As our journey to the Midwest, the East Coast, and the South comes to an end, I have reflections and resolutions. I began my current trip preparation—one filled with special occasions—vowing, “It’s official. I’m done with trying to get everything I own for eleven days into a carry-on the size of a lunchbox. I am not in a contest to see who can travel the smallest, lightest, or most efficient! I don’t care if all three wrinkle-free pants go with all three easily 'rinsed out' tops for nine...

Regal, like dignitaries in a receiving line, they stand in their purple opulence. Magnificent tropical beauties, the awe-inspiring Jacaranda trees full of silky flowers which hang in countless full bunches grow twenty-five to forty feet with an equal spread. With arching branches and gracefully curved multiple trunks, they frame First Avenue, along with graceful queen palms, on both sides from Walnut to Laurel, the alphabetically named tree cross streets of my San Diego neighborhood, Bankers...

Oh, how I’d love to be a redhead in a Toulouse Lautrec painting. Flame-hair igniting the dance halls and brothels of Montmartre. A can-can dancer, a launderess, a prostitute. Working-class girls. Reclining, crouching, bathing. I imagine myself on stage, high-kicking the top hat off the gentleman in the front row. Or a sad chanteuse clad in long black gloves crooning a soft song. Perhaps adjusting my peek-a-boo fishnet stockings... or washing my copper tresses in la toilette. Toulouse...