Why is anyone still writing? (an answer)

It is 6am and I have been back from Paris for less than five hours. I have slept, tidied messes I thought would right themselves, and mostly tossed and turned in my bed, wondering at the greater meaning of the trip: why I had gone, what I had learned, would I ever go again?

It is common for me to grasp at the “why” of my travels. Other writers jot down every detail: the fistfight on the Metro, the thickness of the tapwater, the way the cobblestones push up at your feet like they are trying to grab you, the oddity of eating pain au chocolat at a small guesthouse while the morning news broadcasts incessant images of cumulous fires and you feel sorrow rather than fear—and then an entirely different sorrow and fear, since you realize