Two years minus two days ago I was sitting in the auditorium of Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne, about halfway down the east coast of Florida, watching an ensemble of local students perform Fiddler on the Roof. I felt a bit chilly under the air conditioning, and maybe rightly so, wearing t-shirt and shorts among many proper and well-dressed parents and grandparents, but those were the nicest clothes I could come up with for the time being.

More than chilly, I felt privileged to be there. I thought of how a week earlier I had been coming down through Savannah, Jacksonville, Titusville and Cocoa, going steadily south. It had been night, the air was getting tropically thick, and distant radio masts towered over the trees, their lone, red lights flaring like the eye of Mordor, like guardians of the jungle. I had spent all my change on Tekken 3 in Fayetteville and felt like Bruce Lee entering forbidden territory.

I had arrived in Melbourne not really sure what to expect. Dennis the taxi driver had taken me to the Colonial Motel (where he stayed himself and where he usually took people in exchange for lower rates) and now I was in the auditorium, thinking of new names I'd learned and been warned not to forget, hostile teachers turned nice, and even of extremely meager contributions I'd made to a bit of the play's clothing.

This day had almost a month of my stay in the States behind it, about enough to notice getting a little more tanned, a bit stronger and more experienced, well used to backpacks and long roads. Far away from home doing what I believed in.
I was happy then. Happier than I'd been in a long time.
I know this now. I cannot say for certain if I acknowledged it while sitting there, but I like to think that I did.
For there, my eyes were open, and what I felt worthy to be written, as it is said, on pages of gold.