Comrades,

I have remained static, while the location around me has changed. Gone are the steel-reinforced walls of the Ministry of Interior. In their stead, I have the comfort of higher sort. Apparently, a pack of wild dogs had claimed my new home some months before we arrived. As such, evil has taken on a new face; though rabies has seldom looked cuter. Beucephalus, a heroic if not starved beast, likes to wake me every morning with his affectionate howls and his disease-infested drool. He and I share a strong disliking for the rats that have begun to wage war with the dogs for rule over my new kingdom. But all is not lost as it seldom is.

Yesterday, I saw the most jaw-droppingly, heart-achingly, hit-in-the-stomach-with-a-piece-of-molten-lava breathtakingly beautiful sunrise. The clouds broke halfway across the horizon as the half-crescent of the sun climbed above the steps of wispy white, and bounced sunbeams like pebbles across the pond of the heavens. This was the sort of sunrise that you cannot escape. It would find you in your bed, kicking and screaming and bouncing upon your chest like a child at first, until you had lifted your eyes to look at it, when at once it would have transformed into something infinitely more glorious than you would have been ready and or willing to accept. Going back to sleep, you would have felt that matter of supreme importance waited for you to explore it, if only you could remember the proper time and place to greet it. This was the sort of sunrise that starts wars for the love of a woman. The sort of splendor that makes small men giants, and giants mountains, and mountains obstacles to the view of the sun and therefore subject to the wrath of small men.

I would have taken a picture, but I’m lazy.

At any rate, I check my email now and again these days. I should take a picture of my building, but I doubt that I ever shall. I’ve become selfish, prone to hoarding memories these days. Fortunately, I write less poetry (or none at all) than I used to. Speaking of the esophagus, I have written a little story, hardly more than a page, which I greatly enjoyed writing. In fact, it’s difficult to articulate, but I have felt quite so singularly alive–like really alive, conscious of the mindset of your toenails alive–in quite a long time. So I’ve decided to share my little bit of joy with you all, and hope that all will enjoy it.

Until our paths cross again, I remain,

Your friend and expatriate.