home world

Day 3

2008-04-29T02:00:11+03:07

29 Diner

Leaving the Sheraton after one of those complimentary hotel breakfasts, just us in an empty huge dining room while 2 women in uniform are cleaning around us. We woke up late. The ride was not fun, it’s cold this morning, the air is crisp and the freeway is packed with cars. On the other side of the road, a bunch of police units are trying to clear out an accident while traffic stand still for miles and miles in the other direction. We ride. We pass Washington DC without even seeing any of it and cross into Virginia.

There’s really nothing on the freeway to make me realize I’m in a different state aside of a red cardinal on the direction signs. It’s strange to even think about it is a different place because it’s just all the same, trees and cars and Mc Dolands . Ned stops the bike in front of a restaurant, it’s called Bombay and offers Indian food, and also looks uninviting and possibly closed. We both spot a diner sign on the other side of the curve and head there.

29 Diner is a tiny blue and aluminum spot that’s cramped with people. We wait at the counter for some people to leave and sit. It’s strange to be all geared up with leather jackets and helmets and bags full of cloths and computers in a room full of locals who are just in for their Sunday late brunch. The menu has protestant, catholic and Jewish food blessing on the back and there’s a juke box and a beautiful marble counter top. We order the biscuits and gravy and some coffee and tea and get warmer and warmer.

As we get up to leave, a man with missing teeth and long thin hair talks to Ned. He’s got food and grease on his shirt and his hands shakes badly as he’s lifting a cup of coffee to his mouth. When we go outside I ask what he said and Ned say “that he hopes the wind stay to my back”. And then he say “if there is a god, that’s what he looks like” and we drive away.

The great American War

"Look at it like this, Shadow: we are the coming thing. We're shopping malls-your friends are crappy roadside attractions." -

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

We choose the “avoid freeway” root option on the GPS, usually that leads to beautiful spots, but somehow we get on some boring highway that just cruises between one sprawl mall and another, a whole bunch of Dunken donuts - mattress store - Best buy - Starbucks.

I’m bored and cold and there’s nothing to take pictures of. I think about multi diversity in nature and how, it feels as if the small restaurants with the cool signs and all the non chain store are getting extinct just like fish and birds. How what the culture is losing in that is not so much the lack of animal or places to shop but the diversity.

I think about the waitress in the 29 diner and how, when Ned asked her where we can get another jacket or sweatshirt for me, she said “Wallmart at the end of the road” right away. How just like driving a huge car and not understanding why do the prices of gas are going up and why are there less wild life than there used to be. Buying in chain stores is ruining one’s own culture and destroying the economical balance of one’s own community.

I think about America and how it seem to always be in some war between different parts of it, how it sometime feels like the only way this country renew itself is by waging a war against what used to be here before, whether it’s The natives, nature, it’s own people or its own economy. Like some strange contained fires to burn all the old wood so that there’s room for new ones. The great American war of now, is not so much between nature and manmade, but between manmade and manmade. An all somehow like in all the great American wars, you always know who’s going to win, and usually it’s the bad guys.

Blue Ridge parkway – Shenandoha

We took the itinerary from the trip off the Hearly Davidson’s website, so though we knew this is about the root we wanted to take, we didn’t know the details. This was the first destination out of 16 that the guy who made this root send us to. The sky line PYW.

As we were getting near, it got more and more clouded and the guy at the entry to the park, said that it’s supposed to rain later. We went in anyway. Just as we got inside the park, we saw a dear, standing then running back into the wood. It felt like a good start. We started riding up a mountain and stopped in the first view point, where we knew there’s a beautiful view to the valley below, but couldn’t see it with all the mist around us. The trees were still all bare from winter because the top of the mountain is so much colder then the bottom. We went on. And it was getting very misty.

We were riding inside a cloud, seeing only this grayish white wall of cloud in front of us from which trees were rising as we got closer to them. It was beautiful and frightening. I didn’t know whether I should panic or just be amazed at the beauty of it all, Ned was riding very slowly, following the yellow line in the middle of the road. It was a strange and peculiar feeling, knowing that this is probably one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever done in my life an at the same time, being so calm and feeling so peaceful, all this light around me and trees and nothing but the engine sounds to hear.

