Coming back to the hometown has caused a stir in my willingness to do things, as I was doing them just a day before I arrived. Perhaps, owing to the fact that the weather is not helpful in the least. It is cold and dry and drab, and no matter how many clothes you stack onto your person, there is no respite towards the end of the day. You realise a breeze caught you at some point—and often you can place it with the accuracy of an astute detective for when it must have happened and how—and now you must lay and rest. Most of the last few days have been either this or worrying about the new apartment, things that remain undone, trinkets and furniture that remain unbought, deliveries that are pending, and cleaning that never ends. There was also an invasion by some ants practising the most subtle guerrilla warfare, but I reckon that was a minor episode and was thwarted by sealing the hole they had been using as an inlet into enemy territory. But yes, it has been different and distracting enough that I find myself in a fix yet again. And this is where my want for constance, for rigidity, comes into the picture again. Oh, how I would love a life with little change—the same home, the same places to visit, the same days to live. To many, it might sound like imprisonment, but to me, that is true freedom. To be unbothered by the other frivolities of the day and life, to be left alone to think, to read, to not have to worry about invitations, to have the stubbornness take such a hold on you that you simply reply “no” to all mail and messages, and not be bothered to give a reason. And when asked for one, you simply tell them that you are too busy, not lying, of course, but playing coy with the interpretation that busyness might look different for all of us, and for some of us, it is the blank nothingness to simply be.