Arrived

I sat in this room back when I was that other person. I think it was five years ago. Maybe more. Maybe less, the past is nebulous that way. It was the end of an era, of sorts, maybe it was the beginning. Who can tell? We were in Saigon, or do I call it Ho Chi Minh. They say the way we name things is important. Some tripe about language, but who can tell what they are callings things these days.

In those days, as well as all the other days, I thought of these days. The wispy streams of consciousness we call past, present, and future. Time another one of those pesky ideas we have mislabeled. Or is it they who name our language. Maybe it’s me. Words never seem enough. 

I am alone at The Spring hotel, I think the same room we had last time we were here. I have my computer, all my music, a solid connection to the Internet (Read: The world) and a nagging need to wrap my world in words. I have nowhere to be, no one to meet, and no one to be. Feels nice.

I am letting my brain run a bit. Stretch out its legs. Write a bit. Call friends on Skype and actually show them what is happening. As a young man I often romanticized the men who sit alone in strange rooms with the need to turn themselves inside out. I marveled at the power they wielded to be ideas changers, world shifters, to be writers! I was in love with the vision of my heroes, of my our fathers -Men like Hunter S. Thompson and Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, let's not forget Steinbeck and Dostoevsky sitting in rooms dipped in madness.

But as, I watched the sunlight move a slow geometric dance on the desk, I look around and notice I am here. I have arrived. I am who I have always dreamed of being. Leonard Cohen softly fills the room and these words slowly drip out. Trouble is, now all I want is to be home to hold my wife and play with my kids.

Happiness how can we express that with words?