My visor was fogging so I lifted it, it was very cold, it wasn’t raining, well, not exactly, but the air was so moist, tiny droplet of water just accumulated on my jacket and pants and gloves and making me wet and freezing cold. From within the forest, a deer came out, looked at the road, blinked and run back inside. Another one, from behind one of the ledges were running fat, parallel to the road, all I can see was his strong neck and head popping as he galloped along us for a bit. Looking into a strange looking branch a white and brown barn owl, was staring into the road before swooping into the darkness of the heavy forest.

It was like nothing I have ever experience before, not even like a movie or a book, but just this very strange frightening experience which is somehow intimate and somehow much bigger then myself. I had no idea how long the road is going to be, or how fast we were going. My brain kept making up scary scenarios about getting stuck in there, not being able to go on because the visibility is zero and having so wrap ourselves in the sleeping bags to keep warm and wait for rescue. There was no way to get to another place or road but to ride the whole thing through, this undefined distance that would only get more and more cold and more and more dangerous as darkness falls. It was already 7:00 and I thought about the bears in the bears in the forests and how if something happens to us right now, nobody will know about it till it’s too late. And I thought how even if I do die now because the bike hits a deer on the road, I don’t mind so much, because all this is such a special moment I wouldn’t want to miss it.

Eventually we made it through, the valley bellow was still very misty, but as we came closer to the highway, it cleared a little bit. Ned pulled over in the next gas station to fill up, I went inside and got a cup of coffee which I couldn’t drink, I was too cold and every zip was scolding so I threw it out. We checked in the nearest motel and went into the bath right away, slowly getting all warm and tired and still not quite believing this whole thing really happened.

Day 2

2008-04-27T17:46:47+03:07

Morning at the Sheraton Columbia Hotel. It’s clouded and foggy outside, there’s a beautiful view of a lake and a forest. We are in some strange hi tech and business area with really nothing but office buildings and huge chain outlet stores, by the looks of it.

Still all foggy by the absence of coffee and not enough sleep. I really wanted to write about Yesterday, but it was already 2:00 AM and I went to sleep. Sitting in the bath while Ned was on the computer. I was doing this math: Writing down everything that happened today will take about 3 hour, if I also want to download some photos and post them in the website, that’s probably about another hour, I also want to draw a bit, let say, another half an hour. And I still won’t be getting everything I want on paper file. However, if I wait till morning, not only I probably won’t have the time, but also, I forget a lot, not so much the other stories of places and people but that abstract feeling of how a moment is, and how I am in it.

I’m frustrated with the mapping program as well, because it can’t just register everything I want it to. I don’t know why documenting this journey is so important, but it feels right now that on every moment I spend on the road I would have to spend a moment writing about it, is it more important to document then to experience? Probably not, but then again, the documentation makes the memories, and somehow, making memories feels important now.

Day 01

2008-04-26T17:55:53+03:07

The plan was to leave at noon, but as always, while traveling, noon means 3:00, and to add to that that the bag wasn’t packed yet, it was 4:30. The bag eventually contained about 4 tshirts each, 8 pairs of socks 8 underwears, 2 bathing suites, extra pair of jeans and sneakers each. Some toiletry, laptop, GPS, cellular modem and cameras, chargers for all of the above, sketchbooks and paints and that’s about it. Very little for home, a lot when you have to carry it all into every restaurant you want to go in.

Holland Tunnel

If this was one of those new age spiritual books, every reference to the road would mean something about life. Maybe this one does, but I have, but I have no idea what it is. First lesson on the road – Never leave in rush hour. Manhattan is all plugged traffic just stand still, we are already stressed about leaving so late. We just stand there, looking at spring sales in expensive fashion stores and wait. A police man right in front of us directing the traffic and probably making a bigger mess then necessary. Eventually, we can’t take it anymore, I get off the bike and take Ned’s helmet, he pushes the bike in the middle of the road, probably pissing off a whole bunch of people. After a block, we get on it again and wait till the next police man will let us through. A woman on a larger Hearly smiles at us, her bike is purple and silver, she’s wearing a matching helmet and have 2 large side bags and a big striped handbag strapped to the language rack in banji cords. She say hi. Her license plates say “May” and have “California” written on them. “Are you out for the weekend?” She asks, Ned say that we are just starting a 2 weeks trip down the Appalachian Mountains and ask her if she’s from California. I’m trying to guess if she just came from there. She looks tough and tanned. “I’ve been in NY for 6 years now, but the insurance is cheaper, so the bike’s listed on my Dad” We pass her as we go through the Holland Tunnel.

