Another Thought for the Day

Here's another quote from the "Off The Map" by Mark Jenkins, the book that I quoted from the other day. The quote, by the way, has some strange phrasing and ungrammatical sentences, so I didn't mistype. But, since I'm headed to Costa Rica to teach for four months, this quote from page 187 seemed pretty poignant:

“There is something about long journeys. You’re lucky if you manage one in a lifetime, and by the time you’re done you’re swearing by God never I’ll never do it again. But then some evening, months or years later, while you’re browsing through the atlas, whistling or humming or eating, whop! A few weeks later you’re gone. And if you somehow find yourself on just one more long journey, something gets in you, like a worm gone up through your feet. From then on, somewhere inside every unbearable trip (because there will always be another trip), you’ll swear up and down this is it dammit God damnit this is it, period. But then you’ll find your way back to your own warm bed and clean bathroom and beautiful world and discover they’re just as they were when you left, and after another month or two or six, this thing inside you will start to swell and throb. You’ll become restless and sore as if your bed were too soft and your bathroom too bright and suddenly your beautiful world has again grown moldy with mediocrity. So you’ll pull out the atlas and fall into it and the next morning buy an airplane ticket and just when everyone thought you were finally figuring it out, you’re gone.”

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