LET'S BEGIN: DECEMBER 1, 2009

YOU

ARE LOVE

LOVE IS LIFE

LIFE IS NOVEL

THIS IS JOURNAL

START OF THE DREAM

A HISTORY OF PLACES TO BE

I EXPRESS WORD MAPS TO LOVE

I DON’T KNOW HOW WE’LL GET THERE

BUT I KNOW WE’RE GOING SOMEWHERE GREAT

December 1, 2009

I wake up.

Where am I?

I look around… a room.  I am in a bed in a room.  I am alone in the room.  It is my younger cousin’s room.  This is my aunt and uncle’s house.  They made my younger cousin sleep somewhere else so I could get a good night's rest during my stay in suburban Long Island.  Suffolk County, East Islip.  South shore, near the Great South Bay. 

I was born twenty minutes from here, twenty-five and a half years ago.  Smithtown.  The most common name in America.  I lived within a half hour radius of this place for the first eleven years of my life.  This is the world I was born into.  This is the imagination of the world as it offered itself to me.  My youth was The United States of America as manifested in the comfortably compromised offspring of the most famous, powerful, creative, diverse, innovative and hated city on Earth: New York City.  We don’t call it New York on Long Island, because we live in New York too.  I have lived in five different areas of New York State, and they were all in New York. 

Most recently I lived in that most famous crazy aforementioned city.  But I left after three years, and I lived further north of the city at my parents’ home for eight months to prepare for this experience.  Now I am back on that island where I have lived most of my life, whether in Bellport, Brooklyn or Queens.

I have a plane to catch.  I plan to fly tonight.  I am going to fly to the strangest land.

I go to the shower.  My country is developed enough so that all I have to do is walk a few feet from a comfortable bed in a private room, turn a handle, and wait while wonderful warm water flows over my body, waking me, soothing me, comforting me, reminding me that I am part of the flow because water runs the life show.  When I am finished cleaning myself with various soaps and shampoos of whose origins I am mostly ignorant, I turn off the water, and dry myself with a fluffy towel.  I brush my teeth with paste and a brush, and go down the stairs to eat breakfast with the family.  

 It is a full house.  My uncle has a wife and three sons, in this house alone.  I remember holding each one after they were born.  I have one older sister, but no younger brothers.  I have many great memories of this place.  My uncle also has two grown children who will soon be bringing his grandchildren into the world, but I don't know this yet.  He is a big trunk at the center of a large family tree, which is great because he's not only a celebrated engineer, but an expert in genealogy.  For example, we didn't always used to be Sanford.  We were Sandford, but they spelled it wrong on my grandfather's birth certificate, and he didn't even find that out until he tried to illegally underage enlist in the marines during World War II, but that's another story.  The Sandford's have been on Long Island for over three hundred years, within a cycle of gaining and losing money in a sustainable style of survival that resulted in you reading this, however you feel about that.  They came from England, and lived on that island that sticks out into the Atlantic as a buffer between Europe and America's most prized city.  There must be something about islands.  As far as I'm concerned, it not only produced me and my whole family and friends I made at the beginning of my life, but it also provided our greatest poet, Walt Whitman.  They named a mall after him, so it must be true.  People should go to malls and buy his poetry books, and then spend a little less time in malls after that.  They can shop all they want, just be quicker about it, because there are other things out there that nobody is noticing and is so much better than anything on sale, however useful a tool it may be to get you to the real treasure.

After breakfast I open a box and search the world wide web of information and experience to enhance my enlightenment in imagination world.  I do more research on possible places to be during my journey to the mysterious lands of adventure, danger and wisdom.  This will be the greatest test of my life.  I have no idea if I am prepared for it or not.  All I can do is do it and see what happens.

In the afternoon I drive to the store to get copies of passport photos.

Then we visit my Grandfather Ted and Grandmother Hazel at 17 Jackson Street.  This is where I was brought home as a new human, and my father was brought home as a new human, and my grandfather Ted, who still lives here, was born as a new human.  Ted fought in the Second World War.  He was in the United States Marines.  He lied about his age when he was fifteen so he could enlist early.  They sent him to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific to fight the Japanese.  It was one of the bloodiest battles in the whole war.  He says he got there after the worst of it.  One of his jobs was to go into enemy fox holes after they had finished with the flame thrower and check on the success of the carnage, and hope to whatever it was that he hoped to that it had been successful.  He’s still here, so they must have been.  And because he’s still here, that means I am here, which means I have to be happy they did a good job with that flamethrower.  But why would I think about things like that when there’s so much on TV? 

