This is the eighth week of your trip. No wonder you are exhausted. You have been laughing and weeping and dancing from city to city. The Perpetual Guest. Hairpin Bridesmaid. Inspector of Babies named after Lydia Lunch. Giver of orchids, blackthorn xylophones,and acorns that spit cobras when cracked. Who knew that a traveler could have a thousand and one occupations?

Your employers were Wanderlust, Chance and Generosity, who flew you from coast to coast and commanded you to seek. You walked for decades, without rest or a notion of the future. You walked into many homes, around lakes, past skyscrapers, street musicians, all the world's temptations. You wrote stories and poems. You immersed yourself in the study of gestures, whether through photos, film, or on the street. You helped your friends in various ways. You heeded advice. You reunited with your parents with an open mind and you were astounded by how everything, even the seemingly monolithic, is subject to change.

A Perpetual Guest must have certain qualities. Willingness, for one, whether to delightfully converse about donut holes and virtual reality with a friend of a friend who departs tomorrow to assist in the Rwandan genocide tribunal; to stroll through the eerily perfect American town in Connecticut for a day; or to take a piss-stinky decrepit bus to Philadelphia where you promptly have margaritas, sing "Groove is in the Heart" at top lung capacity, and get into a car accident. If you are strong, that's handy--at a friend's behest, you can destroy walls or interpret dreams. But sometimes you are weak, so know how to be weak. Identify the problem and resolve it, through multi-vitamins, medicinal Brazilian honey, sleep, moon-gazing, writing, etc.

More importantly you must know how to wait. Wait for five hours in a train station, watching businessmen in salt-flecked suits and Indian nuns, pious doves in saris, flock and coo. Wait on planes, in terminals, on a hard seat in a cold library. Wait for those you love and respect. Wait for the words to bloom, which you will harvest, beat, and comb into threads, by which you may articulate all the ways of your life.

That warp and weft? Haphazard, rich in senses and broke-ass, strung with tea-kettle whistles, temple bells, cricket-chirps. Patent leather heels one day, barefoot the next. Awesome and humble, awestruck and blithe.

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