always a tourist

i am a woman of no roots. growing up in the northeast in a project school has some advantages. your friends are from all over the country, given to you for either two or four years. the fixtures form the background--a set of boys you will never really get to know. it teaches you the pointlessness of attachment. it teaches you to hold yourself apart. at a time of unformed ambitions, you are dimly aware that there must be more. you don't want friends so much as prizes. the thing that chills you, that makes you want to leave, is mediocrity. you want to make your peace with it. you are suspicious of standards. you don't know your own strengths. you develop no abiding interests. nothing is reliable. your childhood is a drugged dream. you don't live in the cities you grew up in. there are no vanished safe havens to pine for in an orgy of nostalgia. you have the soul of a tourist. you are always simply passing through.