I was there.

That’s what I’ll say when it’s all gone. When Venice has sunk under the waves: that’s what I’ll say. When the pipelines run through the prairie dog towns: that’s what I’ll say. When they break the treaties again: that’s what I’ll say.

My mother has a piece of the Berlin Wall. She was there. She worked with a Kennedy; which one? Your guess is as good as mine. But, she was there. Then he died. They all die. What is it that they say? This too shall pass?

Alas, what am I to say? That I was not there? That I stayed home? So, on the eve of a departure that I imagine to be grand but could more realistically be described as akin to the rides that those fleas hitched on those rats who hitched rides from Asia to Italian ports, I decided to see what I could.

In my privileged life I had been to the same number of foreign countries as U.S. States. I decided to change that and visited fourteen new states in eighteen days. So now, I can say, I was there.

Everyone wants something to mean something. Did I eat in Chicago? Did I pray in Columbus? Did I love in Seattle? I have no doubt that there is some psychic resonance to travel. There is certainly something special about seeing the places other people exist. You see, I could wax poetic about the poor souls who’ve spent their whole lives in Libby, Montana, or the lucky rich fucks who have second homes in West Glacier, but, I think that all I want is to say that I was there.

I need those digital photos to prove that my material existence was just slightly closer to this and that place than you were. And I think that makes me better than you. I was there, I know what a road looks like in Wyoming. Do you? Oh shit, I could’ve done this whole thing on Google Streetview.

But when I was sitting in a fold out chair in National Forest land overlooking Ellensburg, Washington, I didn’t think of where I was. The streetview cars don’t come up this high. It’s just me and the other bums. So, for a few moments I had those wordless thoughts that I had spent my entire life looking for.

I speak so much about how language poisons us, but I can so rarely escape its grasp. I guess the prisoner knows their jailer the best.

So, I glimpsed real freedom longer than I ever have before.

But, I’d rather just say that I was there. And when they say, where’s that? I just don’t think I’ll answer.