Stopping for Gas

New Jersey is the opposite of Tel Aviv, it looks good from distance, but pretty ugly up close. Traffic is getting thinner and right after the toll. We are stopping in a gas station. It’s filled with cars. An old man stops with a smoking engine, his wife, a dyed blond in her 60’s looks strange all dressed up in a gas station, she yells at him as he’s trying to explain the problem to the gas station worker. Then she goes into the bathroom. I look at the street, 5 of the 6 houses are up for sell or rent or the windows are blocked with wood. A bunch of kids, all probably the same age, but in that awkward age in which some of them look like scrawny boys and some are already as tall as a man sits on the stairs leading to one of the houses. They talk and every couple of seconds one start punching the other. They play, well, not really, they are just there with nothing better to do. A man walks a huge black dog, and I see a stork flying in the sky. A policeman in uniforms comes over, he asks about our destination, I don’t feel like being friendly, but then he start talking about how he used to do the same trip to upstate New York every June for 6 years in a row.

CheeseQuake PKY (yes, it’s really a name of a place)

We ride and ride, the mind that at first is full of thought, ideas, fears and anxiety is starting to clear, I’m just looking at everything and it’s so beautiful. The sun, not quite setting yet, but the light, under the clouds is starting to get all golden. We pass through a forest and a river and a small perfectly shaped swamp. A white large bird in the air, then suddenly it ducks and dive straight into the water, just to come out a second later holding a fish in its beak. I see all that in a split second before the bike moves on.

All Seasons Diner

Eventually we stop, it’s 7:30 and we are both cold and hungry. It’s one of those horrid sprawl malls, with a Macy’s and an Appelbies and a JC Penny’s, on the other side of the street there’s a diner, but it takes us a while to find the right road to get to it. It’s very crowded inside, mostly, old people, it looks like every part was built or decorated in different time and nothing match. We sit next to a display of huge cakes. As we order, we turn on the computer. We open the map file online and add a couple of stops from the day, I pull out the SD card of the camera and slide it into the computer. I love that feeling of being amazed with the immediacy of technology, of the fact that I can sit in some NJ diner and put photos and text on a map that people everywhere can see as I’m working on it. It feels like being amazed by the grandeur of nature, though instead of feeling connected to some primal past, I feel like I’m connected to a future. In both cases, the only way I can describe this feeling is “ It’s like in a movie” meaning it’s larger then my own life, I feel connected to something larger than me. We order omelets which turn to be surprisingly good, and we plan the trip on the Hearly Davidson site, picking someone’s saved trail and changing the first destination point to our home. We sit there for about 2 hours. In the bathroom, on the toilet paper holder someone wrote “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time” and I feel sort of good to recognize it’s a Chuck Palinhuk quote and wonder how many other people have recognize that. And I’m thinking of living life to their fullest and how this trip is like that, just going and doing stuff and having a good story to tell. 2 women sitting in the next stalls are talking about a friend who pretended not to see them in the street because she just had a face lift. “If I ever get rich” one of them say “I’m getting my chin fixed, it just dropped over night, my DR. said he can’t do anything about it, because it’s cosmetic and the insurance doesn’t cover it, but he said that DR. Greco is the best. It just happened over night, I’m telling you, The DR. said it’s Gravity, I don’t care what it is, just fix it”.

Burger King

We stop about an hour later, it’s already 10:00. The only place that’s open is Burger King in some strange food hall that looks the same way mental institutes looks in movies. Big neon lit open space with chairs set in line in front of a TV showing CNN. We have coffee and tea and look for a hotel on the GPS. We are close to a shoreline and the air outside is breezy. All the hotels have names like “pinebeach” and “del mar” and “waterfront”. We google them, Hooking the computer to an electricity outlet under a pay phone. CNN is talking about a person who was bitten by a shark. We check pictures of the room and prices, eventually we come across one that looks nice, we want to call and check if they have any rooms, but then Ned can’t find his phone, we look everywhere, and it’s nowhere. We left it at home. He feels stupid and I’m getting stressed, I don’t know why. I’m getting this mental image of us stuck somewhere and not able to call for help. CNN is talking about the Obama Campaign and about the prices of oil. We decide to get a hotel room and search for the phone and decide what to do later.

