Never dreamed I could use that word for the Middle East. Definitely the feeling, though.

I was supposed to read The Sheltering Sky ten years ago. I couldn't though, not because it was assigned, like all the other great books I screwed myself out of reading, because I was drowing in the desert already.

My little brother, who is always a good judge of these things, wrote me while I was living in Kuwait, and assured me it would ease the pain.

There was a lot of pain, along with a great deal of wonder. But the advice arrived too late. I knew the understanding would help me in the long run, but I had my hands full with the short. Life was freaking hard over there, and I couldn't live it all day and relax with an imaginary version at night.

But I got back to the states eleven years ago, still had the copy, and something made me pick it up.

Took me nearly a month to slog my way through seven brief but grueling chapters and then suddenly on page 62, Vintage International edition, it suddenly opened up for me and I began relishing it.

Don't remember any book ever turned around that abruptly. Basically, one of the three miserable main characters revealed a hidden side that explained not only him, but what the other two were doing with him in the Sahara, and we were off.

It didn't just get better from there. It did gradually get better, but in part two it took a far more dramatic turn and morphed into something qualatatively different, beyond anything I would have imagined.

And then in the brief third section, it morphed again. More remarkably still.

I hope that's not maddeningly vague. Really don't want to wreck it for you. (Even if I'm the last person on earth to get to it.)

Made me feel a whole lot of things, and homesick shouldn't have been the most powerful, but I'm afraid it was. I had no idea how ready I was to get back there. Arabia, maybe, but Asia and North Africa in general. Still haven't gotten to Nepal. Or Cambodia or Bali, or, damn, don't get me started.

I am so ripe for an adventure.

But I've got work to do.

Maybe when I finish my book. I get to get everything when I finish my book. So I better get back to it. But not tonight.

There's this poem.

And there was this boy. (Adult boy.)

We drove each other nuts, but we couldn't stay away. And then I read this poem, and I had a name for the attraction.

None of the racial stuff applied. (Neither of us is Native American, like Sherman), but that's the great thing about poetry. You don't need to apply all of it to anyone thing. I felt the force when I read it. I had felt that force in my life. I understood. Finally, I understood.

It's long since over with the guy, but this other guy was just asking about it, and I dredged it up, and it's such a great piece of work I just had to share it with the rest of you.

That "weight, size, dream" part really gets to me.

Even though I was running in the oposite direction at the time. Funny how I completely forgot it was about a breakup. You take what you need, though, and I was moved by the intensity of the force I was still feeling.

And the idea zips right back into my head every time I think about that boy.

Wish I could have expressed it like this.

Maybe some day I'll write a poem. Maybe.