Says Kurt Vonnegut.

It is settled, etched in stone, demanded by the gods! The Blue Ridge Parkway beckons. I will carry with me enough to sustain me for an indeterminate period, plus one (1) ukulele. I will pursue the horizon.

Arnaud returned from New Orleans Sunday night with Marie. The two of them hitchhiked from NOLA to Atlanta with a Columbian truck driver who, upon his departure, gifted them (and by proxy, me) with spoils readily available at any fine Bankhead truckstop. Last night, we nourished ourselves with home-cooked goodness (banana coconut chicken curry with cumin lime chickpea salad, if you must know) and cheap wine, desserted ourselves with an apple-cinnamon pastry, and nightcapped ourselves with the banter of our collective profundity.

And tomorrow – tomorrow! If I can somehow finish my exams with the taste of the mountain air just out of reach – phantom pleasure just teasing the olfactory glands – I’ll embark with a wildfire burning blue beneath my itching feet.

I don’t know where I’m going after the Parkway. We are dropping Arnaud off in Baltimore so that he may pursue doctorly things at Johns Hopkins – but then what? Where to from there? Keep driving, turn around? Left, right? To the seas again? Do I taste salt water?  or do I feel the heat radiating off of New York City?