Boa Viagem

I learned today that Hemingway was once a copywriter. I wonder if he wrote junk mail as well.

Yesterday marked the last departure of friends to another country. Now my nearest and dearest are scattered -- in Addis Ababa, London, Sao Paulo, somewhere in China, Istanbul, Minneapolis, Providence, Buenos Aires, Iowa City, the Bay Area or on various rock and roll tours across America. One can only imagine where they go from there.

Maybe because I left high school for a year in Chile, then left Minneapolis for Providence, then left Providence for Brazil, it seems a little mundane to be in New York now. But I plan on being domestic, and keeping house, and looking off piers for approaching ships. Ex-pats are wierdos, which is precisely why I thought I might someday become one, red-faced in a tropical shirt with a harem of underpaid servants. Or maybe just a resentful cranky foreign correspondent. Neither here nor there.