Interim

“This time next week…” is my mantra now; in less than seven days I’ll be in India and finally starting the adventure I’ve been waiting so long to have.

And yet I realize there’s no reason I shouldn’t consider myself already launched; after all, it’s not as if each day isn’t an opportunity for exploration no matter where I am at the time.

I tried to cultivate this attitude as I rode around today; being downtown on a weekday in January is certainly an unusual experience for me and I couldn’t help but be struck by the strangeness of the human condition as I wandered about in Nordstrom’s on a mission to buy socks observing well-dressed older ladies carrying big shopping bags or getting make-up consultations from younger ones in white coats and red lips.

It will be something else to be in a place where things will be exotic by definition; I want to try, though, in my time remaining here, to observe the world as a traveler might: I’d like to be surprised by what I see even if I’ve seen it many times before.

Whether I can do this is an open question; whether it matters if I do is a fair subject of inquiry, too.

Too much of the time, most of the time, I go through my days counting on the next thing being the thing I’m attending to. When I travel, though, I tend to be slightly less impatient. The getting there is a more part of the being there; I wouldn’t go all the way into the clichéd “journey is the destination” mode, but I know, for instance, that simply looking out the window on a train or bus through a place I’ve never been is sufficient entertainment. Through familiar terrain, by contrast, I’ve got to read a book or something.

“This time next week,” though, all that will be different, which is why, I guess, I can’t hardly wait.