One Thousand Eight Hundred Ninety-One Dollars And Thirty Two Cents

"D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I finished telling you about. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it.  All I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about....Don't ever tell anybody anything.  If you do, you'll start missing everybody."    -from The Catcher In The Rye 


My passport has run out of usable pages.  My remaining clothes are torn and stained beyond recognition.  My pack is in need of repair.  My copy of Siddhartha is being held together by packing tape and faith.  My sleep schedule is a mess.  I'm sitting on a comfortable leather chair sipping a perfect double-espresso.  I'm back in the United States of America.  In all honesty, it feels pretty good.

There is the fact that everyone speaks English and I can understand the conversations of nearby strangers and I'm understood when I ask where the tofu is, and there's the odd single-color currency, and there's the outrageous prices for everything and my barely-suppressed horror in the face of pervasive consumerism.  Of course in a few weeks or months I suspect that none of that will seem strange anymore.  But as I scan the internet for employment and read job descriptions that use the word "vacation" and ponder the notion of travel, not as a lifestyle, but as a short break before returning to a well-defined collection of constants, part of my consciousness rebells and I realize that I already miss the road and I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. Or if I want it to.

That's all I'm going to tell you about.  The balance will continue to decline but I assume I will find a job before it reaches zero.  In any case, my travels are over and so this journal is finished.  It's been fun.  Thanks for reading.