12 September - Vancouver, WA, Urth

What am I? Am I my memory? Am I the one who rode my bicycle to Wolf Point, MT, or do I merely remember that as I remember a dream or a particularly good book? My left knee hurts, and I am not really sure why. I remember it hurting before, and I think it had something to do with me coming home—though my own motives have always seemed a little opaque to me—but maybe I hurt it and decided not to go on the trip at all. Maybe I stopped in Havre instead of Wolf Point; there was nothing in that endless terrain to tell me where I was. My bicycle is even clean. I cleaned it today and got dirt under my fingernails. I cleaned my other bike before I left, and it seems strange that I should have two bicycles. Obviously I can’t ride them both at the same time.

My stereo system is playing music. Perhaps there is something different about the music, like water to a thirsty ear, but already it fades into the background, just like a man who has drunk forgets that he was once thirsty. Where’s your revolution then—how am I to retain the feel of these words, that among others, spoke to me and through me, ran through my mind as I pedaled along? Nothing changes, except me, and I change in such a way that I am nearly unaware of it, the past becoming once more motivation in a sea of desires and perceived needs. Just as the past enfolds itself in my muscles, so that I bicycle faster—so that I bicycle at a certain speed I think faster—so it is with my mind. It behaves differently, or in a way that I perceive to be better than what I once did, or think I once did.

Is this what it means to be home, to have the past once more folded into an eternal present, into days that precess like identical soldiers? On the road, I need the past to explain why I am where I am. I need Havre to explain why I am in Glasgow. Perhaps that is why there are wanderers: we are not satisfied with the present, with days that have no explanation and need no explanation, and seek in the road a recovery from amnesia, a trail of steps marked with our memory that will somehow, we hope, explain what it is we ourselves are.

I shall not remain here long. Perhaps in some dream I will see the staggering path of my life laid out behind me, and in that line read an explanation, an explanation for my inexplicable decisions and the infinite hunger I still have.

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