CMC is here, at last

Welcome to the new niece.  Celebrations ensued the day long among the largest Southern Cross crew yet, a proper genoa sail to the backside dock and sunny exploration of Fort Ives, right into an epic croquet match.  Pimm's and BBQ and sundown and Alan Watts musings on dreams, before a dreamless sleep onboard amidst agua and salty chips.  

Four jogs down, last night the slowest due to a tender knee, but enjoying the routine, surprisingly.  Every other day seems a reasonable bar to set.  Missing keys after a midweek blinder with Nasser mean the weights have been put on hold, but otherwise the manifesto progress has been nicely set for improvement.  

Back in the office, masked, and it feels strange. The hope is still to take advantage of the global situation through ridiculous flights of thine own.  Project Z in full swing, and so the daily googling of the status of African airline flights and emails with Samson about potential options.  Tanzanite seems a substance of choice for next month.  And on Black Tot at that?  Por que no?

Three weeks tonight if the stars align.  Surely the chance needs to be taken.  What more must I do, to make it happen?

Record of my Written Plan

Another one rolls by, like that.  Here now anew, please find fulfillment of the annual requirement for year ending May 31, 2021.  Personal growth is the message and theme.  Can Plan Z be achieved?  With faith in fate (and Samson) surely.  My professional development includes a redoubling of efforts to focus on immigration law (one case in particular) and ensuring wheels in motion by September.  The usual attendance at online seminars and internal firm CLE events on regulatory, environmental, and energy law matters shall fill the gaps.  Best of luck, the trick in such lofty plans lies always in the execution...  cheers to another successful year, Benoit.  I’m still here, and likely to be another one hence.  It is after that...

Tanzania Training

Quite the weekend, as you may recall.  Halifax to Truro Sobeys/Burger King to Refugee to a dropped and found sleeping bag and white deer and bald rocks and to Seal and a sunset and again the relentless slog through (do you live in) Eatonville's grass to the beach road home.  48 km in 48 hr.  Not too shabby.

My favourite part was the conversation with myself in those final strides in the sun on the beach, trying to catch the ghost up on all that came after that first circuit 4 years ago.  Not much to be changed.  That June was extraordinary, as were the manic years after that find you here, motivated to check into the Clifty due to the sun and the wifi.  Just enough cash in the wallet to avoid the extra in tax, the only NSLC open on Sunday, let alone at 8:30, even as the restaurant at Peggys (first choice) was closed and the air was cold.

At a stroke that avoided the encroachment on the Halloween tradition, while launching a new one, since on the apex of the sun's year, you know exactly where it hits at the edge of that tree from in front of this place.  Older Lisanne with Dutch accent accepts the money and gives a slight discount knowing you have no dog.  So much before that today, the $10 onion rings at the drive-thru on the Hammonds Plains road diner, the Glooscap resto steak (where you could hardly walk in or out), the white bearded man whose wife took your photo, as he lamented traveling across the country and not having enough pictures of both him and his wife, the elastic band at the end of the beard, and seeing him in passing stopped for a photo of the low tide mud of the Bay, and deciding not to turn around and absolutely make their day.  Alas.

Today the phone says you have walked 34,720 steps, 20.6km, 112 floors climbed.  What odds to be here at a motel off Peggys Cove, slipping in for a bottle of 2018 Western Cape Umbria for a sunset to die for in the cove as a bayliner uses a blue paddleboat for three roundtrips in from the mooring.  Some woman yelling about coronavirus and the Trump prosecution of women from her balcony and a guy in headphones muttering indiscriminately on that makeshift dock. 

I have blasted the heat.  How I'm still awake a bit of a mystery.  But I have booked a flight to Dar Es Salaam for a month from today.  Because Hope is not a Plan.  And I'll take the credit, thank you very much, if such is what it is.  But I know for sure what should be done on Black Tot Day 2020, particularly knowing now that Nick is set to leave Greece on the day of arrival in Africa.  So count the days, put faith in KLM, Mugufuli, Kenya, and Zambia.  It's a long shot but faith is the power to hear music when all is still. 

So I read, somewhere, one time.

It would be such a coup, so let's.

This ladder!!

First (potentially last) night at George’s.  1393 days since a biking Rowland offered up the Magnolia Electric and the window open as you slept in the same bag on the same boat at the same dock as yesternight, which I’ll play now and then the Joel new Inn to close it for a few hours before the early rise.  Oh for the taste of the 7am coffee already.

We work and we yearn and for what. I’ll join you Khayyam.  I came like water, and like wind I go.  I will aye.

