To travel: a brazen search for deeper understanding

I rode the train West from Padova.  I had   missed seeing the city again, and wondered when I would get the chance.  It may be soon, but something told me it would be someday far in the future.  Cicely had told me something months before that still stuck with me.  'We have our whole lives to travel, you can always come back.'  
It was a beautiful and simple way to put our situation.  I have thought about it often since then.

The ride west was nostalgic, and reminded me of Colorado.  Mountains lay off to the North, and a huge full moon rose during the sunset.  The moon glowed in the purple hue of the Italian valley.  Pollution clung to the earth all along the Italian lowlands, and the sunsets looked like illuminated fog.  
The silhouettes of mountains were sharp with the sun behind them; Perfectly similar to Colorado.  The outlined teeth gnashed against the bloody red sky. Houses sped by in front.  
I wondered if I would appreciate the mountains back home more now.  I love the build, the rise, the art of them already.  Something was irreplaceable about them that the scene around couldn't quite mimic. When I was home the mountains were as beautiful as ever, but I longed to leave them anyways.  The trees grew dark, and the fields were losing their light.  The moon became the only illumination in the sky.  

Could this be home?  I found myself asking that question at every turn.  Were any of these places I travelled to a capable home.  In some sense they were all capable.  I could picture myself living in every possible circumstance for some amount of time.  The right people around could make the smallest town splendid.  And with a couple quiet cafes, the biggest cities are as peaceful as mining towns.  The dark splendor of the Italian landscape was pulling my mind back to Colorado.  

It is a far out life to live, meandering through time zones in a search for a new home.  I slide easily into place wherever I end up, but somehow the calm hold of an Italian home does not ring so perfect to me.  I have warmth in my days.  Every morning I am surrounded by silence, then spat into the raving madness of teaching.  The kids are the essence of life.  Vitality, energy, continually altering their own existence through play and imagination.  They try to define themselves by trying on whatever hat seems cool.  Maybe for one hour, maybe for one day, maybe for one month, they act out the life that fits each hat.  Does is look good from the side? Is the bill intact enough? Does it block the sun when necessary and keep the head warm as well?  

In comparison, they are doing the same as I.   Or maybe I as them.  My imagination is not quite so bright, and I am forced to surround myself in likeminded people.  The child-like curiosity of fellow travellers.  Yes I know who I am, sort of.  But my days are a brazen search for a deeper understanding.  I am helplessly defined in lines and boxes designed by a generation I do not identify with.  My mind is all but at ease when I relax and fall into the common step.  I feel a rush to turn away and realize a route unseen by the map markers of my elders.  
My fellow travellers, the bouncing board of my idealism.  Some of them are sorrowful and lost souls, some hilarious and lively spirits.  Their minds built for building, and mine trying to learn their ways.  We are the few that do not lose that childish drive to blindly chase the unknown.  
Have I seen it?  Well I must at least see it.  With that we are off.

It is a mindset of naivety.  The unknown is where life is, so we must search for it!  We laugh at the nonsensical, the preposterous pieces of life.  We make asses of ourselves with no care.  What used to be the complete acceptance by our childhood peers has been replaced with a complete lack of worry, for we will leave next week!  What matter is it for the people of this tiny town to think me an imbecile?  Like we are actors attempting a thousand roles a week, we find each unique trait of ourselves.  And by unique I do not mean unlike any others, but the traits that we align with.  Travelling is the catch all of differences in the world.  No amount of conversation at home can give you the perspectives of conversation abroad. The open spreading of differences is encouraged.  So we grab hold of each perspective, take a peek inside, toss aside what doesn't seem pretty and stuff what we like into our pockets.  What makes each perspective so unique is how all these traits match up.  No person can match perfectly to another.  Some odd difference here and there emerge, and that is what being human is to me.  The tiniest of differences in some perspective or another are what make people interesting.  The madness of mirroring a million reflections in a hope to see a mural of oneself: that is the call of a traveler.    

It is concerning to the people who stay cemented in place.  And who is to say which is correct? I have found a deep and true happiness in my life surrounded in the known.  My days were planned easily, with little stress and almost no question of what to do.  My nights were relaxed, full of simple meals and healthy decisions.  I slept in one bed, with a closet full of my own clothes.  My shower worked regularly, and my friends were nearby.  The singing call of a single sleeping ground is a true one.  There is no denying the great depth of sleep one gets from a room defined as one's own.  
But to me, the consistency is numbing.  I feel dulled by the normalcy.  My passion is put out and replaced by humble acceptance that this is how life should be.  To some that must be a beautiful feeling, but I am starved by it.  I see the flash of life in a single wondrous person's eyes, I hear the laugh of someone seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time and I start itching for that feeling myself.  I wonder what else is out there that I don't understand in the slightest.  So I find myself some bravery, pack my bags with my naive will to learn, and leave early for the airport in excitement.