Anyway, I read news and look for and collect facts because so far they haven't added up anything. I had pictured, as a younger man, that the things I knew and would know were bricks in something that would, effortlessly, eventually, shape itself into something recognizable, meaningful. A massive and spiritual sort of geometry - a ziggurat, a pyramid. But here I am now, so many years on, and if there is a shape to all this, it hasn't revealed itself. But no, thus far the things I know grow out, not up, and what might connect all these things, connective tissues or synapses, or just some sense of order, doesn't exist, or isn't functioning, and what I knew at twenty-seven can't be found now.

To travel is selfish -- that money could be used for hungry stomachs and you're using it for your hungry eyes, and the needs of the former must trump the latter, right? And are there individual needs? How much disbelief, collectively, must be suspended, to allow for tourism?"

Her English was seamless. Everyone’s was. I had sixty words of Spanish and Hand had maybe twice that in French, and that was it. How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.

So I have advice for you guys. I don't want you to actually use it. I just want you to hear it, have it, sometime after the fact--after it's useful. Don't listen to me. Advice so rarely finds its intended audience. It's like the sword in the stone--you leave it there, maybe someday someone finds it useful. Sorry, people--we're driving through Latvia and I can't vouch for my state of mind. 1. Thoughts are made of water and water always finds a way. 2. If you can't dodge the water, run. 3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like a bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs! 4. If your house is haunted bring in your friends and start tearing the walls down. How can they haunt a house that you take apart? Aha!