Motel

We ride and the road is dark and pretty. It’s one of those long long roads with a bunch of motels, car dealerships and restaurants on both sides. I’m taking pictures looking for where the most light is. I think about this: During the day, on the road, nature overcomes, I shoot trees and fields and clouds, the beauty of nature trumps all and I try to avoid buildings and cars and get all the other stuff. But at night, the nature parts become gaps of darkness in the scenery, and manmade is the only thing I can shoot or see. I love that darkness of seeing a lake or the ocean at night, knowing that it’s there just because of the absence of any light. But I cannot capture that image in my camera or describe it in words, it’s like silence, like nothing, but beautiful. We cross a bridge onto an island, it’s full of tiny houses and tiny motel, it’s probably very crowded in here in the summer, but it’s still the end of April now and almost all the motels are closed. Eventually we find an open one, the Sea Palace Inn It’s full of teenagers for some reason, something about prom night special. We take the elevator up. In the room next to us, 5 or 6 teenager lay down on 2 queen size beds and watch “Borat” on TV. Two of them smoke outside, on the balcony. The noises die down shortly after we enter the room.

Our Wedding

2008-03-29T04:02:43+03:07

This was such an amazing experience, right before I left for Israel, I got contacted by Etsy's video article expert Tara Young who wanted to do a video article about us. I send her a written story a couple of months before when they asked for stories about handmade weddings. We manage to schedule the shoot a couple of days before my trip and so it was a wonderful surprise to be able to see this movie all edited and made on the day I returned. It's hard for me to not think I look stupid on camera, but I really love the way it came out. with the trip to Israel and all, and this feeling like such an important time in our relationship and life in general, it's really wonderful to have this beautiful overview of the beginning of our love.

Jet Lag

2008-03-28T20:55:13+03:07

Jet lag

Back in New York.

Every time I fly I feel like such an international success story or something, as if I do this all the time and am quite used to it by now and I loathe those overly excited Israeli cry babies who act as if this is the first time they are flying and everyone should be extra nice to them. I always thank everybody and try to be extra polite. I guess it’s just another way of acting all provincial.

Right now time measures in a different way. I took the lap top into the city, and I forgot the charger so now time measures by the length of the battery life. After trying, in vain, to connect to some Wifi connection in Starbucks and finished writing an e-mail I can’t really send to my family in Israel, I have 14 minutes (19%) to finish this.

Time bends, it seem, especially when traveling, somehow the distance multiply the time or vice versa and the distance between New York and Israel effected also the perception of time. The weirdest thing about Israel was how unweird it was to be there, how familiar everything was. The strangest thing about New York is its unfamiliarity. In the taxi, on the way to our apartment, l look at the buildings, the trees, the empire state and the Williamsburg bridge with the eye of a tourist, and with the eyes of a resident and with my own eyes. And it’s so confusing I just want to close my eyes and disappear.

I don’t know why, but I have the feeling as if this sensation, of calling 2 places home is unique to me, as if it’s totally unexplainable and ununderstoodable to anyone aside of myself, as if the finer points of this sensation are so alien, so against all human experience that there’s no word for it. Which is funny, because it’s just not true, maybe the reason I feel like it’s so alien is that it’s so new to me. Maybe it’s so foreign to my definition of what home is that I can’t really place it within my realm of experience and notions.

We sit in that taxi and we talk, he missed me so much, and I missed him, of course, but it’s different living in our home without me as opposed to being somewhere else. He’s so beautiful, that always catch me by surprise and the way our apartment smells like him, everywhere. We talk, and I mention how different it was being in Israel, how much, even after a year and a half of New York living, it still feels more like home. And I see him cringe and hurt for that, as if it’s some competition he needs to win, a war waged against a whole country for my heart.

It’s odd how I can mark this specific date of making choices, a harsh line between past and future, and still, to feel like I’m stuck on that line, somewhere on the air between 2 continents and 2 different lives.

4 minutes and 6% of battery left, I get one of those “please save your files or you might lose your work” massages on the bottom of the screen. Trying to ignore the bad Starbucks music, on the table behind me a mother and a daughter speaks in Hebrew, I turn to look, they have H&M and Filline Basement bags, the daughter have a bag I saw the other day in a store window in King George street. They talk about shopping, I think, it’s hard to follow, over the sound of other conversations and the music. They look at a small map of Manhattan, the laminated one I used to carry around when I just moved here.

I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worst.

