I returned to a small island at the beginning of a new decade having spent some time away in another place that was not an island even though it was touched on a rather long side by the sea. In this place of deep European culture I saw very clearly that this mad thing that had taken hold of me had a weight and tradition as a medium of personal expression. This was not the case in back home. The written word was king then as it is now. I had also returned to a well-known place now made somewhat alien. A marooned island, stuck in a time long past. I became an exile in my own town and even the weather seemed to be perpetually grey and a thin wind constantly cut me to the bone as I stared and wandered and hunted and felt things with an intensity now partially diminished. I love my country. I hate my country.