internal weather report

I have just realized something. Or, rather, something has just hit me, with such a staggering force that I feel a little like I've been punched. I have just realized that I miss sitting on grass, and rock, and tree branches, I miss the sounds of wind through thousands of leaves, trickling water, and hearing leaves and gravel crunch under my feet.

For three months now I've lived and explored this city of Taipei, trying to come to terms with the culture, its people, its traditions. But now, I simply miss what I cannot seem to find here, and that is a specific kind of weather, nature, atmosphere, that I can visualize more easily than express. I miss having seasons, especially, desperately, autumn. I miss experiencing a thunderstorm, hearing, feeling, and breathing it in, and being able to see its effects on the land, rather than simply a city that has been drained of color. I miss the prickling almost-annoyance of a thousand grass blades pressing into my prone body from below, with the sun beating down from above and fleeting clouds moving swiftly past.

I should have known; after all, I think I will always be a country bumpkin at heart, regardless of how my relatives praise my "city suaveness," and the fact that I am now comfortable using all forms of public transportation here. And I realize I am waxing terribly poetic about this, but I feel the effects of this as if it were some terrible reversal of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

...

I am also hungry, and past experience has taught me that my empty stomach makes me all shades of irritable.