Terminal 02

2008-03-28T05:40:05+03:07

I'm in Zürich's airport. It's beautiful, it looks like the way airport would look like in movies, rather then the way they actually look in reality. all steal and glass and gray concrete and black leather couches. The large windows are open to a forest and a snowy mountain and a airplanes. I've slept in the plane, though badly, so I'm tired and cranky and feel very exposed in an old dirty sweatshirt and a pair of jeans I've worn basically every day in the past 2 and a half weeks.

It's strange to be here, so far from everything I know. I'm hungry, I think about the last meal I had, Sushi in a cheap tiny restaurant on Ben-Yehuda st. and Ben Gurion ave. Me and my sister laughing at the size of their bathroom and talk, what about really? I can't remember now. Just stuff, and the amount of comfortableness I felt. Like I know everything, like I can't embarrass myself in Tel Aviv, can't do the wrong thing cause I understand the rules and how it works.

I sit on one of those airport cafes, an open space next to those huge windows, around me, two French business man are showing each other funny YouTube clips and laugh, a German blond couple are trying to talk quietly while still keeping an eye on the baby. A bald man browsing a paper notebook while his wife dropping off duty free bags, a Muslim woman with a trolley suitcase and an orange and pink floral headdress is chewing gum while her middle aged husband looks at the menu.

I'm trying to connect to the internet, but fail, I might or might not payed for it, but still I can't seem to be able to log on, I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone, and lifting my head I notice that the other laptop user I saw before already left for his flight. I eat a bad and over priced ham and cheese bagel. The prices on the menu are in Swiss Franks, so I'm not even sure how much it costs, I leave a 20$ bill and get change in strange beautiful coins I've never seen before.

The trip to Israel, now, after a night of very little sleep, feels so far away, and NY feels even farther. Airport always feels as if you spend all your life there, even if it's just for a couple of hours.

Terminal

2008-03-26T06:09:04+03:07

It's almost 5:00 AM and I'm so tired, sitting at gate B8 in Terminal 3 in the Ben Gurion airport in Israel.

I'm really tired and restless, I want to be on the plane already, to be moving, in transit. The past couple of weeks were so busy and so crazy, it feels as if this is the first time I'm resting, sitting, and I don't really want to.

It was so packed and busy, and happy and sad and very emotional, I'm not quite sure what went on, a lot of beginings and no endings, threads of stories and moments and parts of conversations and places rather then a linear sensible journy.

I'm sad to leave Israel, I can't wait to get home.

Chance meetings

2008-03-20T15:37:06+03:07

1. an old freind's flatmate

My best freind and neighbore, from 6 years ago, we used to live dore to dore for almost 2 years. She and I shared everything, meeting in her place or mine or in the coffee shop a coupel of blocks away. She was inlove with a guy who told her, upon their first meeting that he wouldn't go into a relatioship with her. It was all so complicated, she was the ex of a good freind and an ex lover of mine. It was so much that tight Tel Aviv bubble of 3 people chasing their own tails.

We lost touch, she went to India and I was angry, she wasn't there for me, after my big break up the way I wanted her to be. We have changed so much, I think, just didn't have room in eachother's live for one another. I knew she got married, and living in Haifa.

taking a turn into my sister's street I meet her ex flat mate woh tells me she is pregnant and about ot have a baby in

Sadness (it's a drag)

2008-03-16T15:56:58+03:07

So today it's finally hit me, that sadness I was waiting for since I landed. I guess up until now I was busy being amazed at the strangeness of this and get lagged, but today, finally, after my first good night of sleep, that knowladge that the word "home" will never mean the same thing for me. That connection to the self, of old and new and my collied into that horrible empty feeling of being a looser finally hit home.

What will I remember from this trip? I think, crossing from Yahuda ha'Levi st. to Rotchild via Ha'hasmonaim. Not the wonderful meeting with friends and that connection of love with people who, though I haven't seen in over a year, feels as close as ever. Not the beauty of Tel Aviv, my beloved city, not spending time with my sister. what I'll remember, I think, is those dead hours, like now, walking aimlessly from one place to the other, too slow and my back killing me from lagging this heavy lap top around and having no phone so, basically, communication, both technically and emotionally is just too damn hard.

