14 January 2007 13:32 -06:00 GMT

My current obsession is eating me up. When I went to India for a month that bookended 1989 and 1990, I kept a journal. In fact, I wrote about a hundred pages in that month, a fact that later impressed upon me that writing was a natural act for me, a bit like breathing. And when in a foreign environment, I tend to take breaths a little more deeply.

So I wrote this little journal, and now I can't find it! It's bugging the daylights out of me. I just pored through one old box that contained elementary school report cards (a little dismal), a Jr High diploma, cards and letters from family and friends, a Bank of America award I received in high school, an old Rolling Stone magazine with U2 on the cover, an old Atlanta Constitution with the headlines alluding to trying to find the Olympic bomber, a small wooden circle that has an Islamic symbol - a token that I received from a Dhow excursion in Mombasa back in 1998 - a 10 cm saucer that has the Moran coat of arms on it - an ode to my Godfather - and other miscellaneous and sundry mementos of my past. 

I've moved...oh man...at least a dozen times since I got back from India. It could be twenty times. College days with yearly moves. Pretty frequent moves after college, while finding work and myself. Move to Alabama, moves pre- and post-divorce, moves to and from Zambia, moves after re-settling in the US, and the most recent move after my wonderful perma-marriage...I just hope this darn book shows up! It's my current obsession, of this there is no doubt.

I hold two entities responsible for this obsession. Those are Deepak Sree and the Birmingham VA hospital.

Deepak had to go and have a heritage that is Indian, and he had to further go and be an excellent team mate on our Team D Internal Medicine service this month. So Deepak and I got to talking, and India came up, and I got to reminiscing, and so on. We talked about food and religion and diversity in the country, and family. Now I'm thinking about the missing writing from India.

It's Deepak's fault.

Then the VA countered with this series of paintings on the walls. They're paintings of typical scenes from France, except they are artificial because there are never any people in them. Despite being artificial, they are quite accurate, with great detail of bookshops, cafés, clockfaces on old buildings, creeping vines.

I love France. I speak some French, and that has facilitated wonderful experiences in the country that American popular culture maligns inappropriately. I've visited many places in France, several times over the course of the last 20 years. I've seen it change, and I've seen it from many angles. France has  been a significant player in the total enjoyment that I have received from traveling. So I walk in the VA, and I see these pictures, and I am briefly taken away from the fact that it's 1:30 in the morning and I'm walking toward a few more hours work in what will become a 30 hour day. For a few moments, I'm vividly back in France.

I thought, at some point during my call night, that I would just scribble down my current memories of places I have traveled, such as they are now. (The still small voice begins to moan, what if you had those real-time writings still, like the one's you wrote in India...and my obsession is born again.)

Nice was the first place I thought of, and that might just come up here in my wee little blogosphere. But for the moment, I've just completed proof-reading this blog, and I'm ready to post it. I just want to add this last little fact.

For lunch I'm having nshima and caterpillars.