For me, it's a period of renewal. The lingering alterations to my perception last for months, where reality and everyday experience becomes re-awakened within me and I feel again more aware and conscious of my place in it. This period allows me to observe my own life from a greater perspective, to step back, and then to re-integrate. I remember who I am relative to my life story and who I want to be. This exalted reality appears at every flick of the eye, at every step and every line of thought and contemplation. The natural environment, including the empty paths of the park and the bustling sidewalks of the market, the neighborhood's trees, plant-life, front porches and gardens and branches and leaves and lawns and the people around and the sound of my feet flapping on the naked skin of the earth, and the sky and the rain and the clouds and the fog, all gain a sense of depth, of yes-ness and perceptual certainty. My thought processes appear brighter, crisper to my mind, and I become cognizant of their flaws--though always aware of their architectural beauty--the greater goals in my life, the people around me, the systems I rely on, including my means for achieving positive emotion. I fall in love again with life. Passive dissatisfaction fades and affective engagement imbues moment-to-moment experience with tart-cheeked gnawing ivory. Distressing memories become objects of jovial disregard and present-ness and playful optimism take over.

And the stillness lingers on.