It's July 3rd, pushing 35° outside. That's above the European melting point. I'm at the cafe, sitting by the open-air aperture at the front of the place. 

Outside: the summer light is glaring on the pedestrians on Bartók Béla. Their hat brims cast shadows so sharp they could trim your bangs.

Inside: three women sit in the corner, surveying fashion magazines. In another, two Hungarian men are chatting over their laptops, arranged in a battleship fashion. The side wall is a jam-packed and tidy book shelf that reaches to the back of the cafe, into a back room that feels like a library.

Then me: having a sandwich, alone, contemplating an analogy that relationships at my age are like owning cars in the city: 

Some people want them but don't really need them. 

Some people can't imagine life without them. 

Some people rent them. 

Some people admire them from afar, while others curse their existence. 

Some like having friends with one, a way to tap an easy place from time to time. 

Other people take theirs for granted. Never imagining they could be stolen or hauled away.

What people think of them is largely a product of what dwells in their hearts and whatever that might be, it sits on a spectrum between contentment and longing. 

Some share them freely and others over your dead body.

Yes, I've concluded that the analogy holds. 

At some point during my contemplation a man sat at the two-top opposite mine, opting for the chair facing my table. I always consider this choice a gesture, though it’s likely not. Strange, I didn’t notice him sit. 

His elbows rest on the table, and his hands are in the perfect position to cradle his chin as he ponders his tolerance for the weather. Instead, they cradle his phone. Then he takes his espresso in a swill, and leaves.

Next to his empty-cup-on-saucer, I notice his order number carved in a black wooden cube: 39. 

I click over the number in my head. Thirty-nine. I’m always looking for numbers in the atmosphere, spotting patterns, signals, omens. Amateur numerologist.

Thirty-nine. Three times three is nine. So what? Nothing here, move on.

I started numbering the entries in my journal, counting the days since February 1st, 1995. That's the day I left Tucson on my Great American Neo-Beatnik adventure. I was going to chug my VW Thing up into the Pacific Northwest, maybe up to Alaska eventually. Who knows? The goal was to pump some fuel into my secret ambition to be a writer. At least, that was my justification for putting grad-school on the shelf. That and I was almost out of money. In hindsight, it seems an odd time to set out on a great American adventure, eleven hundred bucks to my name, but that was Day 1. Today, as it happens, is Day 11,111.

One one, one one one.

818 E Seneca St, Tucson, AZ 85719 – I shoved off late morning and made it 355 miles before my engine blew on the outskirts of Indio. I limped into a gas station, sat for a while, and then called my old man. He threw me a lifeline, but it wasn’t the sort I had in mind. 

“You’ll figure it out,” he said. 

I was confused for a minute. Part of me wanted safety and security, maybe even an easy retreat. Part of me wanted to believe this was an omen to turn back toward what I knew. Toward the familiar. Part of me wanted to cry. Almost did. I was sitting in the middle of the California desert with a crippled Volkswagen and a backseat full of god-knows-what belongings I deemed essential.

Day 1 had gone tits up, that's for sure.

You’ll figure it out.

The “it” was whatever lay ahead. The “it” was the journey, not the retreat. That one statement was more like the koan that guided everything that was to come. The highs and lows, and mostly the lows. 

You’ll figure it out.

And figure it out I did. Sort of. Eleven thousand, one-hundred and ten days later and I’m still figuring it out. Thank goodness (and Dad).