Aspen, Colorado: Welcome Home. Goodbye...

Back in the happy valley and it is raining, gentle and cool. I as I breathe the clean air, filled with the scent of sweet woodruff (gallium odoratum) at the condominium redevelopment I was designing before I left, I begin to remember how I came to spend four years of my life in this fantasy land.

I have been traveling for weeks, and have miles to go. Running into old friends (or at least acquaintainces), I ask a weak question: Did I miss anything? The answer inevitably is no, in the passing conversations that can't get any closer to the soul. Some buildings come down, others go up; people come and go: they broke up, and they got married, they had a child, they moved to a new house...did I expect anything more?

Are we getting closer to really knowing? Twixters and self-proclaimed dirtbags; tele girls and the nouveau riche. It is so easy to fall into everydayness. Would it be so wrong? Why do we demand so much of ourselves? Am I demanding too little?

Life steps. The green light flashes go, and in the morning I will, leave the happy valley for harder places, hotter and dryer and with the soot and smenge of a larger circle of humanity.

Welcome home. This is America.