Everything Is

Yesterday Jess and I took a walk down by the water. It is the Atlantic Ocean. It is ten minutes from her friend Gabriela´s apartment, where we´ve been staying the past week and a half. I can´t believe I have been here a week and a half. By those who know from experience, and there are many who pass through here, the apartment is affectionately known as The Vortex, for its sucking-in tendencies. Gabriela is so warm and lovely, people just unconsciously move toward her. And from the seventh floor balcony you can practically see, way out over the water, Providence.

We walked down by the water, we watched the sun setting in it. It is quite strange the number of sunsets that happen in a life, and the number of sunsets watched. Jess talked about the forgotten beauty of hunting, which is to witness the waking up, the feeding, and the dusking of nature. A ritual like dinner. There is a man she met once who goes kayaking with his wife every evening to watch the sunset. I want to try now to stop each day and watch it too. I think if that is the only habit I pick up on these travels, it will be good enough.


We are leaving today for Lisbon. We have a couchsurfing host there who has been to about a million and a half places in the world. I read some of what the guidebook has to say about Lisbon last night in the bath. It was leveled by an earthquake in 1775, and rebuilt in a late eighteenth-century grid, which is lucky for us because I seem to be able to navigate cities successfully only at right angles.

From there, we are thinking of heading down south and into Morocco for a couple weeks. I really want to go to Morocco, and I think it is a good place to go with Jess since I probably wouldn´t want to travel there alone, but I feel impatience to be on my own again. I guess it feels too easy being with a friend all the time. I guess it´s why I have stopped writing.