you are twenty-two years old and the walls are vibrating sounds from anonymous source. you sit cross-legged on a floor strumming a near stranger’s banjo, a stranger you may come to know quite well or not at all. or at least someone you have gotten to know through his absence, his belongings left behind. you eat his food, read his books, occupy his living space as if you were he himself. and you stare at yourself in the mirror. you miss the people you were or the people you could have been. but you like yourself, mostly (although not entirely but who does?). you’ve been reading books straight through and wondering what it’s like other places, if you’ve been depriving yourself of some kind of miraculous adventure. you wonder why you accept one sided compassion, yet the physical aspect is nice. just to touch another body. you feel trapped, as if you are trying to know a place through its emptiness rather than its presence in void. you end chapters, you gravitate back towards them or do not give yourself enough time and space to love the new ones. so to you at twenty-two i say, stop trying to find yourself in other people. if you go about it that way, the vibrating walls are as close as you’ll ever get.