questions.

there are moments when i feel like i'm running away; like i'm trying to escape from responsibility, from reality (however confounding those concepts might be). at times i feel that i don't deserve this: vacations are for the ranks of the employed; we ought to be looking for jobs. i'm irresponsible. i'm lost. i'm a cop out.

but there have been moments on this trip -- several, already -- where the opposite is true; where i'm certain that we've made the "right" decision in coming here, doing this ... at this moment, at this juncture; this is what we're supposed to be doing:

a passing remark is made that resonates; that somehow speaks to our situation.

a brief pause in a conversation when introspection takes hold and i muse on how space, time and circumstance have coalesced in seemingly perfect harmony giving way to some tremendous act of theatre for an audiene of one. and, at least momentaritly, i'm certain that the universe is governed not by chaos and chance, but unfolds according to some meticulously thought-out plan. is it God? my naïve optimism? the wine? am i imagining this?

there are moments when a song i've heard hundreds of times before sounds entirely different; a lyric i've never heard before is speaking directly to me (turning your orbit around...).

moments when i come to terms with the realization that the simpsons just might be our (america's) greatest cultural export; or that humanity really isn't doomed. is it travel ... the experience of moving through space? the landscape? bertrand russell's prose?

before this trip started, i was convinced that coming here would answer the numerous uncertainties that i needed to answer. and maybe it will. maybe in several weeks time i'll have figured my life out; maybe i'll have identified the path that calls me, a profession that inspires me; maybe i'll be more optimistic about the trajectory of the US ... of the world; maybe i'll be ready to settle.

but i doubt it. (and i'm ok with that). maybe there's something to be said for embracing ambiguity.

jared.