Homeward bound

After the movers left yesterday, as I settled into the reality of needing to write another ten pages, several songs kept running through my head:

• Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn." OK, really just the one line. Over and over again. Mayhaps this reflects the small nibbles of sleep I've managed over the past four or so days? It was the loudest in my head last night as the clock rounded on 4 am. I think there may also be something to the fact that today is the first day in a good week or so that I can head to bed early and not worry that I'm neglecting anything. Coincidentally, I'm in a New York city that begins with B.
  
• Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound." Tomorrow I will step off a plane and into my family's arms.* One of the thoughts that has kept me going in the past two weeks plus that we've been in different countries is the moment that Scooter will throw himself into my arms. (Sorry, Trillian, you'll have to wait for the second hug.)
  
• Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street." I have three CDs on my laptop and I listened to them several times yesterday as I worked on my paper. It's not even my favorite song from Shaking the Tree (a sort of 'greatest hits' album that's now 17 (!) years old, but has amazing harmony and a tendency to sneak into my head. I think, perhaps, that this is also my subconscious' recognition that I could definitely use a little mercy from my professor.
  
• with occasional instrumental interludes courtesy of the strings in Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner." Solitude Standing is another of the CDs on my laptop, so that's another song I've heard multiple times recently. There's something about the strings part of the instrumentation that is particularly melancholy and captures the introspective nature of that song so well. And I have most definitely been dwelling in my head, perhaps a bit too much.

The words, non-school words, are starting to come back to me. There are sentences, non-academic sentences, wanting to be written. I am ready.

*Obviously not directly. First I'll have to push my way through the gate area and then search for Trillian and Scooter in the crowd before I will actually get my hug.