April Fool's, 2014?

Another future date to serve as a marker?  A fixed bearing to focus the mind on new, ever grander adventures?  For the combination of the Ransom and the World Cup loom large in the mind, more so after airing the possibilities with Nick after another wonderful 7 hour bender of Lemon Hart ("Monday Monday" on the jukebox, the catastrophe of darkness on the boat, and To Parapono) and with Inch and co. on the boat tonight.  It is almost too dream-like and magical a chance to deny.  There would be things to be done and sorted, but none unmanageable.  The recent retention and potential NL work to pass the time until then would appear to fit in well as a bookend, offering up the possibility of taking a crucial February holiday just before the dropping of the news. 

I like when a good plan comes together of a sudden.  And a symmetrical one too, almost 5 years to the day when you set off for the Camino originally, and wasn't it just like fate to remind you of that with the timely appearance of Ms. Kos in Halifax after all this time.  Must send Mr. Walker a message. 

And as for the office, as the time goes on I think it is worth facing the inevitable at some point.  This is never going to be the career.  The opportunities up to this point have suited beautifully, but the ongoing chase for clients, the predictability of the opposition, and focusing so much on representing the views of others...  surely it has always been clear that long-term there are other horizons.  What a thrilling moment if you can take to the seas, onto the Amazon, through the Canal and Darwin's island, and then to the once-in-a-lifetime World Cup, with destination truly unknown in front of you as that winds to its conclusion? 

Third time's a charm and all that.  This could be the wandering time to rule them all.  Dream on about it further, and think of it while walking again along Shakespeare's Thames and within Red Square in the next two weeks.  But already, I get a sense of wheels in motion, of waves leaving and not yielding in their drive forward.  "No second life," as Elytis says in the yet-to-find translation of Parapono.  But that must be the motivating fortune that leads you out into that beyond, in search of what's next.  Hard to imagine a better place for a 35th year tape than somewhere in the Pacific...  Oh, oh, oh.