Forever Endeavour

Solid 18,000+ step and 25:54 min meditation day.  Toying with the idea of Zanzibar in a month's time, hovering on the verge of booking with KLM, but need to weigh the matter further.  Just too many variables, and the next trip really needs to be done properly.  The seats don't exactly look as if they are in danger of filling up...

Urgency in the call tonight, and stories of the harassment that exemplifies her struggles in waiting true.  So it is nice to have a dream in mind, an alternative vision for Black Tot day this year that would last.  Such itineraries will be closely monitored in the coming weeks, maybe a mistake to hold off, but they have been made before, and will be made again, as we wait for options rather than further crackdowns. Motivation to keep the getting in shape plans moving forward at least.  The birthday week wraps up in style tomorrow on the water, but no booze or takeout for awhile now that you've had the chance to indulge, eh?

  

Other nice thoughts from random Shubie benches tonight, to add to the pun of a title from the random house alongside Banook:

Come sit awhile, think of me
But also think of all the beauty
That surrounds you.
Fair winds and following seas sailor 

Stop the car, lay on the grass,
the planets spin and we watch space pass.

Favourite quote: Over analysis leads to paralysis

Time has no master
Life is ephemeral

Keep a look out for the wherearewe bird

Yes, all correct.  Taxes filed today and a pleasant surprise in the slight refund.  For some reason I was more pessimistic.  The bank account at least is in good form, for now, and it could really blossom if 601 gets any takers.  My oh my.  Answering the questions the same every year - no change to status or home.  Is 2020 the big one? 

As the old song goes, perhaps perhaps perhaps. 

The Dropped Glove

Maybe it is all the time travel fiction I have been consuming lately, but it seems fated that the 2002 Globe clipping that affected the young traveler so has been saved all these years for this moment, so you could pull it out again while waiting for Nasser at Basha, as Thammer sleeps on.  And learn the author died at 90 in November 2017, just as you were in London, preparing for the draw and the Gatsby, oblivious to your own imponderable future.

Yet here we are with the wave of birthday wishes flooding in from Zambia.  The condo set to be listed.  The Old Triangle and Southern Cross still to be frequented. I enjoy the Arabic aspect of this decision, visions of Zanzibar in the future.  All coming together, links in the chain, none of which can be seen, until the immediate next is forged in place.

Will Nasser arrive?  15 more minutes.  Then it is to find the right wine and Vodka before Guinness.  Ha, an unlikely sentence that makes perfect sense.  As all these attempts to plan always do.

I ordered your book, Mr. Coles.  The thought has cheered me, that one may despair at mistakes in selling stocks or poorly timed real estate ventures, but there are things far more important.  Infinitely so.  Keep the right perspective and do the necessary.

42 is a number all right.  Set things in motion that cannot be stopped.

What’s Next?

Classic June 5th, the Monte proved exceptional, and the Scoop never disappoints.  The death of Peter Strans a sad but poignant end.  And all leading to consideration of the bright, open future.  Spent a hungover afternoon dreaming of shacks on islands, dreaming of life by Mistake River, but the truth is that to be truly free, to seize the magic of this pandemic moment, you must liquidate.  No baggage.

Some optimism on the European border front sets the stage for happy thoughts. Condo on the market, 2-3 week visit in August, back for an isolationary period and then the closing.  Move home October 1, followed by an African trip through to the start of December?  Counsel arrangement for 2021 on the road permanently while the Visa awaits, with a trip back for residency in June?  All sounds eminently doable.  It is to dream.

For now, keep burping out the fat and upping the meditation.

16 years...

Since you boarded that flight, fresh from law school graduation, with Oxford and the rest of the world ahead of you.  To that point there had been a bit of exploration through Europe, and even that felt grand by comparison to others.  Over the past years of increasingly epic dreams realized, it is sometimes hard to forget exactly how much time on the road you have been able to squeeze into your days.  All the little trinkets that adorn this place, reminders of so much.  Still worth considering the shack option, if only to have room to store all this stuff, and to lock into a 5 year mortgage with interest of almost zero?

Maybe.  But the idea of a truly free open road seems more appealing, given the uncertainties, and lack of a car the biggest hindrance to such a plan.  You do have options though, and I’m almost giddy at the idea of talking with our man Dale as part of the birthday itinerary.

Annual emails exchanged with Gatts, sparking the notion of a firmer date for Samarkanda.  Amazing the power to be able to sit and conjure the future.  The 20th anniversary and the 45th birthday seem ideal.  I toyed with 2026 and 2029 possibilities, but there is the matter of the World Cup and the 50th must be saved for Greece.  So wonderful still to have so much ahead, even at this ripe age.

