to explode with mixed emotions

Lohbado swelled up and nearly burst

Lohbado felt bloated from eating peanuts and yoghurt, which he bought at a small store next to a gas station at a crossroads of secondary highways on the Plains of Radiation. He felt both hungry and full. His legs felt cramped. Lohbado stopped the 1967 Chevrolet Impala, had a drink of water and decided to hike across an empty cow pasture to have a look at the river.


Mid-April, there was still snow on the ground, in shaded areas and along the river bank. The soft semi-frozen ground, the smell of earth and damp wood, the sound of crows, ones of straw stubble brought Lohbado back to life. Just to be out of the car, in a spacious field in a northern landscape felt relaxing. Worry dissolved. To walk on the earth, to stand on a river bank, on some coarse patches of grey snow, to watch blocks of ice float down stream, it made him feel spacious and strong, after the heavy claustrophobic dark days of a long cold winter.

He enjoyed being alone in a field on ground that had been turned a few years ago. Fields were created by ploughing under the bush, taiga region forest, cheaper land the farther north you go. Lohbado turned to the earth as a last resort in trying to find home. A year ago he went to where he was born. Twice he met strangers who asked him what he wanted, what was he looking for. He didn't belong. He should go back to where he came from. The place he was born was not the same. He was now a stranger to his birth place. He didn't belong there. He didn't belong in the place he just left. He didn't belong anywhere other than on the piece of ground where he happened to be standing. Lohbado laughed at the strangeness of the whole thing. By the time he got back to the car, his shoes were caked with mud.