Morning:
Still some residual euphoria about being home, in familiar territory. In the headlines we see the President talking to the United Nations. I recall reading somewhere that prior to his election, he had only left the country a few times. (The actual number of trips is somewhat unclear, according to this source.) Even so, he usually traveled in a delegational bubble.

I suppose there's a lot to be said for traveling with a posse of aides, but it's probably not the same kind of experience. Did he experience the same sort of dislocation as the average traveler, fumbling with coins in the corner mini-mart? The same sort of glaring awkwardness when it turns out yours is the only American accent in the room? The sense of standing on a corner with a map and realizing that you've no idea where you came from and where you're going?

I expect not. That may explain why he's able to talk to the United Nations with a head-spinning sense of entitlement.

Evening:
A smooth, efficient doctor goes over me but the stethoscope isn't cold. I have bronchitis (but probably not pneumonia), and that I have also fractured a rib from the attendant coughing. I have swank slick pink pills and codeine. When I get outside it's raining, and I am momentarily disoriented--not only by directions, but by the unaccustomed pain.

The office sounds like a TB ward, and D says in chat he's been in bed for 9 days. So not only have I moved in the strange shoes of a foreigner, I am now inhabiting body of a little old woman.

And that was morning and that was evening on the second day of autumn.