The Fourth Cup Of Coffee Makes You A Little Too Verbal When You're Not Sure What Time Zone You're In
Back in the States.
I don't like a lot of the directions my mind starts to head when i'm home. We've only been in the country about twenty hours now - yesterday morning we were riding the Tube to Heathrow in the early dark - but i'm already noticing a change. This place, this Carolina city, is not really home either. But for all the differences i love to discover between the American states, they're starting to seem increasingly the same.
Out traveling, out in places not your own, life shrinks to simpler things. The smaller things - the larger ones, really. A place to sleep for the night. Clean water. Your next meal. Though some do, it's hard to sustain an off-the-grid existence like that for long. But there are elements of such life a that i will fight hard to drag with me, kicking and screaming, wherever we end up. For one, i want to keep that hard-won effortless freedom from stuff. You know those little half-conscious thoughts you find yourself thinking, your brain's little self-entertainment in idle moments? I'm sitting here at this sidewalk cafe in Charlotte and realizing more and more of mine are already about things i'd like to buy. Things i'd like to have. It's not that i want these thoughts, or that i'll necessarily give in to them; no, what bothers me is how much of me enjoys them, and that i know i'll have to work all the harder to think the way i want to while i'm here. Not "here" in Charlotte, but here, at "home." Travel can give you more perspective than you'd like sometimes. But sometimes i think there's nothing more needed, really, in my whole life.
Except maybe more coffee. Mmmmm. Coffee.
I don't like a lot of the directions my mind starts to head when i'm home. We've only been in the country about twenty hours now - yesterday morning we were riding the Tube to Heathrow in the early dark - but i'm already noticing a change. This place, this Carolina city, is not really home either. But for all the differences i love to discover between the American states, they're starting to seem increasingly the same.
Out traveling, out in places not your own, life shrinks to simpler things. The smaller things - the larger ones, really. A place to sleep for the night. Clean water. Your next meal. Though some do, it's hard to sustain an off-the-grid existence like that for long. But there are elements of such life a that i will fight hard to drag with me, kicking and screaming, wherever we end up. For one, i want to keep that hard-won effortless freedom from stuff. You know those little half-conscious thoughts you find yourself thinking, your brain's little self-entertainment in idle moments? I'm sitting here at this sidewalk cafe in Charlotte and realizing more and more of mine are already about things i'd like to buy. Things i'd like to have. It's not that i want these thoughts, or that i'll necessarily give in to them; no, what bothers me is how much of me enjoys them, and that i know i'll have to work all the harder to think the way i want to while i'm here. Not "here" in Charlotte, but here, at "home." Travel can give you more perspective than you'd like sometimes. But sometimes i think there's nothing more needed, really, in my whole life.
Except maybe more coffee. Mmmmm. Coffee.
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