Contrasts

While I was dreaming this morning, I opened my left eye. The bright morning lit our ceiling, our wardrobe, the window, and my nose. Although my thoughts were deeply somnolent, I commanded myself to touch my nose to guarantee my location as fully present whether within a dream or awake. I felt myself touching my face. I saw no change from my open eye. This test having been tried three or so times, I was condemned to this half-world until I called out to myself, jumping up. I went to wipe my face, though now I saw my hands were deep under the covers.

"We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy your bodily warmth some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm." -Melville, Moby Dick

We explored ancient ruins today. Four Americans who had pulled to the side of the road in Turkey. To the side of a windy dirt road in the foothills. Across the valley from the mighty snow-capped Mt. Erciyes whose ashes once covered all our surroundings and were compacted into loose rock, easily chiseled. We ascended the foothills and dove in and out of man-made caves. Some were multi-story. Some had shelves, cubby spaces for beds, and chimneys clogged with fallen rock. This landscape is our home for now. It exists in parallel with those homes we left, the state we have in common that instilled us with the dialect and culture that so easily brings us together in this foreign land.