`More Than I Have Learnt'

The dolor of rental cars, hotel lobbies with adjoining "business centers," freeway access roads, reproductions of Jasper Johns' American flags hanging on the wall at Denny's, petrochemical rainbows on wet pavement, talking elevators, USA Today outside the hotel door in the morning, "impacting" as an adjective and "signage," the absence of books but for Gideons Bible, Rupert Holmes "Pina Colada" on the shuttlebus, mints on the pillow that even my kids won't eat.

I remember what Theodore Dalrymple wrote in The Spectator on Dec. 13, 2003:

"All in all, my life is a rich one, and it is a rich one, and it is rich because the world is so much richer than my life can ever be. I don't think I will lose interest in the world until the day I die, and my only regret is that I will not have long enough to learn much more than I have learnt."