My responses as they fell onto the yellow pad this morning:

• what does being away teach?

• realizing self as 'quaint' and 'marginalized' and 'irrelevant'

• a sauve qui peut time

• vow to retreat further into self-education, music, and Imagination

  We simply don't understand the society that could produce such a result, and I see no way to build a bridge to useful understanding. The task becomes: how to turn one's back on something so distasteful and malign, and to orient to something positive. I have a lifetime of resources at my fingertips.