I was still considering the North Africa trip. His money was a buffer between himself and dealing with any of the tedious expectations that others may have for him. It was only later that I realized that my life or at least the thought of a life with me was something she would have found horribly confining.

I was more shattered than I could ever reveal. I was always watching (analysing) him whenever I was around him, trying to discover what exactly it was about him that had so quickly convinced Kit that he was the one for her. It didn’t take me long to discover that my ship had sailed and Port’s had docked. I was on the verge of asking her to marry me when she abruptly disappeared on a whirlwind tour of the world. We occasionally kissed with something more than friendly affection. We hung out together to the detriment of our individual studies. We exchanged books and thoughts about those books. I watched the moth morph into a beautiful butterfly.

A psychologist might make a case that my inability to pick one companion from the available women in my life actually stems from a deep seated belief that eventually Kit would come to her senses, divorce Port, and fling herself into my arms. I guess I might as well confess this now. I was disappointed that his wife Kit was not with him. Shamefully so.ĭespite knowing this about me, Port did stop in one evening to ask me if I wanted to go with them to North Africa. So yes, I was never able to linger while traveling, due to the fact that I always had a pressing need to return to my life, to shore up my business interests, and to keep my social relationships growing. I had three women I was seeing, all interviewing for a more permanent position as my wife. I was still building a living for myself.

Whereas a tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.'īefore meeting Port Moresby, I always thought of myself as a traveler, but after one particular late night discussion accompanied by inebriation, interrupted by a frolic in an exotic bordello conveniently located nearby, and then reconvened over tankards of yet more alcoholic concoctions, he managed to convince me that I was merely a tourist.

The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. 'He did not think of himself as a tourist he was a traveler.

The sheltering sky book review