And yet the old familiar too.  SC tonight to What’s the Scoop? and another overnight aboard.  First cigar of 2020 as well, perchance, under the full Strawberry Moon.  “Lunar eclipse is here once again and Zambia will experience it in totality.”  I shall speak with her anon...  happy days.

Feta Fog

16 more minutes in the meditation position on the rock, first time in damp wet fog that proves mysterious and a boon for relaxing contemplativity. Shades of bluish silver cotton, paint brush streaks of dark in the mists.  The joy of salty feta cheese the first surprising random thought with the eyes closed, but quickly on to the notion of planning and decisions.  How the whale pub and the Tancook dream and others fell by the wayside, along with the aborted PhD and the uncertainties over the Partnership call.  Some make it through, Europa’s voyage a prime example, but how to view the others, in which such time was invested in the imagining, yet nought concrete to show?

The spark tonight, that living those paths without living them is the result.  The fantasy of roads taken in other worlds.  Just not right for this one.  And no regrets at the difference given all the chances given to ensure they were never the correct ones.

How stand I then, on the verge of another June 5, this one amid a pandemic and its global travel advisory restrictions.  View it from the positive light where you now find yourself, 10 weeks in.  Corona as the jolt needed to remove complacency, to reveal possibilities of remote work, to convince of the course for the future.  Jo’burg was pitched as the summit to decide, but in eliminating it as an option, the pandemic helped present the choice unvarnished.  More, it offers the means to ready yourself for it.

Think back to the Dolphin and prior Manifestos, at last the mind is clear enough to do it, the time spread out before you, not on the ground, but in the sky and on the water.  Here is what you need to do to be ready when the gate is next unlocked.  Body? Check. Mind? Check. Discussions with family? Check.  Condo and other possessions sorted?  Check.  Variations of the Work Experience mulled over in their entirety? Check. The chance to say goodbye to the SC in her 10th year, and 50th since the Tot?  Check, check, check.

Off home to finish up another day of 10,000 or so.  I feel myself breathing out the baggage, breathing in the fresh dawn of 2021 as the proof of change.  Shatner claims to be in a “fervent of creativity.”  Soon, so shall I...  it is the portent of beginnings, and I feel fine.

Reasons for Being

“Do you think these types of learnings are going to continue to apply post-this?” comes the question on the weekly HAL POD call.  Remember?  Lying in bed, typing out an email to Gartner reflecting on the Arsenal season ticket future and the N. Fudge surprise sunset and first pop into the office from last night?  “Yes in the evidence we are seeing of what is possible in terms of change and innovation,” the CEO says.  “Look how quickly you adjusted can be a rallying cry.”

How central work is to all these people - why we are here, reasons for being - customers, clients, etc.  Seems such a strange lesson.  Fascinating as a means of setting priorities.  Such contrast to the meditation, 18-6 fasting, and steps progress.  So enjoyed the cannon yesterday and find myself anticipating my sacred Banook rock with a sense of joy.

As others craft and scheme up “Houkem Scoukem” deals to buy new boats to float their fancies, pursuant to Mr. MacLeod’s turn of phrase, the focus remains on a different type of future.  The Elementum new file, review of the terms of the Partnership Agreement, and ongoing financial results enough to keep the day moving in a more optimistic fashion.

We shall see (said the blind man).

The Holiday-Makers

June One.  The days of the pandemic pass peacefully.  The sailboat is in, the Banook walks continue to prove restorative, and the ADC draft paper is complete at last.  Another call to Livingstone as the frustrations simmer at the lack of freedom to move.  “Boiling Pot” indeed.  But consider the upsides for a moment, the focus on health, the cleaning of the condo, the sharing of information about the lover with family, the acceptance of time wrapping up at work, the ability to bid the SC a glorious farewell...  positives all.

The Qsack email jolt from nowhere, remember that?  A long way indeed since 2006, the first of the Krapp’s tapes, in fact, the start of this blog. What ancient grudge might he still be nursing?  Billy no longer even around. Fun recalling the sheer amount of magic of those 15 years, the sights and sounds and spectacles.  The pilgrimages taken.  As the slow walks and the slow jibes and the slow fires continue, everything returns to the same starting place, the same reckoning.  The new plan.  Same as ever, but with the “bonus” of having a companion for added motivation and excitement, to ensure the gaze focuses relentlessly on the future.

All adds up.  The lessons have been learned.  Operational Experience.  Trust.  Transparency.  Communication.  Collaboration.

Now put them into practice for what truly matters.