Wednesday Writing Notes

What we want from life, and what we get.

Years ago I was staying in a mud hut in the Nepali jungle. In the morning I woke up to the sounds of chickens calling and the effervescent hum of the cicadas which in undulating waves throughout the days and evenings.

throughout my stay there I didn’t really leave 1000 foot radius around that little mud hut. When travelers came through, which didn’t happen often, they would ask me which trek I was planning to go on. None, I would say. I felt no need to explore. Or rather, my exploration was internal and immersive. Or rather, I was more interested in exploring the lives of the individuals living in the tiny village in which I was situated. The shrinking village, its inhabitants slowly leaking away, gone off to find the American Dream. Somehow the delusion of the American dream had made it to the jungle of Nepal.

On one of my rare walks down the mountain I happened upon an older Nepali man dressed in jeans and a Coca Cola t-shirt. He stopped me and asked me where I was from. When I said…