83   Friday, November 21   Trenton, NJ

It's raining. Not that that means much. For once, the weather 
forecasts have been bang-on. So, able to predict it, I took 
refuge in a motel, where I am now. I don't really have much to 
say, although I decided at one point that I would like to have a 
journal entry from each state and province I pass through. So, 
since I will be out of New Jersey by tomorrow, I should probably 
get this in now. Although I probably won't ever get one entry 
from each state I pass through, since I will be taking a bus 
through most of them. This is very disheartening. It is also due 
to a miscalculation on my part. Setting out so sure of myself, 
so sure that I would be able to reach Montréal, get down to 
Washington, Texas, California and back to Vancouver by December. 
I laugh at myself and my naïveté. What I believed myself capable 
of. Come what may, however, I must be back in Vancouver by the 
15th of December. So I am cutting myself short. An excruciating 
decision. But one that was made in fact such a long time ago, 
that I cannot at this stage avoid it. And that's the story. So 
many times, when asked what my plans were, I would respond, "To 
continue on to Texas..." Ever realizing, yet ever pushing to the 
back of my mind the realization that I would never make it. That 
my days had been numbered before I ever set out. And whether I 
was capable of it or not. I was. And still am. I could keep on 
going, and therein lies the pity. Given the chance, I feel still 
as if I could continue to the ends of the Earth before the 
necessity of returning were to strike. So different, things are 
since when I started. And yet so much the same. So I look apon 
the waning days of my voyage. How interesting that we have so 
many ways of saying the same thing. Metaphor, allegory, direct 
synonym, or otherwise. The wax and wane of the moon. The ebb and 
flow of the tide. The rise and fall of an empire. The growth and 
decay, finally, of a human life. Waning days, then. As I look on 
the waning days of my voyage, I feel a deep sense of regret. And 
a sense, moreover, of waste. I believe I understand acutely the 
"midlife crisis" that so many people suffer from. I set out to 
discover. Externally, internally. I set out to change. To change 
myself. To gain, somehow, somewhere, an idea of what to do. And 
now, then, as I look on the waning days of my voyage, I find 
myself no wiser. I search, yet find no sense inside me of what 
to do next. I dread the question that others ask me, "so what 
will you do when you're finished?" Because I have not the 
strength to ask it of myself. Because I did, before, and have 
yet failed to find an answer. After covering more than 4000 
miles, I have come nowhere. So different, things are since when 
I started. And yet so much the same. I look forward, with some 
foreboding, to the time when I return. And I look backward, to 
what seems not even yesterday, but this morning, riding down 
McBride Ave. in New Westminster, 132nd st. in Surrey. Setting 
out on a fantastic voyage, and yet not quite believing it 
myself, not quite believing that this would continue. Thinking, 
still, that this would only go on for a few hours. And in a 
sense, it has. It seems, as I said, that this was only this 
morning, that in fact, only a few hours have transpired, though 
I know it to be closer to 3 months. And what has happened since 
that morning 83 days ago? And, more importantly, what will 
happen on some morning 22 days hence? When I wake up in my own 
bed in Vancouver and still nothing will have changed? The 
throught does not bear thinking.

   I so much wish I didn't have to return.

   "After changes apon changes, we are more or less the same".