Making it back home

Zach,

The ride across country was amazing. Tuesday night I met a gent who came to Pittsburgh from Chicago to meet a girl who he met through an online video game, where he was a clan leader. Wednesday was a few hours in Chicago, where I toured the Art Institute, and then met the wonderful Ayelet from my high school days. On the Zephyr from Chicago, I met a truck driver who spoke about the wonders of his iPhone, the new economy, and paradigm shifts.

I read about the American Red Cross raising funds for Haiti through text-messaging, an unfathomable $500,000 per hour. I spoke with a couple who studies the Feldenkrais method who quoted yogi Richard Freeman who said, "if something is popular, then I want to know what's wrong with it?" I met a girl from England who travels foreign countries to disprove stereotypes that they are dangerous.

I spoke with a few of the eight Amish, taking a trip from Nebraska to Tijuana for medical treatment. I spoke with a Silicon Valley programmer about the lifestyle of working at a Valley company. I spoke with a Cal Tech physics undergrad and Stanford PhD about the hilarious Richard Feynman and his advisor, Linus Pauling. I played my mandolin with a guitarist from the Netherlands. We had a long conversation about politics, media, Islam in Europe, and the EU.

I got to write. I described the soaring landscape of Colorado, the gorgeous but dangerous Donner Pass. I wrote about things on my mind, about plans for the future. I got to the point at 6:30pm Mountain Time on Thursday where I felt I had expressed on paper whatever it was I had wanted to. I finished reading Murakami's amazing Kafka on the Shore. I didn't use my computer once, didn't have access to the Internet. I was free from distraction, and so my mind could be liberated.

And I'm back. Now the task is, as DFW puts it, keeping the important things, the expansive things, in front of me on a daily basis. So there's a bit of writing and reading in store.

Elliot