Neither Here Nor There

My nomination for word of the plague year: liminality

Neither Here Nor There, of course, is the title of a book by my hero Bill Bryson, a shambolic white guy who has made his way around the world a dozen times (it seems) while getting into minor scrapes, meeting cranks and pissheads, and delving into local history. Who knew there was a living in that? Had I known it was possible to make a living that way, I might have simply continued my post graduate education in randomly dashing from one place to the next, in perpetuity.

Our quote-spewing friends at Goodreads.com highlighted this passage from Neither, which pretty much nails what I have been up to during a lifetime of wandering: “That's the glory of foreign travel,” writes the peripatetic Bill, “as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have …