Crashbox

Wednesday I didn't sleep. Thursday and Friday night I caught about 5 hours apiece. It is now Monday afternoon and I am still awake, but still alive and snug at home. Problem is, I don't want to be home. Pictures and remembered words and too many things to even mention fill my bleary brain so that everything here looks strange and unfamiliar. I want to be anywhere, but nowhere would be better. Travel is a very real attempt to illustrate that searching, longing, God-pleading loneliness that wells up within us from time to time. Travel is the pretty but doomed expression of the need to find the missing shred of our souls that, if found, would allow us to be noble like all those haunting images of heroes and saints we wish we could imitate. And yet beauty and comfort abound. I will, though my stay was very short, never forget the people and the impressions of a world I had no knowledge of. Inspired, determined, thoughtful, and supremely happy. This is a pattern, a sickness men have suffered the whole course of history, and I too will play my part. My time below the equator could not have been better, thanks to a wonderful friend, endless hospitality, ancient vistas, and chickens.