On the plane — January 11

We are almost home after a month’s absence. It’s been an incredible trip — upending my mind, raising my consciousness, lighting up the globe of my imagination so that places that were once just names to me are now pulsing with life. It’s been the kind of transformative trip that realigns the planets a little bit, challenges my certainties, and shifts my realities just enough to let me glimpse the world briefly through other peoples’ eyes.

It’s been a trip filled with antiquities whose ancient import still dictate events, where believing in a linear, progressive view of history doesn’t make nearly as much sense as a circularity of time layered upon time, where narratives, hopes, ambitions, and grievances are buried under each other like the ruins, covered by the force of earthquakes, waiting to be resurrected and restored.

If you’ve followed along with…