We talk about my upcoming journey.  He is a nice man, and always in a good mood.  Very curious and active.  He is 83 years old.  If he didn’t smoke cigarettes for sixty years, he would still be a superman.  But he did, so he says every step is like climbing Mt. Everest.  He has an oxygen machine he needs sometimes.  Otherwise, he is spry and wide-eyed at the world, despite what he’s seen and doesn’t talk about.  Somehow the conversation shifts to all of the horrible dangers that might await me, which is always great fun for my family (or really just concealed worries) but very annoying to me.  They bring up all of the shots I had to get, and the medications I had to buy, and how there’s no surefire medication for malaria.  I couldn’t even afford a supply of the most effective stuff, only an emergency supply in case I’m in the middle of nowhere and need a four day supply to get me to a hospital.  Grandpa Ted casually mentions getting malaria in the war and his mom sending him quinine to cure it.  He says it like it’s nothing.  My greatest fear on the journey, and he went through with it.  No big deal.  He was a warrior after all.  Still was, what with the Everest breaths.  After the war he became a state trooper because he wanted to help people.  Then he was a park ranger.  He never knew what he wanted to do. 

He told me all of this late one night in the kitchen.  I was 24 and visiting home from New York City for a few weeks.  Sometimes, in between temp jobs, I liked to check back in with my roots to escape the madness of the city.  I’d just come inside from a campfire with two of my best friends in the world.  They’ve known me since I moved to the country when I was eleven years old and from suburban Long Island.  They faithfully listened to my tales of circus craziness, clownish catastrophes and cosmic coincidences, as all good friends who are used to putting up with that sort of thing are wont to do.  Around 1 am we put the fire out, walked back through the dark woods, said good bye.  I went inside and my grandfather had woken up to use the bathroom.  Then he started telling me these stories, even though it was 1 am, and it went on until 3:30.  He had had all of these adventures I’d never even known about, and he didn’t even talk about the war.  It took little prompting to keep him going.  It was one of those special moments when you realized you were getting once in a lifetime treasure of wisdom from someone so close, with the same genes, yet with so much more experience.  He told me to get out and see it and do it while I could.  He said I was lucky that I knew I was a writer and that my dad knew he was a wildlife biologist, because he never knew what he wanted to do.  He just wanted to help people, and even though he didn’t say it, he obviously wanted to be outdoors and mobile and working with his body in an energetic way.  There was always something to learn by trying and “dumbing it out” and working.  Always approach people and talk to them because everyone is alone and wants people to reach out to them.  People’s stories connect and intertwine through patterns you could never imagine.  Go with the flow.  As I sit here listening to him so carelessly confess to having malaria during the worst war in human history, I think of these lessons I learned from him the year before in that kitchen.

It is later now, night time.  I am researching the internet to see if it’s safe to travel alone where I’m going because my mother insisted I at least do that.  If not for my peace of mind, then for hers.  I find a web site.  A girl writes about doing it alone.  I can do it.  Then again, girls can do lots of things I can’t: giving birth, making my stomach fill with butterflies, multiple orgasms, a certain sweetness...and all the women I know who do all of these things I can't imagine doing, things that help me get through this thing, usually a notch higher on the kindness scale than we men.  And then there are all the greats I don't know…  The day before I read this book by an artist named Stephen Alcorn.  It's beautifully, creatively and masterfully imagined onto paper from this great man's hands and one of a kind mind.  This book is called Gift of Days and it is a 365 day quote book accompanied by eloquent portraits with classical Italian influences evident in his amazing art.  I read it on the car ride down to Long Island yesterday.  Perfect timing.  Great man.  He lived in my hometown, and showed me how a real human being could make a living through his applied imagination, disciplined craftsmanship and high energy exertion equal to the eternal effort at enhanced expression.  Speaking of which, ever seen Hiromi play the piano?  I can’t do that.  Then again, nobody can.  A living legend among us, and some of the world knows her name.  That Alcorn book has an awesome portrait of the great Michelangelo, my second favorite ninja turtle, and I don't remember this from the show when I was seven, but apparently he said that, "A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as failing to hear and see it."  Ever read Toni Morrison?  You should.  She won some big prize in Sweden for being one of the best writers ever, and she deserves it, because she wrote Song of Solomon.  The character Pilate is the most loving, tough and brave soul that’s ever been imagined.  I wish I could be that loving, tough and brave.  I don't know how loving this girl is, but she must have something to complement that toughness and bravery.  Even so, if a young girl can travel alone in this level of unknown chaos with strange men more likely to grab her than me, then I have no excuse.  Not to say it's a competition. 

