Noticing

The ultimate destination: Really, truly, paying attention to where you are.

On Fridays I run excerpts from The Road to Elsewhere, my coming-of-age-travel-memoir-with-funny-drawings. (You can find the first entry here.) It tells the story of my road through Paris, London, and Zagreb, in search of the ultimate destination: a life worth living.

I AWOKE ON DAY THREE of my adult life with all of Paris to explore: Classes at the Alliance Française wouldn’t start until the next day, so where to? 

I was now fully captivated by The Waves, an impressionistic novel of youth and aging, with Virginia Woolf of all people spinning the glass shards in my own wacky kaleidoscope. Perfect reading for a self-obsessed 21-year old, right? 

At that time I was all about making lifelong pronouncements and plans (If you want to make God laugh….), and one of them was to read The Waves every year, as I charted my own path from the vivid fears of childhood to the time when, like one hero in Woolf’s book, I’d fall off my horse and terminate the wild ride. 

How did Virginia know what I was fee…