Far below is the icy landscape of Greenland or northern Canada, its mountains,  its giant fissures and frozen lakes.

When I look down from a plane I think how we struggle with small undulations, tiny creatures that we are, like insects on a duvet cover.

I feel happy.

Maureen texted me. “bonvoyage n njoyyrslf. xx”, she wrote.

It all seemed so easy, so natural. What do I do now?

She is more than 25 years younger than me.

Yesterday, when I was out running, Charlie Venn was standing in the lane by his farm to stop traffic.

“I’m putting the cows to grass”, he said. “At first, they were slow to see the gates were open.”

Now they were charging across the road, tails up, kicking out their heels, jostling.

“The day of the dancing cows,” he said.

As we come down, I survey the huge expanse of Los Angeles, spilled out across the desert.

I am here for a reunion. I will see the man who first hired me, who was a good mentor and became a fine editor.

The reunion is in Palm Desert where he retired.

I have borrowed an apartment in Koreatown, near where Julie and I lived when I started work on the paper he once edited.

Oh, my America, my new-found-land. 

(Then I remembered that phrase comes from a wonderful erotic poem by John Donne.)