This place is haunted.

I have been remiss in posting for the last week. I am back in the States, at my parents' house, with a cold and without any particular responsibilities.
The flight back from Japan was in coach and difficult. I did not have the vast array of sleeping pills with me that I had taken on the flight out, so I was awake for most of the 9+ hours, reading Ibuse's Black Rain. After all, the one thing you want to be doing while you're 3000 feet above the Pacific ocean and trying to fall asleep is read about the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima. I am a smart woman.
Once I arrived at LAX, I had to go through agricultural customs and throw away two grapefruit I hadn't wanted to throw out in Japan (fruit, after all, is expensive). Amanda picked me up, and from there, I spent most of the next two and a half days asleep on a bed I had made out of the cushions of her love-seat. When I was awake, I walked around her neighborhood looking for food, and had the odd experience of being honked at by men in cars. I felt like an observer, taking data as to what "Los Angeles" was like. Apparently in Los Angeles, men will try to hit on me, and the 7-11 will have a gigantic "Coffee Station" with at least 8 different types of coffee available for purchase. That last part really puts the US convenience stores back in the running against the Japanese stores.
In LA, I also saw my advisor, and tried to make him laugh at my stories as I always do. He offered me a bit of extra funding, which I took despite feeling guilty about it. I fled two large debts in Japan, after all, that I'd like to settle before I have to return to the country. If everything works out, I might be out of debt for the first time in years, come September. We shall see.
On the way to my parents' house, I read A Moveable Feast for the first time, and fell back into love with Hemingway, despite the cliche-ness of it. Next came Didion's Play it as it Lays, which is biting and sad and uncomfortable. Both novels made me dislike the verbosity of my writing (and speaking); their words are sharp, and both leave out anything in their stories that is not absolutely essential. I like that; it leaves the stories feeling clean and presses the mind to create the details of each scene on its own.
Anyway, now I'm at "home", spending my time eating, sleeping, and ransacking my stepdad's music collection. I now have a lot of George Harrison and John Lennon solo works added to my music collection, and Beatles rarities, and an anthology of the Yardbirds, just to name some. I finally have a reliable internet connection here, and have been dling a lot of random things as well (to offset the Beatles' slant). Stocking up, I suppose, for the future. Pity my poor computer's hard drive. There are also a lot of cats here, who like to poke around while I'm typing and use the corners of my laptop to scratch their cheeks. Cute, until your laptop is coated in cat fur and your eyes start to itch. My years away from home have made me weak where pet dander is concerned.
I still have over a week of family time, but I've started already to become anxious about returning to Ann Arbor. Won't it be so sad, after all, to see all these places I remember so well, without so many of the people I associate with them? I feel like the nostalgia is going to beat me with a hammer. When I think of the town, I think of drinking outside on someone's steps and feeling lonely. On my own front porch last summer on the phone with George, or on Sara's with B drinking some fruity mess, feeling scared and strange in the back of my mind even in company. Or at the bar, sitting in a mess of peanut shells, laughing and happy but afraid to go home and be alone again.
At this rate, my sentimentalism will be the death of me.