Today's writing

I cross the junction of the Labe and Chrudimka rivers and find myself in the town square. It’s older, more human-scale, with dramatic rooflines punctuating the gray sky and a huge monument brooding in the center. Now this is what I’d expected.

It finally registers: I am six thousand miles from home. I am on the opposite end of the world. Shit is old here. I’m from California. Old to us is a burger joint that’s been in business for fifteen years. That’s a historical landmark.

There’s something unsettling about being surrounded by history. I was raised in a place so relatively free of the past that it is possible to believe you are a maverick. Here you just feel like a pretender. I mean, this shit’s been around for centuries: What can I do here that hasn’t already been done, practiced, perfected, and then forgotten?

That’s so American of you, I think, and smile. It took moving half a world away to sound like the douchebags I try to ignore at parties. It’s not American to want to leave our mark, to hope we are remembered. It’s human.