I wish there were a zero transaction cost way to pay all the random street performers when I pass them in the metro stations. Too often I'm late to get somewhere or I just don't have any spare change on me. And so over the years I have derived a nearly incalculable amount of joy from hurried snatches of jazz or funk, from the aching melodies of ragged violinists, the irrepressible energy of homeless saxophonists, the foot stamping rhythms of bucket drummers, the easy charm of old accordion players, the anguished beauty of long drawn out notes from street side opera singers...

and I never even stopped to tell them thanks.

Jet lag is a form of nostalgia for the body. I lie here in my hotel room in Ukraine at 3am, and my body imagines itself back in DC. My wife and I talk to each other about our days, we cook or exercise or delay doing little chores. Outside the bright twilight sky peers between the tall trunks of trees. It is a time to be awake, to be alive. And ~30 hours from now, perhaps I will wake up in my own bed, with my sleeping wife beside me, and I will peek through the window blinds not knowing what to expect: a starry sky, the glimmer of dawn, or maybe a distant city of gold domed cathedrals where revolutions are talked of as yesterday and shrines to martyrs line the city square.