rules of the wild

I read this book by a woman named Francesca Marciano and... Well, it kind of has become my favorite book ever. Everything she says seems to perfectly describe the things that I have felt since being in africa. And i love her for that. She articulates things in a way that i never could. So thank you Ms.Marciano.

...against your will you are forced to experience the euphoric horror of floating in emptiness, your moorings cut for good. It is an emotion which has slowly corroded all your ties, but it is also a constant vertigo you will never get used to. 

This is why one day you have to come back. Because now you no longer belong anywhere. Not to any address, house, or telephone number in any city. Because once you have been out here, hanging loose in the Big Nothing, you will never be able to fill your lungs with enough air. 

Africa has taken you in and has broken you away from what you were before.

This is why you will keep wanting to get away but will always have to return.

Then, of course, there is the sky. 

There is no sky as big as this one anywhere else in the world. It hangs over you, like some kind of gigantic umbrella, an takes your breath away. You are flattened between the immensity of the air above you and the solid ground. It’s all around you, 360 degrees: sky and earth, one the aerial reflection of the other. The horizon here is no longer a flat line, but an endless circle which makes your head spin. I’ve tried to figure out the trick that lies behind this mystery, because I don’t see any reason why there should be more sky in one place than in another. Yet I haven’t been able to discover what is the optical illusion that makes the African sky so different than any other sky you have seen in your life. It could be the particular angle of the planet at the equator, or maybe the way clouds float, not above your head, but straight in front of your nose, sitting on the lower border of the umbrella, just on top of the horizon. Those drifting clouds which constantly redesign the map: in one glance you can see a rainstorm building up north, the sun shining in the east, and grey sky in the west which is bound to turn blue any minute. It’s like sitting in front of a giant TV screen looking at a cosmic weather report.