One year ago today, I landed at Logan Airport in Boston, still drunk on Tokyo, 13 hours with Japan Airlines, Natalie Portman in The Black Swan, twentysomething hours without sleep and a glass or two of wine. I fell comfortably into the arms of my family; the young children — who had not been told of my pending arrival — fainted on cue; lasagne and Girl Scout cookies were fed to me and I fell into a deep sleep for exactly one week.

I knew then that it would be a good long while before I returned to Asia. My father had suffered a 1-2-3 punch of illness and injury during my last two years in Korea, and small children were growing at alarming rates among my brethren. I loved living in Asia; it treated me so well. But I’d outgrown the distance separating me from my people. The distance separating me from ovens and microbrews and not-needing-a-translator-for-everything. So when a friend offered me a position as his Art Director at a small agency in a small New England town on the New Hampshire seacoast, I jumped.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I would stop writing in this space. I had stockpiled stories and photographs (more…)