where am I?

I'm back from the lake. 

I'd forgotten how lovely lakes are.  Such a pleasure to gaze at the water, trees and sky.  A different experience than gazing at the ocean, waves and sky. Whatever, it's all time-consuming, I'm happy to say.  And harrowing, too.  It makes you think too much and that's hard work and can be quite frightening. 

We drove back last evening, back to my daughter's home in Quincy (Massachusetts), and I woke early this morning wondering what on earth I'm doing here.  Not here, but here, on this earth. Travel in any form, however modest, does that to one - to me, anyway. You move your body through time and space, as I've said before, and then you wonder where you are. You carry the cocoon with you, of course, the transparent bubble that you live inside and look out of  - if you're lucky.  Too many people have their bubble pierced or shattered. I'm one of the lucky ones: my bubble is intact, maybe a few dents or cracks, like the wounds on a windshield, but I can still breathe and see.  It's the change of scene that I'm looking at that becomes so mind-boggling.  As I drove last night, a docile passenger with a beloved chauffeur, I looked at the highway and trees and the roadside signs,  bridges, rivers, church steeples, on and on to the city entrances and exits and the signs and commercial come-ons, and I thought of all the places I have so recently seen on my "trip of a lifetime"  and of all the people I buzzed over and past  - no - passed.  Passed over. 

It's scary. 

I have to think some more.