I’m sitting in my bedroom right now, listening to a conference call. I’m not actually on the call, a friend of mine is, but everybody seems to like to crash at our place. I don’t know why. I used to think it was flattering. Now I just assume people who want to spend the rest of their lives sitting around playing video games see us as an easy mark since we won’t throw them out on the curb immediately. Either that or they’re just trying to be nice and they can’t comprehend someone who wants to be doing something else. What’s that song? “I chose somethin’ else…”
I mean, I don’t mean to be ice cold. I remember being about thirteen and staying for long weekends at my girlfriends’ houses, but you know there’s a difference between a thirteen year old with a bad family situation and nowhere else to go, and a thirty year old. Maybe I’m just crotchety, but it seems to me you make plans with people, you go out, you spend time enjoying one another, and then you go home. When did this whole hang out for six hours of your life start up again?
I guess home is just becoming more sacred now. I was thinking about it a lot this past week. Home is this place. A memory you can’t go back to. Sure, you can go back to the place, and you can go back to the familiarity, but once the people who made life seem safe are gone, and their spirit is gone, home really isn’t home. It’s just a place. An obligation.
My mother called me unpatriotic today. It was expected, but if being patriotic means being downtrodden in a country we’ve all been told is great and wonderful, then I say what better way to know for sure than to go some place else?
We were supposed to go to Europe in a few weeks, and somehow it looks like that’s canceled. So fine except, once I was told we were going, something just snapped in my brain. It went “yes, dear god, why ARE we still here in this place? Is there something else to learn or are we just getting complacent again?”
Anyway, that’s apparently what happens when you don’t have any notions to tie you down. I just have this insatiable wanderlust right now. I’m like, don’t toy with me. Don’t tell me there’s a chance for travel and then take it away. I’m one of those people. We get on a boat and we go. We effing get up off our duffs and DO IT.
THAT’S what American really means. I just wonder, has everyone forgotten?
