Travel is life-changing. That's the promise made by a thousand websites and magazines, by philosophers and writers down the ages. Mark Twain said it was fatal to prejudice, and Thomas Jefferson said it made you wise. Anais Nin observed that "we travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls." It's all true. Self-transformation is what I sought and what I found.

I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity test the bonds of love. I think it's more likely that people who hate to make choices to settle on one thing or another are attracted to travel. Travel doesn't beget a double life. The appeal of the double life begets travel.

In her fury she'd broken into Valencian, indicating the deepest possible roots in the land. I was impressed with how deeply she was from here, in a way I could never imagine being from anywhere, not even my home town.

There's always a parallel story. The paths not taken go on in our heads.

It was the inverse of an island in the sea.