I’m doing this, basically, when it comes down to it, because I have to.  It feels like a choice, and I chose it, but there was no other choice.  You can’t choose to walk away from your dreams.  That’s when you stop living.  You still exist, but you’re not alive anymore.  My dreams called for me to explore the world, so I chose to move forward toward that direction the best way I knew how.

First, we eat pizza.  I love Long Island pizza.  It’s my favorite food in the world, ever since I was a little boy.  I used to be such a picky eater that I would take the cheese off and give it to someone else to eat, because I really just liked the tomato sauce.  I eat the cheese now.  I eat anything now.  I’m about to eat a lot more things that I never knew were part of “anything” possibilities.  I am eating with my mother, and my sister, and her fiancée, and my uncle, and his wife, who is my aunt, and their three sons, although I’m willing to guess that at least one of them was in and out in between video games.  I want to knock their vicarious virtual adventures, but I cannot, because I grew up playing video games.  And I just spent an hour playing all three of them in Super Smash Brothers, my favorite game.  You can play as any of my favorite video game heroes when I was a little kid: Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, Kirby and Samus.  Maybe all those vicarious adventures were ancient inspiration for what I’m about to do.

Uncle Ted says he is jealous of me.  This makes me happy.  He taught me a lot about sports, and he’s very smart, and he has reddish hair too.  I’ve always looked up to him.  He says he wishes he was 25 and wandering around the world on his own.  I don’t plan to wander the whole world, but I will be on my own.  I’m just going to two countries…as far as I know.  But I don’t know when or how I’m coming back.  The adventure is open-ended.  Hopefully I’ll be home in time for my sister’s wedding to her fiancée in seven months, back in the state of New York, even though they live in Germany, because her fiancé is German, even though he wants to live in North America and she won’t let him because she loves Germany so much.  I am afraid of being alone, but sometimes, when I see how relationships inherently limit people, I am happy to be alone.  I understand that everything is a trade off, and they are getting something greater for making that trade, and I am happy for them, and I would love to make that trade someday too… I even tried to and thought I was going to a few times during my spin ball ride so far.  But it didn’t happen, so I am alone, and I am making the best of it.  It’s not that I’m 25 and single.  It’s that I’ve been single the vast majority of my life.  I’ve had a girlfriend, friends who were girls who were more than friends at times, many dates, many times where I could tell she liked me more than I liked her, many times when I went gaga too soon and she was overwhelmed or secretly already taken.  There have been plenty of girls, yet I have somehow managed to remain freely available without being a conquest-driven Don Juan.  Even so, being single feels like a failure at times.  It's human to reject the big alone.  But life always has something going on, and usually for a good reason, even if you can’t see it yet.  The best you can do is be the best you and love the world as it plays itself out through you.  I hope someday soon I get to play again with someone special to love…

Now, that is not the case.  I long for romance, but only when given the right chance.  Until then, the curious circuitry of the wolf is in command.  I must howl at the moon and run wild across the land, chasing the life force food, a mysterious nutrient for the soul that I know I can catch if I trust my natural instincts, my intuition, my physical gifts, and my hunger for truth.  I am very hungry.  I am hungry for more reality, for higher experience, for deeper connection, for wider understanding, for love.  I'm blue-jayin' (know what I'm sayin'?) for everything that I know is already all around me.  I keep learning it over and over again, and feeling it over and over again, and knowing it’s truer than anything I could possibly reason, over and over again, and thinking I’m done over and over again, that this time I’ve got it and there’s no need to worry ever, and there’s nothing I have to prove to the world.  But life keeps going and changing the set.  It’s (326) always teaching me something new.  There is always more and more, another move, another move, keep moving, keep going, keep learning, keep loving, keep living, keep giving, keep trying, stop dying, that’s lying, spirit’s flying to something new ready for you through and through whatever you do or who you think is who within the big U.

I hug and high-five the good byes.  They hope I survive.  I appreciate it.

I get in the car with my mother, my sister and her fiancée.  My father has to work.  We said good bye the morning before when we left Cambridge.  I tell my mom to give me the keys to the Wagen because I want to drive to the airport.  It is important to me that I steer the wheel on the road to begin the journey.  Also, I won’t be able to drive a car again for seven months at least.  I like driving.  I feel free… sometimes.

I turn the key in the ignition.

The car starts.

I turn on the radio.  I connect the iPod to the tape adapter.  I press play.  I shift into first gear.  I press the gas.  I pull out of the driveway onto the road.

The moon is full.

Leaves are falling all around

it's time I was on my way.

Thanks to you I'm much obliged,

such a pleasant day.

But now it's time for me to go.

The autumn moon lights my way.

