writing falters

06 Apr, 2026

Lately life has interrupted the desire to write about it. Too many events I am left to go noodle on. Or perhaps overthink as my wife claims. I look at the events and people like an examination of sorts. Perhaps like the old,

the unexamined life is not worth living

That’s it. Without some kind of looking and touching, just accepting things is not my forte. I need the mental feeling around the edges, the boundaries, what things mean and perhaps it means giving them more in the journal or in the journey. I like how those words start out the same.

It’s been getting warmer lately and lately by about noon it is 37. I won’t do much walking in that kind of weather so I tend to leave earlier when I can. Going for a walk at 730 works nicely. The other thing has been this family thing. I’ve had my feelings there lately so I just stopped doing things with them all. I guess I’ve felt I don’t really belong to all that and I bring nothing to it. That’s a feeling perhaps expats here can find. We just do not fit in and many I think do lead this lives one vlogger called lives of isolation. We don’t belong to any of it no matter how hard we want to. I never remember feeling the same way in Vietnam when I lived there. It seemed there defining “belonging” was different. My friend Paul living in Hanoi would differ. He has told me friendships are amazingly hard to find. Not just friendships but even lesser things that just do not come his way. Someone to talk to daily. His wife is Vietnamese so she will talk to him. The baseline is different. How it multiplies is the ripples in the pond. Toss a thing in and watch the ever widening movement. I guess that’s life to him. I never did experience that in Hanoi. I had a lot of Vietnamese friends. I don’t know why but Vietnamese people seemed easier to have meaningful or not relationships with than most others. Cambodian people seem different.

I noodle that of course. And I write about it because putting it down here is a way of looking at it from the angles of life I get here. Last night was my wife’s long lost daughter last night here and they fly back to Europe today. I just stopped doing things with them after the Battambang thing. Perhaps I should call it the “Battambang disaster”. I know I decided I cannot go back there. It has been too many times and the last one really affected my desire to go again.

So all this peddles around faltering at wanting to write but not losing wonderful little tidbits. It did let me see that writing daily is something perhaps I cannot sustain. Maybe I do not want to any more. It became a bridge to cross each day or to write the posts I love that cross over days and thoughts.

Life changes too and RWR would be upset with me if I did not expect and cherish and rage against the change. RWR passed away last year in October. I had not seen him for years. It was with some sadness but also the wondrous wealth of memories that flooded after I learnt of it. He was a force in life to me and still is. His things. Oddities. Ways of making archeology more fun, sometimes dangerous, always full of his wonderful stories. People gravitated to him and he had this cadre of former and present students that would volunteered at his weekend archaeology field classes. I went to meet him with my daughter way back when. I have a few cherished photos of that. Many of the earlier photos were in real albums that either live on or my ex wife decided to dispose of. I believe the worst of her these days. It makes it easier to dislike her I guess.

Anyways, this all points at me trying to find words this morning to look at my desire for writing these things. I’ll give it some time and a coffee out perhaps in a bit. See how it all fits then.

coffee out with words

Sleeping last nights has been a joke really. I keep coming back to wondering why. Like why is it I cannot sleep and then feel better or even less terrible. So this morning it’s more of the same. Down to a closer place for coffee. Pondering the inscrutable. It’s our little human condition to ask why of things. Some people here would answer,

It’s just the way it is. It will pass

That seems an easy way out to a chronic over thinker like me. I don’t want to figure out the reason for everything here. That would be a frustrating and never ending endeavor. What I do want is to find my things, write them for me and maybe you, find more things. Try to understand them. The sum total of reality perhaps is fake. Edward Abbey said he had never found underlying reality. Being of human breed though we continue to ask the why questions.

I’ve covered some places this morning. The writing sometimes takes me to some dim lit place I wandered or wondered at. Google Photos lately tells me with remorseless precision where I was 8 or 6 years ago. Do the photos tell the story? Some places a renegade thought emerges. An Amtrak ride that took me to the land of dreams. I remember laying in my sleeper. We had left New York Amtrak station. I had ridden from Florida. Then this.

Words could come and perhaps did. In some forgotten blog where I wrote once on my little adventures. I had seen my daughter in Florida. Took her to Disney world and Epcot center.

It all came to words and memories. The ancient Egyptians believed if you spoke the name of a dead person they came back to the living. Perhaps in some wonderful time altering way it happens for me. Not just people though. Moments frozen. A train ride. Then and now.

See you soon.