The Time Traveler

The great oddity of moving time zones away from home isn’t the separation of space, which you can trace with a finger on a map, but the time divide. As I write this at 6:00am Sunday morning - and 10:00pm, Saturday night in California. Part of my brain will remain (even after jet lag eases) aware of that other time, and of the people I love moving through it. The awareness produces a sensation of splitting, not unpleasant, especially since this separation is voluntary, a privilege rather than a consequence of circumstance. My perceptions of both places, England and home, deepen. My sense of self as distinct and mutable, sharpens. I have to mark it down on a paper, before the awareness dulls and is lost again.