Not too long ago, I was looking at a similar view when I wrote about breaking up with Manila. But for better or for worse, this place is still home, for now, and life has been sneakily getting better the more I embrace it for everything it is —- and isn’t.

Rilke once said: “If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.”

This has been in the back of my mind for the months I’ve been back, gnawing away like guilt, pushed aside by fear. A fear that staying here is settling, a settling for something less. I’m only beginning to learn to embrace what makes here and now so rich, to be as wide open as a traveler arriving here for the first time.

Home is still a question I’m trying to answer. But, as Rilke also says, “… the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”