A writer in residence came to me to tell me that another one had confided in her that she “almost left”.

I went to fix the discomfort.

Something echoed.

Graduate school. Summer camp. Bali. Berlin.

Almost everywhere I have ever gone involved a moment, or many, of almost leaving. Including Here: Paradise, Southern France.

It seems to be part of the internal conversation of anywhere new. Anywhere being always an internal journey eversomuch as external.

That is almost obvious. What is never obvious is that in the mayhem of packing, rushing, lines, and lags, we are somehow diminished.

Tossed about between authorities, we lose our own.

We arrive with foreshortened perspective. We arrive in a collapse of expensive hopes and the traumatic hardships of travel. Grateful to have escaped the clutches of our seat assignments and their securities, we are gnawingly hungry for vague delights and effective escape.

Away from home we are always working a double shift: a desperate commitment to conjure the emotions we believe we have paid for, and a seething resentment for the unfulfilled and perhaps nearly obsolete myths of luxury, inspiration, glamour, and exoticism.

We are burdened like a porter with diverse and unrelated promises.

As travelers we must keep track of one more satchel in which we furrow through our aggrandized expectations and the commercial responsibilities of those with whom we have contracted a fantasy.