Even though I've now been at "Riverbend" for over twenty years, and my many experiences in many other places are far better left forgotten, those far-away places continue to call me.
My mind is filled with the previous twenty years' worth of imaginary opportunities lost and gained, and I sometimes wonder how profoundly different my life would have been, had I decided to stay in any one of the many places which had begun to feel like home to me and which I knew that if I had stayed much longer, I might never have left again.
But then the moment came when I couldn't imagine my time getting any better, and so I convinced myself that it would be a good idea to leave before the magic would start to dry up and the bottom fell out of the experience. For all those years, I was convinced that it was perpetual motion that opened me up to new experiences and unusual encounters, and this compulsion kept me on the road, often at great personal cost.
Time, life, circumstances and fate all have their way of changing who we are and altering beyond all recognition memories or feelings until they finally seem like part of a dream or an illusion, and it is now far too late to return to a place once loved, or recapture a friendship left behind. "Irgendwo über den Bergen muss meine ferne Heimat sein."
