About Me — Damon Ferrara

A traveling poet in a postmodern land

Reading Game of Thrones while watching on the Wall. (Photo credit: Author)

I don’t know why I sound British.

Father was the first to notice and I lacked a good response. I ‘d lived in the same New York town all my life, and was 10, an age little heralded for clever retorts. Best guess: Harry Potter and Doctor Who. Homeschooled in a countryside absent sidewalks and people, pop culture proved a fitting substitute.

Not that I felt any loneliness, until I tragically enjoyed a summer camp. Upon discovering friends exist, I fancied having a few. Since then, this irritating desire has often complicated my life. I don’t recommend it.

The Call to Adventure and/or College

Before leaving home, I declared to myself I would not be weird. I failed but became sociable.

I do not, for instance, drink, but in a room of drinkers, sobriety makes you the most intriguing person in the room. First, dance the hardest. Then, when they celebrate your apparent inebriation, unveil the teetotalism. After explaining I’ve had 58 sips of alcohol in my life, plus an alcoholic gelato and an ambiguous Peruvian incident, I am deemed as interesting as Dos Equis.

Gelato and Peru are both important here, traveling made possible by my educational strategy. I skipped high school and started college…