leaving on a jet plane

I am convinced that coming back to one's childhood home actually involves processes of repetition - this time consciously so. It is, once again, my mother's small posy of flowers on the windowsill - one sole late summer rose, and by now, my last morning drooping like something out of post-lapsarian Paradise Lost. I've been putting together slides for tomorrow morning's class on the 1960s - convinced that "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was a Vietnam song, I used it in today's title - but I can't find quick proof one way or the other. But what I did find when looking for course materials was this amazing set of memories and footage about the Grosvesnor Square anti-Vietnam demonstration in 1968 - narrated in a quite perfectly English way.

http://tinyurl.com/ylnvsc4

I wouldn't for a minute want to be next to me on this upcoming Virgin flight - I am deeply suspicious - have been for a while - that I am turning into an English hog, and even if I'm not actually swinish - who knows? - I would assuredly be thrown into quarantine if I were attempting to enter some countries.

Always hard leaving; always hard writing about it adequately: I find myself pressing up against my self-imposed limitations about public blogging: more on this self-reflexive topic at the end of the year.