Day 9: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

In the hot, hot Alabama mid-day my fiance and I are hiding out in our bedroom, normally my mother's, and finishing up the last disc of On the Road.  Our own trip is slowly coming to an end.  My nephew, his mother, and my brother left after Easter service and now it is just the three of us in the house.  The house feels quieter, but somehow just as full.

My entire life I have dealt Dean and Sal's drive to travel; to move on; to go, man, go.  I like to call myself a vagabond sometimes.  It makes all the moving seem a little more romantic than it really is, than people think it is; moving sucks.  I haven't been in one place for more than four years.  Ever.  I don't know that I'm even capable of having a face-to-face friendship that lasts more than a year or two.  There's something sad about that.

But I've had opportunities too from all the travel.  I've seen more of the country than most people and I've figured out that despite some scenery and food and a few strange customs, that people are pretty much the same everywhere.  That's not to say that there aren't any differences, just that they are so small and insignificant that I have no fear that I can survive anywhere.  I don't care if I end up in California or Alabama or Montana.  I don't care if I only stay for two years or if I stay there forever.  I think I'm much more flexible than a number of people I've met.

I have itchy feet, but I also have feet that desire familiar ground.  I've been moving so long that I think I'm finally ready to move somewhere and not intend to move somewhere else.  I feel like I've been dragged and pushed across the country and the world my entire life, and in many ways I have.  I am worn thin emotionally from starting over and over and over everytime. 

I have had the fortune of having good friends, and the misfortune of losing them again.  I have had the fortune of seeing wonderful things, only to return and find that they've been torn down.  I have had the most delicious food, only to learn that they closed because a McDonald's moved next doors.  I don't think it's the loss that's so sad; we lose and gain things naturally during our lifetimes.  We outgrow friends, and places have a tendency to come and go, to change; but my losses were so sudden.  I'm a collection of loose ends; some stillness might help me weave them back in.