There are so many Englands.

Many of us create these Englands ourselves. We imagine it whole cloth, or bend the wood of its ancient trees, or embroider the land and its culture whether we mean to or not. I fully admit this, and have lived with the consequences.

This past trip to England ended a week ago, and I miss any sort of England that exists (be it real or no) and my own England. Each day puts my experiences more and more in the land of my own invention, my England, and less in one that might be visible to anyone else. This loss is one of melancholies of coming home. For me, this is compounded by my sleepy thoughtless loss of my travel notebook. Faithfully, for two weeks, I kept detailed thorough entries about my days only to lose it on the last leg of my very long day of travel.

But to speak of my trip itself improves things, as does posting my photographs, or thinking quietly to myself of living in some part of England again. I cannot recall everything; my photographs sadly do not contain scent (lavender and wet stone on the breeze so rich I do not even have to dip my head to find it); memories do not carry me back there. Still, we can enjoy these imperfect impressions and not hope that they are more than tiny views from moving windows.