like the deserts miss the rain

God i miss England. Next time i go back, it'll be to visit the coast, maybe down in the southwest. i miss those long coastal walks from the geography trip to Slapton Ley. i miss Dartmoor. i miss the woods in Oxford. i miss the lakes up north. Oh God i miss England -- the landscape there -- so much, it hurts.
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It's interesting -- i think i'm a "victim" of literary colonisation. After all, if you spend your childhood reading books set in a particular country, you can't help but absorb things about its culture. i was reading books set in England all the way till my first visit there in 1994, and then some. (Quite some...) The rolling hills felt so familiar, somehow. And it's only in the last 2 or 3 years that i've gradually realised why. i'd spent my entire reading life up to that point reading about English landscapes. For crying out loud, i studied Thomas Hardy for 'S' paper -- Mr Lush-Elegaic-Gorgeous-Descriptions-Of-English-Landscapes himself. How could i do otherwise than to feel these landscapes as home?
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