It happened that I was speaking with a friend on the phone today. Karen is one of those people who is interminably happy about everything. I don’t know if it’s drugs or if it’s her particular chemistry or if she has an awful lot to be happy about. She’s tremendous to talk to for about five minutes. Anything more than that is like flying too close to the sun. And it happened that she asked me what motivated me. It was one of those conversations.

Now I don’t know if it’s this project, I don’t know if it’s my familiar exile, I don’t know if it’s my age, I don’t know if it was Karen’s fiercely fiery disposition, but more than ever before I didn’t know how to answer the question. I said something stupid like, “if I could wake up tomorrow in a Mozambique café, I could be happy.” And I explained that I would be without the trappings, without the burdens, free and new and ripe with potential. She was neither very interested nor sympathetic. She remained unpoppably joyous, however.

That was hours and hours ago. No. I don’t suppose that people generally get to live that way. Writers and poets, miscreants and malcontents, might have got away with it in the 50s. But for the most part, no, people don’t live that way. My wanderlust is not just about being some place new, it’s about, perhaps it’s more about rejecting everything that came before. And what’s more I’ve already done this sort of thing twice. I’ve already uprooted, rerooted, I’ve already rejected, I’ve already run away. And I suppose it might just be that no matter how many times I might run away, no matter how many times I might try to reject what has come before, it won’t ever work, you know? I can’t run away from me. Oh god, Dorothy was right. If I ever go looking any further than my own backyard I never really lost it to begin with.

I shouldn’t know why I want to reject my past, and by extension, me so much. There’s a thrill in the attempt to remake yourself. But the attempt is also almost always a mistake.

I’ve never had a career. I’ve had a series of jobs, yes. I’ve never had a career. I want to take a turn at everyone’s life. People don’t get to do that either. Sitting on the park bench strangers pass without noticing. Supporting actors in my play. The young robust African Canadian. I want to live his life for a week, a day even. With just a day, I could search his brain, rip out his past, adopt and understand his identity by scanning all of his past. I could learn so much so fast. The fretting mother with two babies in her buggy. Her life for a day. The woman, hale, and walking with a mission. What is her hurry? Her brain. Her life. What does she care about? What does she worry about? The elderly Asian man, hunched, moving from my stage left to stage right with all the time in the world. So much to learn inside his soul.

But people don’t get to do that.

A random thought ruins my thinking: the Japanese read right to left. I wonder if that means their greater than sign (>) is backwards? But that seems unlikely. Math symbols are universal, I think. I suppose it doesn’t really matter unless math equations are written right to left as well. I wonder if that’s right? If the language is written and read right to left but math equations and programming language are written left to right. And suddenly it’s really important to know.

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