Coming Home

Today I was awakened by toy mice pelting onto my bed. My cousin and aunt were so generous and good while hosting us, and I’ll miss them.

We went to Heathrow with a nice taxi driver, a Kurdish man from Turkey whom has been here for 25 years. Hearing his appraisal of the political situation in Turkey, Germany, and England was interesting. He was of course affected by the general racism in Turkey when he was a child, and how even now the right wingers don’t want to give Kurdish people rights. He also stated that Turkey doesn’t want to admit to the Armenian genocide because it will then be forced to take responsibly for it and give Armenians their land back. He talked about how friendly and clean Germany is. I’ve never heard “friendly” used to describe the general mentality of the German people, though he was perhaps talking about the large Turkish population there. He talked about how much more integrated these people are, though I have heard otherwise. I don’t know. I think there are bigots everywhere, and an almost disturbing number, at that. It is true that England seems less enthusiastic about its large immigrant population than from an outsider’s point of view makes sense(and I would be considered part of them). I still love England, though, and do think they have plenty of economic activity going on in their country.

It makes me so angry to hear about us powerful nations coming in and just carving up poorer nations for our own benefit. Imagine that happening to you, your country no longer existing because somebody faraway told you so. You’/d think nobody would accept this outrage, but these same people barely seem to know you’re alive. You try to fight and are labeled terrorists. Can you imagine the helpless rage?

Our first flight was seven hours long. It only took me three hours to beat the first five or six scenarios of Starcraft, and I couldn’t read for long or get motion sick. Get vegetarian food on the plane even if you’re not one; we get served first and our food is usually better. We landed in Boston, angry and tired, ate some food and sat at the gate, waiting for four hours for our connecting flight. I fell asleep almost immediately as we boarded for the entire seven hour flight . Note: Don’t do this type of travel. It’s horrible. I dreamt, at one point, about a rock elemental possessed with a spirit who was transported to another dimension where he couldn’t fly. He kept trying to break whatever the dimension’s hold on him was by trying to fly, but eventually found the cause was a tiny city going under the earth, filled with a rich Adriatic-style culture. However, only the princess was good. The rest of the city was not so good, and they could bind together like ants into a behemoth which he had to fight. I blame this on one of the miniatures in the British museum, which was based on a Chinese story where an official wanders into a beautiful city and marries its princess. She dies and he is turned out for turning to drinking while devastated over her death. He goes back to search for the gate, only to find it was an anthill.

We then waited for the Flyaway bus and took a taxi home from Van Nuys. Everyone, exhausted, threw themselves in bed, only to find out they couldn’t sleep. The kittens were also really happy to see us, and there was purring involved. I ate some Indian food and locked Clingy inside, upon which he went a bit crazy and we let him out again.

So that is the end of what seems to have been a very pleasant dream. Last night I dreamt that I visited a large, old cathedral by my house, and was frustrated to wake up and realize that I couldn’t anymore. I’m glad to be back home with Snuggles, who keeps meowing for huggup, and the kittens, who aren’t letting us out of their sight, and my books and capability to work, though. It’s like coming back to reality, which is also a little scary. Time to get down to business.