Another Friday...

2 weeks now since the Antarctica news was dropped, the initial awkwardness fading quickly into discussions on how life is short.  Flights booked and plans made for the Feb 21 departure - so near and yet still a-ways off.  Need to think about what will happen post that trip though, and on lazy nights like this stuck in at the condo, the idea of starting the MFA in 18 rather than waiting until 19 holds a lot of appeal.  To get on with things, even as the pay cheque for now is good.

In the interim, the kayaking trip was good, provoking interesting thoughts on the Eastern Shore future.  The exploration of islands and the like.  The idea of making writing desks out of stone and hunting for inspiration in the waves and trees and forging new hidden trails is a powerful one not to be dismissed.

What will things look like in 8 months?  What do you still need to do before the Santiago departure?  What what what, always what.  Head down and cross off the next run of days until Chicago, then London, then ?

Reflections on 95

Nice drive yesterday down to the Elms for a long lunch.  How timely as well, that the one readily apparent postcard in the collection of "treasures" was from Iguazu, and which noted a swift return home in time for the 90th.  Five years on (and with the length of five long winters, etc.) and the more things change, the more they also stay the same.  Even as you see a dwindling, in memory and otherwise, and evidence that all things inevitably approach an end.

In that context, reading over the past postings here, some impossibly over 10 years gone, the constancy of the escape theme remains palpable - the one overriding thought which occupied the mind through the paydown of debt, the traveling and educational sabbaticals, and the buildup of savings.  That, and the perpetual need to get in shape, which never seems as possible when confined to the office desk, and to evenings spent in vegetative states and the avoidance of any meaningful effort in exchange for card games and Twitter.

What might the future look like this time next year, he wonders, as the clock ticks on toward another sail with our man from Jordan this evening.  To break out of this funk.

Take a queue from Alinea.  A new direction, change in thinking.   
- Disclosure of the Europa plans before summer's end
- Potential November/NYE Arsenal escape(s)
- Resign from SBTS Board
- Application in January
- Return for four months in May
- Accept and start J-school in September

That's one avenue, certainly.  I think much depends on the outcome of the reopening discussions to come.  But then again, maybe it doesn't.  It is difficult to say.  It may just depend on time, unfolding as it should, until a levee breaks, under pressure.  Geology as the study of pressure and time.  In a way, this could be too.  Off for another renewal of SC traditions, on the eve of another san fermin in Pamplona at that, 8 years now since you ran it.  Time. 

Mas soon.