America Bonus: Smalls Jazz Club
Being away for so long does strange things to you. The places you visit and the things you see, no matter how nice they are, still feel unmistakeably foreign. This might be a fine place, but it's not your place. You imagine returning home, feeling that distance shrink away to be replaced by the easy comfort of familiarity. In reality, it's never quite the same. Maybe home has changed while you were away but, more likely, you have. That foreignness you were immersed in absorbed slowly into you, and now the places still look the same but they feel different. Is this growth you feel? Have you become enlightened or just unmoored? Still, after a while the feeling fades and, like waking from a dream, you almost wonder if you ever went away.
Travel is often a very social affair. Walking around in crowds, visiting attractions, eating and drinking out in the city, talking with friends or making new ones. Sometimes you get the impression that this is the whole point, that travel is to meet people, see people, and be around people. Probably that is true to some extent. But there's something special about sneaking out at night, walking around the empty streets, and just taking some time to be alone with the city.
The autumn leaves are, without question, one of the most beautiful things in nature. When you come from a land of evergreens, it is magical to see red and gold in every direction, walk on the carpet of leaves and breathe in that earthen scent. Coming to the end of a journey feels like its own kind of autumn, like a book as you feel the remaining pages thinning in your hand. Though you wish it could go on, you know deep down that it can't. All stories have their ending, and going beyond it wouldn't make it a better story, just a longer one. Better to savour those last moments, the bittersweet beauty of autumn leaves.