By the end of the trip maybe I will relax.  Throw everything in the bag that I want to take and be done with it.  Don’t look back.  Things languish in the suitcase –the exercise bands Christy lent me, a heavy cotton sweater that stifles.   On the train, I pat myself down: where are my sunglasses, I just had them; my chargers, my phone, my money.  I check the belt under my clothes, unseen and secure.  I do the same thing at home: did I turn off the coffee pot? (Once driving home from work during my prep hour –just to be sure.)  What am I forgetting?  It’s all out of control, spinning.

Walking the curvy cobblestones with Natasha in a small town in the Czech Republic, we look for a gallery I saw that morning, lost on the walk at 7:00 a.m., getting up early to shower and walk alone.  I pass the gallery twice and peer in; interesting colorful cards make a kaleidoscope of the window.  I vow to make my way back again after they open.  It is gone.  Natasha steers us through the winding streets looking, recognizing every marker –the lingerie shop, the crystal, the puppets, the elephant mugs, the pencil holders that look like something else entirely.  Everything transformed.  The shop is gone; instead we make our way to the same restaurant where I had dinner the night before smoking weed with Sarteck from India.  I order the same thing I did the night before, wondering how –if I hate change so much, did I end up here?

They say no matter where you go in this town, you wind up back in the same place.  I walk, curving my way around with the meandering river.  Men with their shirts off drinking beer take paddle floats down the lazy river, lazy themselves.  The sun beats down.

Later, back at the hostel, the sky opens.