The sun here is stronger than I am used to. It burns the skin without tanning, the unwelcome consequence of a life lived, until now, under the glow of earthlight. I am more comfortable in the moonglow – the familiar soft amber of home spread wide over the land. In the dusk and gloaming I have stalked this city in search of that elusive aura of ‘home’ that takes root spontaneously and will not budge from that small remote corner of the mind. There is nothing here that transports me to that place – not scent nor spirit nor silhouette. I feel as though suspended over the void: a thin wire all that keeps me from that plunge into the unknown. More convincing even than that, the small pressure behind the eyes exhorting me to jump. To let go, to fall or rise into that void. To stretch an arm into that or this to live as native or alien. To make the choice once and finally between ancestry and homeland. To abandon this mission as smoke and circumstance and just live in this time, this place, as I never have in all my years.