There was a real bittersweet period of my life
from 2009-2014
where I constantly overthought things
and analyzed them until my brain was exhausted.
I salvaged my sanity through music, painting, writing,
playing basketball, and traveling.
Occasionally I sprinkled in a lady or two,
partly for psychic needs,
partly for hormonal curiosity,
partly for a good story,
and mostly for vanity.
But like most medications,
it was too easy to get addicted to them
and they were better in small doses.
Places were no longer places,
they became memories.
Women were no longer fantasies,
they were opportunities–and eventually became people.
I learned how plunge, binge,
and withdraw—riding those rails across the Rockies,
scribbling emotions into notebooks
and running through possibilities
in my mind.
The smells and sounds of each city
told me everything I needed to hear.
Old diners and dive bars
interested me more than clubs and fancy restaurants.
They called “bohemian,
drifter, gypsy, deadbeat, hipster.”
But I wanted to know things.
I needed to see things.
So I learned to indulge, purge, withdraw, and observe–
while ping-ponging across the map
towards my next lesson.
~Edward Austin Robertson
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 