people, places, nature—shifted in fragments, like looking through a kaleidoscope. As in my earlier travel, I had immersed myself in the foreign until only I remained constant. I had left my supports, and now the universe outside me was a collage, churning in the metal blades of a ceiling fan. Through a different lens could those shards become a lovely, logical whole? Could any belief system piece it all together? Perhaps, but piecing it together wasn’t my concern just then. My concern was to be more intensely myself. In that, I was succeeding.
