Like No Other Place

Sometimes you wake up in the morning hungover and it is glorious. You look out the window at a gray sky, but within the mind floweth over with words, words, words and it seems only a few hours until the end of the work week and the next celebratory drink. Seems because it is.

I managed to lose most of those beautiful phrases that were coursing through my head earlier, although impossible to forget walking past that guy this morning and his "Claymore, North Carolina - a great town!" t-shirt. There is an infinite amount of randomness. And the search for more is intoxication itself.

Last night at Rogue's Roost, I indiscreetly added Samarkand to the third rope ladder, having previously done written Oxford a year or so before that dream could be realized. The timing is right, and I see things shaping up nicely. In fact, an initial foray onto the great Silk Road could come as early as this December with a chance at the long-awaited, much-anticipated Istanbul. Combine that with Rumi's 800th birthday in his home town of Konya and the cave hotels of Cappadocia and the epic nature of the trip almost writes itself, no? Plus in the shorter term, it might just be possible to get to Toronto on September 8-9 to see the Smashing Pumpkins and the Killers. Gotta gotta be down because I want it all.

Off for the Guinness. Before, here's my favorite of quotes, up there with Master Beckett, for I could not find it posted on the internet last night. I have also sent a friend traveling through Kilkenney this weekend on a mission to Shem Lawlor's pub to see if The Curve of the Earth's Shoulders is still there. Where the dream began. Surely it must be still:

"To me, Samarkand like no other place had always been the final distillation of romance - beautiful, mysterious, remote - indeed at the very end of the Earth - a place of great but harsh events, its origins lost in pre-history, occupied by Alexander the Great, pillaged by the golden horde, a capital of the world, dominion of Tameplane, stronghold of the Silk Road to China, gateway to the roof of the world, a place much longed for and for years utterly unattainable. But one warm April in 1960, there we were."

They even picked the month for me. Substitute 2009 for 1960, and that sounds just about perfect. Enjoy your TFI. Starting in September it is 50P a pint again. Who knows, maybe I'll swing through on my way to Istanbul...