Reflections on why I am not writing a travel log

It's an odd thing that 

I am not writing a daily blog, photos, thoughts, adventures, practicalities.

At MIT, we'd say the education was like drinking out of a fire hose, too much, too fast.

The pictures don't capture it,  they are sharp and yet, I am in a blur.

Dropped into this little hostel with the two twin beds, a balcony that looks out

over an urban canyon, the ratio of building height to street width unimaginable

in my country.

The blur of packs of tourists, English, French, Catalan, Spanish, Italian,

packs of gay men, naked breasts on the beach, young white men puking,

the waft of marijuana, African street vendors, the Arabs competing.

I don't read other people's travel blogs. I can't write my own anymore.

I can't even write my history, tangled as it is with Devaud sensibilities, 

the traumas, the lonliness, the determination, the mistakes, marriages, divorces,

poverty and success, my way of seeing the world, my generosity mixed with 

naivety, nearly 65, my whole life seems a blur, just as the street outside

is a blur which cannot be captured in any meaningful way by a series of 

photographs.

And so I spend this time with a Senegalese man who lives in his world,

of deprivation, family drama, poverty, endless obstacles, within his society of 

lying to stay alive.

What a disappointment on so many fronts.

How exhausting to be constantly impoverished, spending a day on the street

going hotel to hotel to see if you can get a better deal.

Maybe if you just speak louder in a foreign language, or say, "My friend"

with a too big smile, just to get by.

And so, all of a sudden, I knew that this post would be written without

a crisp photo.

Travel is not crisp.