Look, I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t keep staying here. What am I supposed to DO here? The days just draaaag onnnn… The consultant’s being as good to me as anyone could, but this isn’t where I’m supposed to be. We just fundamentally don’t have anything in common. He’s a thoughtful person, but all his thoughts are so conventional; I get about as much out of talking to him as I would out of reading a textbook. I’m giving myself another eight days and then I’m heading back out into the Unknown. Sigh. Well, this hasn’t been a total waste of time — I have done a lot of drawing. The Consultant has good taste in art, and it‘d be even better if he weren’t so bogged down in theory and this whole academic/critical vocabulary. It drives me crazy sometimes, when I’m exploring some idea with him about nature or art, grappling with it in a really personal, passionate way, and he thinks he can totally *nail it!* by butting in with some prepackaged gobbledygook.

Damn right, I’m just a wanderer, a seeker roaming through life! What, like you’re not?

Where am I headed? Okay…but this stays between you and me. I have to stay here another two weeks, and after that I’ve been pretending to myself that I want to go hike the ______tian Trail; but that’s a lie, I just want to be nearer to Lotte, that’s all. Heh. Follow your heart, right?