I recognized that knowledge we sometimes get in advance when travelling or moving to a new city - here's a place that will have its way with me.

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place.  Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different... My rational thought processes cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.  I'm here because I climbed out the window at night when I was four.

Southerners have a gene, as yet undetected in the DNA spirals, that causes them to believe that place is fate.  Where you are is who you are.  The further inside you a place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it.  Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.

At home I dream of former houses I've lived in, of finding rooms I didn't know were there. Many friends have told me that they, too, have this dream.

Siesta… what a marvelous concept.  For three hours in the middle of the day, you are invited to your own interests and desires.  In the good part of the day, too, not just the evening after an eight- or nine-hour day slogging away.