Why I bother

Wednesday, July 24th - Houston, Texas

I cannot escape Houston. It clings to me. It is my rubber soles melted onto the sidewalk. It is the cement melting till it grips my ankles and spills down my socks into my shoes. I am footbound to Houston, knuckle-caged to Houston. I run for its exits and the invisible hand of Adam Smith slams the doors shut. Dinosaurs get drunk and slam their SUVs into my car. I pound at the walls till my pinkies chafe and my wrist bones ache with  tendinitis.  But the walls don't give and, while I brush the paint off my shirt cuffs, Gremlins steal my bus ticket and hide it in my sock drawer. 



God smites a sacrificial lamb dead and sings a siren ballad to lure me back into the gravity well of staying put where I'm comfortable. Why do I go across the country when I already have it all contained in Google earth and a dozen map books on my shelves? Because I don't want to be comfortable. I want to push out against the unholy suck of Houston and the remorseless sloth of Southern humidity. Why do I go Greyhound? Because I want to roll with the bus over the roads, struggling to type as I travel and sway with the elevated weight of its aluminum sides. I want to feel the miles rush under me.  I want to see the sun rise over dry western expanses, not a transplanted oak or a paranoid neighbor's fence. I want to smell the silica of the desert sand, not the caffeinated stench from the Second Ward factory that grinds coffee into profit.

I ride Greyhound because I do not want to be in control. I want to navigate through a dozen cities and brave the hustle-filled bus depots of Los Angeles instead of driving from point A to point B. I want to run into people, random bored, troubled, dangerous, unwoken people who share this big continent with me. I've not met them. I want to feel that Americans I never met share the country with me. I want to taste that it's not an illusion. I want to do goofy things and shoot pictures of landmarks I can't find in books.

Unlike David Byrne, I'm tired of being somewhere. I just want to travel. And I want it to be inconvenient. I want to embrace life, even when it sucks. I want the contrast. When people who cling too tightly to their conveniences ask me, "Aren't you afraid of traveling by the bus? Aren't you worried about the kind of strangers you might run into?"

I want to tell them, "No, it's only people."