16.12.12

Where did the fall go?  It feels like such a short time ago that we arrived from Japan back in Toronto.  Our readjustment to Canada wasn't nearly as bad as all those JET conferences said it would be.  Home is really where the peeps are.  Which is why we miss our home in Japan so much and are so happy to be back home in Canada. 

Well, now Christmas is EVERYWHERE.  It has officially pervaded every shop, home and personal stereo.  Which means that my birthday is also coming up; twenty eight this year, not a hard one to take.  Some are better than others I guess.  It’s all still young is how I feel at the moment.  Even forty is young, emerging.  People are taking longer to do everything these days.  Longer to finish school, longer to get married, have kids, even longer to die, eventually. 

 The weather has been dismal lately.  No sunshine whatsoever; the distinction between night and day occurs only in shades of grey.  We’ve almost finished our grad school apps, although I’ve grown sick of repeating that over the past few months.  We’re gearing up for Russia and the Himalayas, trying to get visas sorted.  Have started the research which is exciting, exciting, exciting.  Needed to confirm that we indeed had the innards to travel to Russia/Siberia in the heart of winter amidst suicide Moscow bombers and bureaucracy from hell.  Started reading Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” and want to pick up “Crime and Punishment”, some Tolstoy and maybe Chekhov.  At least have a crash-course familiarity with the literary canon of Russia.  Wish I had more time.  I’d do a language course for a month….  Then there are all the other places we're travelling to.  But really waiting isn’t good.  Just Go Go Go at the various stages of ill-preparation that I always seem to be in.  Grab the guidebooks, a reasonably-packed suitcase, passport, plane tickets, visas, a few cultural stereotypes and jump right in…

<>Again that question: why travel (so damn much)?  Because I learn, mind and body wide open.  I'm still trying to prove that people, that I, am the same everywhere.  For the pictures and the stories and the new foods added to my constitution, new words twisting on my palate, train vistas, Tangiers chills (nope, those were Ginsberg’s).  The thrill of moving with time instead of against it.  OK, forward, forward, I don’t want to stay any more than You (Time) want me to, push me on, push me round in solar motion.  To sleep and wake and have my mind know/remember the name of a foreign town in a little-known country and to rise with it.  To drink tea at a plastic table in light clothes… aaaahh I could wax candlesworth of lyrical, strum a mandolin in ecstasy: THE OPEN ROAD AWAITS.