Stranger then a strange land

I'm going to admit right away - I'm a converted country boy.

I have adapted perfectly to the way of the big city, and I stopped praying to the gods of sun, wind and rain. I learned to thrive on all the candy and sweets that the big city hands out so readily when accepting us to her bosom and I've taught myself to accept that the price of that candy is concrete and steel - and I am never ever homesick.

That is, until I actually go home.

It was a beautiful late summer day today, first one after a few days of rain. I spent the day with my family, sharing endless talks with my old man, next to a glass of whisky. After we exhausted everything from philosophy, over politics to sports, I left, deciding to take a detour through the fields on my way home.

Fields of still green corn were stretching into the rolling hills covering the horizon in the distance like a row theatre props, with rows upon rows of unharvested orange pumpkins in between. Smell of grass mixed with the aroma of the humid soil evaporating under the last rays of sun filled my nose.

The hum of frenzied swarms of insects under constant attack from the restless swallows dashing in and out, harvesting their evening meal, gave everything a subtle, subliminal undertone.

A couple of deer jumped over the country road as I continued home, mind half absent, thinking about the day after tomorrow when I'm about to leave again, travel home to the foreign land as one poet once said.

Whenever anyone asks me whether I'm home sick, the answer will be no, because I'm never under this constant feeling of longing, but every now and then, the sun will play a trick on me when I'm passing Belgian countryside, and the picture will be a perfect mirage, a mimic of these fields here, and my heart will skip a beat.

It is like an old, past love that you generally don't think about, every now and then however, you drive past that bench where you sat together, the sun is just as it was back that evening years ago and a familiar song is coming out of your car's radio,

and if your heart is not made of iron and concrete, you will feel it.