A train of thought:

The loneliness of travel.  a catch-22, which captures me between a home with friends and family whom i love and a life that can't include any of those comforts but is ripe with adventures and discoveries.  To travel is to miss things, we set off and leave our beds, our toilets, our comforts into an unknown.  But by now most of what i encounter isn't an unknown, I have settled into a rhythm, not unlike from that movie, Up in the Air.  I am one of those restless souls, who sometimes looses patience with the need to document every moment digitally, I know the menu, I walk with purpose and direction, rarely with a map.  I hate my arrogance and impatience.  I miss the days of constant new-ness, where getting lost leads to a million new discoveries.  What is left is mostly routine, and yet the loneliness persists.  I am constantly leaving, constantly saying goodbye, creating new friendships with marked shelf lives, 2 days, 3 days, 2 weeks, one month.  I often feel like there is a zen buddhist teacher sitting in a slate kimono repeating an endless koan of, 'let go, let go.'  And it is true, this lifestyle is a lesson, we can't hold on, we are at our essence alone and yet a part of everything.  Beauty can morph quickly into sadness and loneliness, an unshared sunset, a missed joke, a lost story.  And yet beauty, magic, and mystery effuse everything: the discovery of a bright pink wall, grapefruit eaten in a park to the sound of bird song, a taxi driver with a map of where you are going.  I am coming to terms with the gray-ness of everything, in my life there is no longer a good or bad, everything just is.