The white walls of this 5th floor apartment, not accented, but washed out with glaring cold-white lamps make this getaway feel more like we got caught.

Sure, it's only two nights, and the days are packed tighter than the van on moving day, but it brought back a feeling I haven't felt in more than two years, since we bagged that relaxing place near the forest on the very edge of the city.

I look out at the 50s-futuristic bridge, envisioned when the year two-thousand was going to be filled with flying cars and vacuum tubes that would transport busy people around the city like mail in a sorting room. Its a bold statement of progress that didn't go anywhere at all, as it towers over an old street a few minutes walk from an even older cathedral. It looks so exposed, like the tallest kid in the class - the skinny one with pale skin and a lazy eye. Kind of feel sorry for it, in an odd way.

These streets, with their blue lines and their cars that fill up every inch on both sides - how they damp the spirit on rained and stained October nights, with their graffiti and bad smells and alcohol. And how the days I spent in these neighborhoods feel so far behind me, they almost feel like I saw them in a movie; they can't have been mine because I'm not old enough to live this far away from them. All strange to return to with my new senses.

I don't miss the city, even if the occasional venture presents opportunities for social calls and a bit of noise besides that which I make myself with powertools and the like. A day or two is ok, I guess. Much longer, and I'm growing homesick for my quiet village. And my dog is doing the same, clearly disheartened by the noise and concrete and lack of fields and forests and streams.

But, here I am, and I will spend lavishly on cafes and book stores, just for a day or two, to inhale the dusty aroma of those little perks I do miss. And maybe I'll pick up a typewriter spool and an LP, just to treat myself. I have been working long nights, after all, and I can enjoy both of these things for so much longer than it took to work for them.

I miss a few other things, too. New faces and laughs, new places and parks, new lines to follow to who knows where. Train rides, the waterfalls of youth, and others, yet. The kind of looks that turn you inside out.

My old friends, many of whom left this city long ago, and those who didn't, but didn't notice that I did. I call them ghosts, because they don't seem real, anymore, yet I can still see them as though they are.

But these ghosts don't haunt me like they used to. We just kind of nod at each other when we pass by in the street, now. They look like they still want to haunt, but they know their days have been and gone. Ghosts who died again.

I reach a crossroad and turn left. There's a new idea brewing, that's got me all riled up. And beyond even that, the next thing, yet more exciting.

We are free, aren't we? And we're going to know it, soon. In a strange way, I think I'm going to miss these places more when there's no need, whatsoever, to return to them. Like cutting a cord and letting a boat drift out to sea with no interest in where it might wash up a month down the line.

It's funny how much you can get from white walls and tacky Ikea furniture.