There is reason to believe I have become overconfident here, I swim across the municipal lake from the unpatrolled side, I cross the streets between tram lights and street lights that might be green or might be yellow but I’m going, anyway, I catch the 3-line instead of the 160 as Google Maps has directed me, I know the 3 will take me to the station 11 minutes and 6 stops later. I get to the station early, there is only one platform 2 but there are two trains that depart within two minutes and I don’t know this until I am on the high speed rail to Wörgl, 1 hour and 19 minutes in another direction. It is on the way to Innsbruck, I have mapped myself there in the preceding months, so the route is not unfamiliar. I should not be going to Wörgl and I should not be going to Innsbruck, but I think I might like going to both. I get off, I wait another hour to catch the train back to where I came from, because this is what I am supposed to do. I am hours late but I’m on a park bench in Wörgl eating a poppy seed filled pastry and the air is still quiet in these mountain kilometers. My lateness, arbitrary.

—

In the early weeks of June, I hold the last week of July in my mind. I hold it as some future comfort, waiting for me, if I can just get to it, get to the other side of the Rhine, get to the rented apartment that is better decorated, get out of this corner of this city. I imagine it as a source of relief, and I am surprised, when I get to it, that I am missing the wide sunsets over the Pfalz from my fifth floor balcony, that is half the time filled with cigarette fumes, and I am missing the overpass under my feet, it goes over long, aged, tracks of trains, but I miss the way it elicits anticipation for the lake water just beyond. 

In the early weeks of June, I claim naivete, or rather, I plan to claim naivete at any number of things I might be penalized for. I ride the city tram without a ticket, the first time, because I am jet lagged and cannot even point North, the second time, because I am bothered by the requirement for an international banking number on the ticket app, the third time, because I will buy my ticket tomorrow. I attempt to pick up a package from the DHL locker nearby, but the app is non-functional on my U.S. phone, I ask the closest passerby to please try to open it for me, he is hesitant, he does not know what goods I am trying to receive, he claims he could be penalized, he claims I might be taking something that is not mine. At the grocery store, the cashier asks to look inside my bag, apparently sensing the peach I have bought earlier in the day, I have no receipt and no proof and it is a single peach, she allows me to pay for my groceries and go. 

In the early weeks of June, I see only grey dirtiness, flatness, the two toned sirens are decibels too high and drift into my apartment windows no matter the time of day. I get some form of food poisoning, a familiar happening, now, in new cities, and lie in bed for 48 hours, I give up on optimizing because I believe there is nothing to optimize, that I will fare better if I can just be. I recover, I take the train to a border town to eat French pastries and look for some beauty. I take a train to the Black Forest, I share apple cake and a whole bowl of cherries and afternoon lattes, I have optimized my caffeine tolerance, at least. I take a train to Bad Durkheim, but I don’t feel like making a transfer so I get off in Neustadt instead, I run some miles into a forest that smells like the Sierra, I get diverted by a trail closure and spend some fraction of a kilometer on what might be the autobahn, I get yelled at from a car window but I don’t understand this language and they are going, fast, so I divert again, to what might be safety.

In the early weeks of June, I want only one thing, and it is to go home to California. I have used up my capacity for uncertainty, I have fed my desire for variety, and I am left with a craving for the intimacy in which I know a coast that is thousands of miles away. I feel irritation towards the past version of myself, I want to give in now to everything that is familiar. 

—

In the last days of July, in a corner apartment in Salzburg, I imagine staying. In the 6pm heat that fades on a hot Saturday, I lie on the wooden dock planks of another city lake, this one, colder, this one, I imagine becoming a constant. In the Sunday afternoon light of the cafe patio, I cannot imagine anywhere else I want to linger in these hours. I say it feels like Fall, and I imagine where I might be in October, what corners I might find, where I might linger.