Speculation, in sight of dark clouds...

It is good, this blog.  This keeping of moments.  This real-time depository of memories.  It allows for the tracking of thought, the ever-cyclical return to the same places in the mind, the recurring dreams and desires.  Evidence of the inability to not think about escape.

One year returned, and how the work grows quiet, despite the conference calls next door.  The lengthy days with nothing for an assistant to do and the slow watching of the clock until the afternoon matches, or the closing of the door for the streaming of missed television shows.  Dallying over the latest youtube clips and researching details on the next adventure.  Anything but the focus on organizing the files, or pursuing the expansion of the career.  In wistful recognition that the famed gravy train appears to have run its fruitful course.

And so your fate lies in the hands of unknown developments.  Though it remains a choice to be passive, to while away the time, waiting.  To rest, I suppose, as you find again at last the motivation to take advantage of the facilities your condo fees have been paying for and begin anew the process of restoring the body to a healthier state, ready for the road.  Even as the efforts to avoid letting Friday nights get away from you continue to fail.

New days bring new hope.  There is also an application kicking around that seems was wise to send in.  That could offer a (perhaps temporary) solution to the travails, and also offer up some intriguing opportunities on the spring travel front.   

That front already looks ever-so promising, with the Xmas Eve departure of the last post booked.  Speaking of leaving fate to the unknown, who could have predicted the Robbie Burns night make-out, that led to the Hip concert last second invite that led to the Loose Cannon and then the Palace VIP and then the strange compulsion to procure a new phone number amid the people watching?  That is quite the convoluted way in which to meet the companion who will eventually join you to Tanzania to start on Kili before the year is up, and follow through to a safari and trip to fabled Zanzibar.  The odds, the ridiculousness, truly mind boggling in scope.

For you also have to factor in the unlikelihood of encountering L. Maurice at the Harvest Jazz and Blues fest - no doubt due to a desire to see French Hip-Hop - when you were there to see the last MG show with Soho.  And so, in the newly acquired rubber boots, fresh off a solitary trip to Moscow and news of the positive Italian and Montreal tests, did the dream arise with clarity...  and so did the perfect Expedia flights hold just long enough for the mention of it following Parkland, and leading to the purchase over Iphone and Blueberry Wheat at Rogues, where the Oxford reference on the rope ladder made back in 2002 seems to have finally faded out.  Two lost souls running away to something new.  Was it just one week ago that the booking was made?

All of this, fitting for the first Christmas Eve outside of Moncton to end, not in the drunk tank, but over the Atlantic.  A trip to top even the grandest taken to date.  Will there be employment for you on the return, who can say?  Perhaps the paranoia and pessimism will look foolish in retrospect upon the landing of some other large file.  Or perhaps not, and the accounts that once looked flush with Revenue Canada cash will be meager and require some creativity to pursue those things that need pursuing, whether on the Ransom or in Jardim d'Alah.

Leave it one more week, and see how the hours unfold.  But it may be that October is a month for putting out subtle feelers for new employ, whether across the seas or otherwise, that can fund a sailing and football excursion for the first half of 2014 that would rule them all.  The money has always been there and can be again, and you wonder if the idea of teaching English is not the way if the professor dream dies due to past failures to pursue it. 


No matter - all this speculation grows tiring, not that it has been set out to trigger future smiles.  Time to walk across the old pedway again, and lodge the first installment payment to the tax man of money that was never yours, and make a deposit for a room in Salvador which I hope you see the inside of come June.  What a world it is, to be able to make such plans...