02092019

In Geneva. Stayed in the room once again the entire day. This room felt nicer than the other ones and the scenery seemed nicer than all the rest – but maybe my perception of it has just been skewed by the fact that it’s the last day of the trip. Hopefully by around noon or so tomorrow I’ll be back home. 

I haven’t worked on anything too substantial the past several days, since yesterday was spent commuting and today I was too tired to really do anything. I’ve been having some trouble designing the biomechanics for urination – mostly regarding volume and rate of filtration between drinking and, well, the act of urinating, the entire process of which I’ve discovered is far more unpredictable than I’d initially imagined – and consequently I spent the entire morning reading (or attempting to read, anyways) medical papers of varying degrees of technical obscurity. I spent the rest of the day lying in bed or looking out the window. 

I feel completely drained by this trip, and I’m still not entirely sure what the net effect of it has been. It’s definitely taken a toll on me in more ways than one and while I don’t necessarily regret having seen all of these places (well, nominally, anyways…) I recognise now with absolute certainty that recreational travel is not for me and that cities in particular tend to exact a devastating toll on my general state. I’ll be returning home in a more psychically precarious and fragile state than when I left, with a far greater appreciation for my isolation. 

And yet, with all that being said… for some reason I still feel a little bit wistful. It feels like the time has passed too quickly, that the trip was far shorter than it actually was (even if the moment to moment waiting seemed interminable at the time). Summer is already over; even two weeks ago seems not so long ago yet it feels so much longer ago than it has any right to seem. I have a feeling though that these things have less to do with the actual trip itself and much more with my general sentimentality these days. I’m not sure though, and that too fills me with a muted sense of… something. In any case, whatever it is, there’s this real empty, almost sad kinda feeling beneath it all that I can’t seem to shake. I just hope it doesn’t persist too long.