A fresh papaya doesn't taste like vomit. Two Canadian women will invite you to sleep with them in their camping tent for no other reason than to talk American politics as raindrops pitter patter on the soft cathedral roof of the shelter. A guy next to you in a crowd will use the term "infinite crescendo" to describe the musical acts of the love fest. You will write it down in your phone, infinite crescendo. You and a girl will sit at the edge of the world calling each other things like lovely as the unnamed constellations do what they've been doing almost like this existence is not a miracle. You will write at some point in your phone "I don't know why I'm here but I love it". A kitchen cook will explode in rage that you sent an omelette with tomatoes back to him. You will get zenned out again and then be yelled at on the drive home by an angry local making a left turn in his truck while you're peeling a quick right in front of him. You will cry three times. Once on the plane there. Once on the top of a volcano summit. Once on the way down its road where it meets the trail when finally after dozens of cars speeding past your worn out thumb, a Japanese tourist offers to give you a ride back up but then a couple from Lake Tahoe stops and gives you a ride back down to your car. You will realize that most tears aren't from the sadness of loss but from the gratitude of what's had. Your chest, the one that's felt like an elephant has been sitting on top of it for months, it will release and allow the heart to open for awhile. I can travel sober. I can lose my mind at altitudes sober. I can dance in public sober. Dancing, I always said I needed to find mine. My friend said she cried at the stupid vulnerability of intuitive dancing and I understood but then I pounded the floor, jumped thousands of times, made myself move until conditioned tension all spilled out of me and I could breathe again. Then we drank a bunch of foraged coconuts. Earlier that morning, I walked naked on a black sand beach, shriveled, and glorious on this earth for a time
