Episode X: If You Still Love Rock and Roll

I ran for my college cross country and track and field teams. After hard workouts some of the team would head to the ice bath (or cold pool, whatever), a big metal tub of water. We would dump huge coolers full of ice into the water and then put our legs in. The first time I stuck my legs in it hurt. After two minutes, I had to look down to be certain needles weren't jutting out the sides of the tank into my legs. However, the next time it didn't hurt as bad. By the third time, my legs just went numb after the first couple minutes.

The two times I have left America to live somewhere else, I have felt a bit of pain. Some might call it a breakdown. It isn't the travel that does it, it's the wrenching away of everything I know.

This last time I left I did so with a gaggle of other Americans. So it wasn't until we all went our seperate ways that the bit of pain hit. Breakdown isn't the right word. I break apart, split open, and everything in me pours out and I don't know anything anymore. Nothing, you know, it's just all gone. A disarming pain strikes, carving out any final scraps of comfort that might be left in me somewhere. Then, (and it always surprises me how quickly this happens) it doesn't hurt anymore.

This is where I stop being able to descibe the experience of travelling. You don't become a different person. Maybe it's that you begin to discover personal qualities you didn't know existed, but that doesn't quite explain it either. I don't know.

Here is what I know: You breakdown, you crack up, you lose your sense of self, but then you gain a new sense of self. And the comforting aspect of this process is that the little qualities you had are still there. I may relate to loneliness differently, I may relate to God differently, I may have a different sense of injustice, maybe I've changed or grown--but I still love rock and roll.

Here is a picture of me and J.M. in the Village this past February.