Soloing

My first guitar-in-hand pub crawl was in Kathmandu some time back. I was traveling alone but I was OK with me. I wasn’t lonesome. I was having a good time. 

Traveling alone has advantages like the flexibility of schedules and permission to exhibit assorted disorganized behavior patterns in public which might otherwise be considered unacceptable . When I travel alone I live in an internal police state of privacy, a thing that I find elusive within in the sanctuary of a well tended garden and a for-the-most-part peaceful co-existence. What I do find is a "me" that is more fly-by-night, a "me" more capable of allowing luxuries which are not for good reason tolerated by companionship.

I own up that when traveling alone I am incapable of pulling myself together on demand, that I might overspend and that I might sometimes feel friendless whenever the sun comes up and just past sunset, but those feelings gain for me a certain self-respectability, one I dare to think of as praise worthy.   

Traveling alone can bring on sensational moments in the moment but those moments often in hindsight nag the question, “What on earth was I thinking?”, seeing that on more than one occasion I fell wide of the mark of good manners. And often in the recalling of events I am at a loss for words; I find myself experiencing an unanticipated reaction to having just "been there and done that", one which then has me stressing only to myself this final point, “Well, you would have to have been there to appreciate it."

When I awake those first few mornings back in my own bed next to someone I recognize and love deeply, I not only glare disapprovingly in the mirror but I am also glad to have made it back. 

Then again, maybe that’s the point, to return with feelings of gratitude rather than those of triumph.