Living On The Line

Today is Saturday. It is exactly two weeks since I left. I sit in a cafe on Batthyany Ter, drinking espresso, and reflecting. I no longer have a home or a job. I have only the most essential possesions, the considered contents of the one bag I can afford to carry across Europe: a few clothes, a notebook; an MP3 player, a camera. I take up residence for a day or two in a small hotel or pension in a town or city I have chosen at random from my map. Then I go to the station to find out where the next train will take me, buy a ticket, and leave. Another station, another town, another country. Every skill and resource from a lifetime serving employers and servicing bills redirected, refined, and realised: to manage an almost overwhelming amount of choice and freedom.
I clear a space on my table and spread out my map. I order another espresso, tracing the lines south, deeper into Hungary; I circle a town with a strange name that I cannot pronounce.
I know exactly where I would have been, and what I would have been doing on this day, had I not left. And where I would be tomorrow, in two weeks, a month.
I pay my bill, and walk to the station.