Well, How Did I Get Here?

          Just as I always try, and always fail, to pack lightly, I brought more of myself to Europe than I wanted to. I didn’t care much for the world or for myself when I left Washington on the 13th of May, and was bracing to face my weeks abroad with the theatrical weariness in which I had become so well-practiced; to be sad, so to speak, somewhere else. Call it ingratitude, call it mental illness, call it a dramatist trying to play a comic role – whatever you call it, I expected it, as a continuation of what had come before.
          Still, traveling is known for its unpredictable side effects, which, if not transformative, certainly give the status quo a run for its money. I still haven’t gotten used to the feeling, for example, of waking up every morning in another part of the world. It’s a stomach-dropping, daydreaming, rollercoaster-riding sort of feeling – a queer mix of terror and excitement, punctuated by the same belated self-interrogation that comes invariably right before the big drop: how could I possibly have imagined that this would be fun? And somehow, it still is – but the fun is inseparable from the terror. Every morning, that terror wraps around me in the form of my thick blanket and pulls me into the mattress, even as my host-mother calls me down to breakfast.
          The anxious writer is never published because he doesn’t write, or never submits what he has written; the anxious talker is never heard because she doesn’t speak, or speaks too quietly to be heard. In London I nearly missed my train because I was too nervous to ask from which track it departed; in Spain I almost threw my book of poems in the garbage, having come to believe them, on the second or third reading, imitative and amateurish. But the anxious traveler can’t so easily give himself up, unless he wishes to stay in his bed all day, which is, of course, simply trading uncertainty for boredom. The anxious traveler is forced by default to travel, to live, to take risks, to breathe new air, to succeed and fail, to win and lose. But he must possess the resilience to untangle himself from the blanket and go down to breakfast.
          Some mornings, by way of motivation, I repeat to myself the mantra, as true as it is tired, that each day abroad offers an experience of immeasurable worth, if only I see it through; or I remind myself, very practically, that a German minor will be well within reach come this fall, so long as I show up to class; or I think about the money already spent (by my parents) and blackmail myself into self-confidence. But when all else fails, there’s only one surefire solution I know of: to tell myself that even if the whole thing has been a colossal mistake, I’d better get out of bed anyway because my host mother has made strawberry jam just for me and there’s nothing more life-affirming than a good breakfast.
          The purpose of this blog henceforth will be photojournalism – observations of the world around me – but the reader should have some idea of what’s going on behind my eyes before I publish anything concerning what I see with them. My writing is my own, and it is the writing of an anxious talker, an anxious writer, and an anxious traveler. I will neither emphasize nor downplay my identity in future writings. But the reader deserves to know: the traveler cannot leave himself behind.