It must be that I do not travel well.  I find it hard to write then.  The suitcase lies open, anticipating the trip to the North Country...

So you go out, have a few Guinness with the crowd at James Hoban, having a bite to eat, fish n chips and a mini shepherds pie, and then on the way home stopping by the Subway for a footlong roast beef, stopping to eat the whole thing on a chair in front of the Starbucks.  Cute young lady.  Her friend, gay, joins us toward the end of the night, gets us shots of Jameson.  The crowd had thinned by then.  Earlier I'd helped a girl who'd lost her ID outside of The Front Page...

Going out seems to match one's inner turmoil.  It helps you pass the time, when you are in awkward state.  It will be hard to write while visiting up with old mom.  And it helps your mind breath a bit.  The unnatural quiet of staying in for two days, granted, necessary for reasons of organization, doesn't seem to help one stay in a mood to write long enough to find the 'hook,' the musical phrase, the 'one true sentence.'  Going out engages your energies in a beneficial way.

But traveling.  The essence of not knowing what you will find.  One more shift to apply my anxious nerves to.

It was not an easy town to write in, fearful of one's own candor.