The return to Kilkenny in Spring of 2004

I returned to Kilkenny Ireland in early March 2004, from Nijmegen where I'd been living with Kim in a tiny student room, and working a few hours per week at a bakery.

I'd never be able to explain nor to justify my trip back to Kilkenny, which lasted until mid-April.

Kim had fallen into steep depression over the winter of '03-'04, and although she was doing better at the time, I cannot offer any rationalization for my decision that vindicates my good intentions. I propose that I was frightened, and ran away.

I have other explanations, but I cannot wash that one away. She asked me, once, some time later, and I could not explain.

I did have a plan, such as it was. The inspiration for this idea — truth being its own force — was a thought that I had whilst experiencing the first, grueling part of a mushroom trip in Amsterdam with a friend of mine. (Or, more accurately, whilst separated from him, off in my own awful state.)

I'd go to Ireland where I could work; save some money; go to the States, where I'm from, and there apply back to Holland for legal resident status. (That is the way it's supposed to work, on the books — the deeply bureaucratic books.)

It sense in the moment, and I believe motivated me to think accordingly; to wit: go to Ireland.

And I did.

I got my old job back, working with a friend, doing industrial cleaning — hardly as bad as it sounds. Windows, floors and carpets, odd jobs here and there about town and region.

I got my old apartment back, and my old room.

Kim needed me, though.

I had to go back.

I missed her, too.