"Pack your things up come on lets go, didn't you know that we own this world?"

I should be sipping dark coffee on a terrace someplace exotic and moody.  Somewhere with rich smells, wet dirt and cardigan weather.  A breaker in me flipped and I can't shake that deep soul yearning.  I want to explore!  I want to write.  I think half of the reason I'm having trouble writing is the fact I don't have anything to really say at the moment--not to the world anyways.  Nothing's really stirring me, stimulating my heart and soul.  Well, that's a lie--life events are--but I don't have that inspired giddy feeling. You know?  I know, I know, I should learn to write without that feeling--which, believe you me, I'm working on.  But I feel like a fool that keeps trying to stoke wet wood.

I feel kind of guilty about desiring the whole traveling thing even.  It's like there's this fat bastard, Southern Baptist preacher residing in me scolding, "Really?  You're gonna pay to go travel and 'explore' when there's starving people and missions trips you could be partaking in?"

The thing is though, I want both.  I want to see all sides of the earth.  I want the museums and mountains and villages and ghettos.  The cafes and the orphanages.  I want to go everywhere.  Experience everything!  But not just experience, I want to pour myself out.  I just keep feeling like I have nothing of worth to say.

How do you write a good story when you feel like you don't have very many of your own to tell?


Song of the Moment: We Can Live Anywhere! - Big D & The Kids Table (Fluent In Stroll)
This song is a glass of sunshine and bear hug to my soul.

The Problem With Alice

I looked down at my feet, a pair of ordinary boots straddling two worlds—one of comfort and luxury with teacups and quilts and controlled, subdued fires; and one of mystery and intrigue that looked both familiar and strange all at the same time.  And I knew I had to choose between two sides of the looking glass. 

Or did I?

In all actuality, I felt perfectly content where I was.  To the left sat my large, striped chair with its dip in the seat, contoured to my comfort.  To my right were flowers that were so magnified and bustling with life they looked less like plants and more like beasts.  The view was more than anyone could ask for—home and adventure all at the same time.  And it seemed final at that moment; I would live there.  Forever.  I would make my home in the in-between.

I wanted to run to my room and grab a couple pillows to situate myself and then see how far I could see to my right, but as I lifted my foot and felt the weight shift I was struck by the realization that I would have to leave my post.  In order to accomplish anything I would have to submerge myself completely into one world and shed myself of the other.  To grab a book I’d have to go home; to explore the garden I’d have to run through it.  And if I jumped in, either way, I’d go without the assurance of knowing if I could ever return.

Away I Go...

I rewatched Away We Go today, a movie I love and am amazed I don't own.  There is something about it that, for as sad as it can be, retains such a hopeful air to me...something I actually am able to draw encouragement from when it comes to family.  Which is very characteristic of Dave Egger's work, it doesn't suprise me his screenplay has that same real yet romaticized tinge to it; Things are broken, but they seek to carve out a space where they don't have to remain as such.

Today, for the first time, admidst my physical and emotion rubble, I realized life doesn't have to be like this.  Sure, there are things you can't really control in life--like the family baggage you are dealt (divorces, remairages, and others' addictions and actions or inactions etc.).  But I can go wherever I want.  I can get out of here, I can leave this place.  I can breathe out there on my own and grow into the sort of person I want to be.  Like a walkabout.  I think I need a walkabout.  I think I need to go somewhere other.

My good friend John I haven't seen in a while asked me, convictingly, when am I going out of the country?  Which sounds small to some people, but it is everything I've ever wanted to me.  He knows that.  He knows I thrive in that with different scenery and experiences and people.  I thrive when i'm pushed out of my element.  I'm in my element out of my element.  I grow from that.  I explore through food and culture and art and I want to run everywhere and do everything.
 I want to leave before I get sucked in and tied down into something I don't want to be.
I don't want to settle.  I don't want to sell out.  I don't want to wonder seven years from now why I've never left the one place I've ever lived in my life.  I think it's time for something new.



Song Of The Moment:  Why Try To Change Me Now - Fiona Apple (The Best Is Yet to Come - The Songs of Cy Coleman)

I don't know why, but I could listen to this cover endlessly on repeat, and I do.  The first line might be the best opening line of any song ever.  It's the type of song you walk at midnight to.