Item: 1 empty black suitcase

I'm back and mostly unpacked now, and I will probably be sneaking in a few more New Zealand stories for the next few days. It was the funniest thing about Wellington, though -- I had a hard time seeing myself living there, and I can see myself living almost everywhere I go. There are so many things to like about it: the mountains and the bays, the old houses (I don't think I saw a single house that looked like it was built after 1950 in all of Wellington). There's the clear air and the lack of traffic and the general peace and harmony, and there's that Kiwi accent.

I came back to Los Angeles, which is choked with smog and smattered with loads of social problems, where the buildings are mostly ugly and tagged with graffiti, and it's too crowded to get anywhere half the time. Yet I knew all along I was going to be really happy to come back to it, which is such an uncharacteristic feeling I'm still trying to figure it out. Maybe this shouldn't seem so appalling as it does. Why should it be a bad thing to like where you live? Except that most of the people I know who feel unqualifiedly at home in LA are so fundamentally different from me, I'm used to not being one of them. In fact, they're generally people I don't much care for or want to be like.

I'm frankly surprised at myself. I was almost less interested in exploring a foreign port than I am in the place where I live my everyday life. Is that because of something about New Zealand, or something about me? When I saw the California poppies blooming between the runways at the airport, I had this deep sense of relief, enough to make me, now, deeply uneasy.