onwards

There’s no question. There will be no sanity in the week ahead. None at all. I’ve hit that time period before the blast off, you know, when the space people turn on the clock and you get to see seconds being tossed aside, one after another, until there is nothing left but zero.

And in this period of seconds, minutes, hours before my departure a week from today, I am finishing the semester and making lists of all that must be attended to before my run out of here. I don’t pretend to cross things off the list. I just add.

Because I will be gone eight weeks, I primarily want to attend to people in the time before I leave. People with whom I can celebrate all sorts of stuff – earth day, for example. Or enduring friendship. I place no limits on what causes joy and calls for champagne.

I put into the sidebar the chronology of my travels, but no dates. I leave there an element of uncertainty, but also predictability. If I am posting from Dubrovnik, you’ll know where I am heading next and what has already transpired.

It’s not all play. I am indeed working some during this trip and that accounts for a destination or two. But there are a lot of saved vacation days being used up in the weeks ahead. A lot. I am, finally, reaching into my European soul and taking time off. I need it. You need it too, I know. I will take it for you.

Is it all solo travel? Nope. I will have my traveling companion at my side for the first couple of weeks and my family the second couple of weeks. After that it’s just me. Riding train after train, with my camera and my laptop.

This is my present to me, to start me off as a 53-year old. You know, ‘cause it’s significant. I was born in’53 and I turn 53 in a minute. Surely that means something, no?