I feel so fucking homeless, and it's so strange how the practicality of not having my own apartment here, collide with the notion of multiple citizenships and immigrant mentality in one of those super obvious cheesy metaphors that only exist in movies or books and never happened in real life, cause real life is so much more intricate and less tidy, and so much more beautiful. Fractal, not calculus. And the only reason, I think about hat now, I know, is cause philosophical masturbation about the nature of life is fucking easier then feeling what I'm feeling.

So I'm trying to go to get a new ID card cause my old one is at my parents and I rather deal with strangers officials right now then call my dad. And I know what it takes cause I've done it before and also checked in their website, a 100 Shekels, a passport and photos, and I know I can get those photos over there, so I walk, they close at noon and it's already 10:30, so though I walk slow, I can still make it. It's hot outside, and I'm listening to "American Gods" my all time favorite book for traveling. Shadow's walking around in the snow looking for Alison's Body and talking to the people of Lakeside in a bar. I'm sweaty and eventually, I get there, only to have the clearest image of the passport laying snugly in my other bag back in my sister's apartment.

So I don't know what to do and I sit on the stairs leading to the building and deciding there isn't much to do.

I walk some more, in the headphones, The story of the African twins coming as slaves to America, I sit in a cafe that was redecorated and feels all different now, and that, more then anything, makes me feel like a stranger. I think of different layers of memory, of how I used to go there when I was living in the neighborhood and later on, though living elsewhere, going there cause it was near the movie theater or yoga.

I eat breakfast and write him an e-mail, and I feel guilty for not talking to him last night, and I feel guilty for not calling my grandparents even though I told them I'll come visit yesterday and didn't and I feel bad for messing up the ID thing and not calling my aunts yet and not really doing anything I needed to take care of yet, and I feel bad about taking room in my sister's house and messing up her life.

I get out and go to the medical center, I'm already there, so I think I'll take care of some medical stuff, but the DR is not in and the secretary looks at me with an angry "how did you NOT know that" look. So I leave and I walk around some more and I'm tired, so I decide to go to the the DR but she only start working at 4:30. I walk into the bank but again, can't manage to make what I want happened Everyone's being helpful but I just can't manage ot help myself.

Old old old behavior, old feeling that I thought were gone by now, the fear and isolation magnified by misuse.

I miss the way he balance me and makes me eat and sleep and drink water. I feel like without him I fall deep into the pit of myself, back into the kasem of fear and emptiness. And I hate not being able to balance myself, I know that my own courage, my own competent is in the bottom of that pit, after all that desert of fear had been crossed, and I hate that I feel so scared, so exposed on my own.

It's just too much like myself.

Strange Days

2008-03-13T19:46:59+03:07

I'm sitting on my own at Tazza D'oro in Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv.

Never my favorite place around, I'm not quite sure why I'm here right now, this whole day had been so strange in it's muddiness. I plug the new lap top to the electricity socket using the American-Israeli adapter I bought at the airport a couple of days ago when I landed.

I'm drinking an Americano and a glass of water, the Americano taste a lot more like Israeli black coffee, and the water, though I can't explain how, taste so different then they are in New York. There's music playing, some mild ambiance and as I type in English, I'm trying not to listen to the Hebrew conversation of the waiters and the people in the table on the other side of the cafe.

When I was blogging more, from this city, sitting alone in restaurant, thinking and drawing and then rushing home to type my thought in, I often thought about how it would be to own a laptop and blog on the go, just pouring the experiences and thoughts into the keyboard rather then wait for that moment in which experience turns into memory, doing this now, from here, feels very strange.

The thing that baffles me the most is the familiarity of things, I still remember where everything is, walking in the street I avoid my old apartments, my most favorite and emotional places, tomorrow, maybe, I'll deal with those. For now I just walking around amazed at how nothing have changed.

The thing I feared the most, I think was to come here and realize I don't like it anymore, or worst, that the big city that used to engulf and engage me, became small, tiny, like that feeling one gets visiting one's old elementary school or grandparents old house and realize they have grown out it's limitation.

But no, it's what it is, the city, the streets, smells I was so familiar with I didn't even knew they existed, the air with it's sandy texture and the smell of the sea.

However, it is nothing like what it was, it is not my home and it does not feel like home, it feels like - I don't know, maybe it's impossible to explain for someone who has not immigrated, how some places, which are not home can be more familiar and comfortable then home, how in getting used to not being 100% familiar with my surrounding, my mind used to translate, it feels very odd or intrusive to be in a place where I don't have to.

Sort of like going out in a pair of pajamas or falling asleep in a crowded place.