People moving about pondering about waiting about fretting about. Airport terminals are like cocoons, just a pit stop before the madcap race begins; where are they going? Somewhere important, as bald men in pinstriped suits and gray haired women reading lingerie magazines and kids with dirty unlaced shoes (all staying for just an infinitesimal short stay at my terminal) are going somewhere. I, like many other quarter-lifers, am going nowhere cause I am in such a rush reach the plateau of my contentment - but nothing is settled, nothing is decided and nothing doing. I want everything to be a perfect Raphael madonna and yet I’m still grappling with an angular cubist Picasso. All upside down inside out inside my head and not very reflective of the natural external scenes. It’s all about the scenes, you know! When I was in middle school I wanted to be in high school where kids have cars and study important stuff (like European history and Anatomy). When I was in college I debated existentialism on oak tree-d lawns and finance in cedar paneled lecture rooms, but I wanted to get to real life so I can get a real apartment with a real bed and a real entertainment system (plasma screen and Bose surround sound!) – real drapes and real stainless steel kitchen – all paid for by a real exciting job. And six months ago in the depths of a hellish job all I wanted was to be anywhere but my window office and my glamorous lifestyle – my four bedroom house (complete with a studio and a backyard with a gazebo) and my flatscreen HDTV and XBox and my lonely weekend at martini lounges and my $200 dinners. Three months ago I was reveling alone on mountaintops and next to blue beaches and under the Great Barrier Reef – I was free from corporate-dom and its insidious politics, but yet, the uneasy thought of coming back to the States won’t let go of my sensibilities - the thought of unresolved careered ambitions and the lack of, oh yes, a job, weighed heavily on my uplifted soul; and more, now I wasn’t so lonely, cause traveling meant meeting other travelers, and travelers (especially backpackers) had no walls or boundaries or reason not to be affable and communal and uncomplicated; I also found time to have a girlfriend and she was great and now it wasn’t about work all the time but more about people and places and things that made living livable, and yet, and yet there was the nagging doubt, the lump of want, like an itch that subsides with the distractions of superfluous activity but is aggravated with incessant inactivity. And so, here I am, inactive most of the time and thinking, man, I want more. More than an attentive and supportive girlfriend, more than time off, more than just a job and just a life and just a city – but what am I talking about? More? I’m living in New York and leisure time I have in abundance and money I have in spite of worries and companionship I have even if love is stillborn. What do I have to complain about? I should be writing and be young and glad! Get it together! Deal! Life are but moments strung together, like flickering lanterns, an ocean of impressions and emotions, lapping onto the shore of eternity. I confront change by embracing the movement, the need to want more – everything changes, and I concede to the imperious fickleness of me, of my environment. Chase the moon.