When I woke up this morning the swollen ball of pain that had been lodged in my throat for the past two days had dissolved enough to allow me to swallow. At the time it seemed an improvement. After twelve hours of dry coughs that threaten to tear out my much-abused throat and leave it in a bloody heap on the floor, however, I'm no longer quite so sure that it was such an improvement. Maybe the knotted lump was better.

As a celebratory gesture towards being out of bed and able to stand upright for more than a few minutes at a time, I worked on rearranging my room this afternoon. My goal is to shape it into something that at least resembles a place in which I might voluntarily live. So far I haven't had much success, though today's efforts did bring at me least a tad (a skosch?) closer. Of course, I do have to realize that by my standards it will never truly be home until at least one wall is smothered in books-- and that's simply not going to happen here.

Still, despite the aesthetic and literary inadequacies of my flat, it does feel surprisingly like home. Maybe that's partially because after nine (or maybe more?) moves in the past five years it doesn't take me long to settle into a place. But the feeling of home-ness extends beyond the walls of this apartment and out into the streets of the city. Returning from Cyprus earlier this week gave me a quite shocking sense of homecoming, of regaining the familiar and secure. Granted, I only have to walk out into the street and try to talk to someone (female, of course) to have at least some of that illusion swept away. But the sensation is there none the less.

After two days of imprisonment I'm eager to go out tomorrow and conquer the world. Or at least watch some of it go by. But my desire for freedom is in some part quelled by my body's sudden and insistent craving for more sleep. Perhaps I shouldn't have moved all that furniture on my own this afternoon. Maybe I simply need to drink more orange juice. Whatever the case, I betake my weary self to bed.