Goes

A walkabout, strictly speaking, is a journey with a return built into it. You go, you come back, you stand in your own kitchen and bore people about it.

I told the woman I loved that I would be back in six weeks. After six weeks I had reached Bosnia. I am not good at arithmetic, but I am not that bad at it either.

Then Croatia, Greece, Turkey, and Georgia, where the car stopped. I flew the rest: Dubai, India, Vrindavan, and the old friend at the temple I had set out for. Afterwards I came back to Georgia.

The word goes, I have since learned, has a second meaning. It is the one in “that’s how it goes”, and it arrived later, without asking. This page is about that one.

The car stands still now. If you came for the road, the journal holds eighty-two entries of it, and I recommend them the way one recommends an old photograph of oneself: with affection, and a slight wince.

I did come back to a kitchen.

Wrong kitchen. I’m staying.