace and reaffirm old bonds – bonds which have permitted me to survive into my present moment.