“At that point in my youth I thought of Travel as a modern deity, one who would swoop down from the rafters of an airplane hanger to grant disposition and deliverance. But rather than finding direction or revolution I gained ten pounds and learned to drink dark beer. I saw ghosts.”

“So immersed in our now routine life I had not noticed winter slipping away, nor realized that I had stopped savoring the rhythm of our secret world.”

“That first stage is always fun; I walk towards the cafe smiling, excited; then I sit and type for a few hours, chortling to myself. I’m puffed with a sense of all the possibilities, with the idea that this essay — yes, this essay! — will showcase my particular brilliance, that it will wow and amaze, and I’ll be able to talk about x, y, and z and tie them together in a startlingly provocative way. I want to shout my idea from the mountaintops.”

“We are the same, yes, always looking for something to fill us, to feed us, to make us whole, and that process, like hunger, is constant, ongoing. And like appetites, it is always changing.”