Days go by.

When days 'just' go by, they turn out to be longer days than one would wish. On such days I end up thinking and thinking, pondering endlessly about things that have passed, things that are, and things to come. On occasion I'll get up to make some coffee, but then I am back on my couch, gazing somewhere beyond the TV screen or the page in my book.

Of course, nothing is solved, nothing new is revealed to me. There are no answers that appear in front of me after these gazing/thinking sessions, other than the constant realization of their sheer futility.

In less than a month I'm off and out of Japan - the 'home' I will probably not set foot in again for a while. I should be excited, and a distant part of me is. But lately, I get the feeling that this summer will be the end of me. It's a crazy thought, I know. I sense a faint inevitability - an inescapable, and inexplicable, death, really - lying ahead of me this summer, wherever in the world I happen to be. It is as if I was never meant to exist very long, and that if I live through this summer there is something very delicate and large and invisible in this world, yet beyond human comprehension, that I would be destroying. I know not the details of all these thoughts; it is, simply put, just a gut feeling.

But, gut feelings - they are whimsical, in an almost uncanny, grotesque, yet agreeable way. This isn't a negative feeling necessarily, but rather an intrepid acceptance of its inevitability. There's nothing I can do about it, and somewhere in these past few weeks I've given up trying to resist it or finding a way around it. I have to go. I have to go to South America, I have to go to Peru - this is all I know. And funnily enough, I can't see myself beyond it - I can't imagine myself in Pittsburgh, in Toronto, in New York, or in London. Everyone tells me it's all going to be great and I'm going to have an amazing time this summer, but my gut feelings say, "You might, but it won't last very long." And any attempt to tell myself otherwise feels wrong, like I am blatantly tricking myself into thinking such a thing.