Lost and Found

Another city. It's beautiful, just like the one before and just like the next one. Different, of course, but beautiful just the same and by now my ability to appreciate the differences is saturated to the point that even Asia looks like Europe looks probably like Australia and I want to go home. The life of a vagabond is surprisingly unrewarding and passionless. I don't know if it's a defense mechanism or just the result of overstimulation but I can't feel any more. It's so so beautiful and yet I feel nothing except the feeling that I should be feeling something.

I used to leave the house every day hungry for adventure and often returned empty-handed and frustrated. Now I wake with no appetite, stuff down as much as I can, and go to bed early.

Sometimes I remember the old me and I miss her. The new me is responsible, punctual. But jaded. I don't know where the creativity used to come from but that part is long dead.
How will I go back to America knowing how to pronounce Uber and not be an immediate outcast? If nobody understood me before they definitely won't now. But still I want to go home.

Baltimore burns and I read about it in the news. I should be there to help fight and to help clean up afterwards, but instead I'm taking a walk in this goddamn beautiful city, eating another piece of honey-soaked baklava that doesn't taste nearly as good as it did in Dearborn, spreading myself yet thinner over the globe.
Which movies came out last week? Last year? Which songs are being blasted in the frat basements and who is blasting them? I don't know and I don't care.
The call to prayer is wallowing from the minarets twice as old as my country and I'm looking for a WiFi network--more out of habit than necessity--to no avail.

Everything I miss about America can be classified as a little thing: paying with a credit card, crunchy pickles, conversations about the local sports team in line at the grocery store, the most ridiculous friends you can imagine, free water, singing in the car. But in the end all those little things add up to something quite big.

I'm tired of analyzing and questioning and still not understanding. I'm tired of fearing that tight bonds might do so much more damage than the weak ones. I'm tired of people asking where I'm from when I just want to fit into somewhere and be a part instead of an other. I'm tired and I want to go home.