The Smell of Jasmine after Rain

The CME award lunch last week, mostly laughable but well punctuated by a story from the Middle East invoking childhood memories of Syria.  Inspiring thoughts of a place of thine own - weather beaten and rough and raw.  Something to conjure up further visions, to shake you from the constant lethargy of these endless days.

The Georgia 6th election finally coming to a close tonight, and despite everything, the Republicans emerging with another close victory.  The nature of these ongoing fights over basic issues of democracy and decency and rationality and compassion... all so depressing.  Who are these people, invested so heavily as they seem to be in hypocrisy and shamelessness?  It can be such a strange, sad, incomprehensible world at times.

What is to be done?  The journalistic path?  There are already oh so many tweets and oh so much competition and jockeying among the crowds.  Perhaps, too, it is a touch late to start down such an entirely new professional road.  Begging the question as to whether you are back to where you started, I suppose.  Whether the creative non-fiction choice should remain the dream.  Or whether to punt such decisions out another summer, into the 40th year.

Have been sat here for 5 hours now, going on 6, just whiling away the time, mostly pointlessly, as you would at home.  Dreaming about the routes down to Antarctica, an idea which you cannot let slip away, no matter the cost or hassles or difficult conversations to launch it.  Might have to toss Torres del Paine from that itinerary though, which strangely suits me.  Chile kept on the shelf for a future year, with flights down through Argentina instead, traded as a new country in favour of an overnight in Dubai on the way to London and Hamilton.

There are so many such trips.  La Paz to San Pedro to Mendoza to Santiago to Torres.  Ethiopia.  India to Nepal to Tibet to China.  The low residency option does have its merits.  I wonder, audaciously, if you could get to work on two books as part of it - one election/Trump-related, the other focused on some of the mental health ideas.  Or something else. 

Worth pondering.  Go and hit the road and sleep (again) on it.