For now I smell the rain, and with it pain

and it's headed my way.

Sometimes I grow so tired...

but I know I've got one thing I got to do.

Led Zeppelin.  When I was sixteen years old, I walked into the same living room in the same house to see my cousins who were visiting from England.  The younger one, Dan, was obsessed with drumming and Led Zeppelin.  A few days later, on my sixteenth birthday, I woke up early in the morning, got in the car with my dad, and rode an hour to Fort Edward to take the learner’s permit multiple choice test of twenty questions.  This would give me permission to drive a real car on real roads with a licensed driver above eighteen in the car supervising me.  I took the test.  It’s easy.  I got a learner’s permit, which is just a piece of paper.  No fancy license yet.  "Thank you, people of New York, for letting me drive amongst you, even though I still live with my parents and go to school.  You have just let me take an important step not only in my immediate social life, but in my realizing what it means to be an independent, brave and free human being."  On the ride home I nearly gave my dad a heart attack when I ran through a yield sign.  Luckily we’re in the country and no one’s around.  We got back home, alive.  I drove us.  I did it.  I’m an adult.  Kind of.  Who cares.  That night I got my birthday gift.  It’s Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Hits.  Dan was thrilled.  So was I.  By the end of the summer I had Greatest Hits II and Physical Graffiti.  For Christmas I got the boxed set of pretty much everything they ever did.  And all this time, I’m learning how to drive.  Even on snowy and icy winter roads in the middle of nowhere.  An adventure at home.

Ramble On!

and now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl,

on my way!

I've been this way ten years to the day, 

Ramble On!

Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.

We are on the highway.  I am driving very fast.  It is very fun.  But I am nervous.  Very nervous.  I have no idea what I’m getting myself into.  Thank God for music.

(I was born, lucky me, in a land that I love)

I steer the wheel with my family depending on me not to crash, especially since I have crashed three cars in my life.  They were all extenuating circumstances, but still.  You never know, especially with Long Island drivers.  I am heading into Brooklyn, on the Belt Parkway.  I am going to JFK Airport.  I am thinking about why I am doing this…I don’t know why I’m doing this.  Why do I do these scary things?  I don’t have to.  It’s definitely safer and easier not to.

Why did I jump in the hole when I was four?  Because my sister told me to… but did she get me out?  No.  But someone else did.  Maybe that’s what this is all about… that first time I jumped in the hole.

(humor me before I have to go)

When I was four years old my older sister Emily told me to jump in a six foot hole near our new house, and I did because I was stupid and didn’t know anything and trusted her and she told me she’d get me out and it would be fun.  She was kind of right.  It was fun jumping.  But then it was dark and I was alone and my deepest fear in the world came true: I was trapped in a deep dark hole with a big hairy spider.  Spiders were the freakiest scariest creatures in existence, weaving invisible webs to trap you before they stick in their fangs to suck your life as you stare at its eight eyes, some sick symbolic joke from sideways infinity.  I did not like spiders.  I did not know all of those words back then, but I knew I did not like spiders.  Hilarious!  Humans are so much bigger than spiders, even four year old humans!  But we never see that, do we, because we can’t see ourselves from above on the outside.  Emily knew I would be okay with the spider, even if I didn’t.  That’s why she ran away and left me alone.  To her credit, she did get my parents by yelling, “Emergency!  Emergency!  Ben jumped in the hole!” and they came to my rescue and asked why I did it, and I said she told me to, and she called me a traitor, and they got me out of the hole and I lived.  I don’t know what happened to the spider.  It’s probably not still alive like me.  I doubt it’s seen what I’ve seen, felt what I’ve felt.  Poor spider.  Keep trying.

Arcade Fire’s on the sound system now.  Nobody’s talking too much.  I’m not blaring the music, but I do want to hear it to keep me cool.   

“Alexander, older brother, set out for
a GREAT ADVENTURE!” 

That's what I wanted...I think.

“Come on Alex, you can do it!   
Come on, Alex, there’s nothing to it!   
If you’re something, don’t ask for nothing.   
If you’re nothing, don’t ask for something!”

I think back to New Zealand.

When I was 20 years old, I signed up to study abroad for a semester in New Zealand.  It was the greatest five months of my life.  Still, I didn’t know that when I rode to the airport with my mom that cold February morning, on my way to an island on the other side of the earth where I didn’t know anyone and didn’t even know where I was going to live after the first week.

“It’s for your own good!  It’s for your neighborhood!”

I think of how great it was to come back.

I hope I come back this time.

I hope I still have my arms.

And my legs.

And my face.

And my fingers.

And my toes.

And my penis.

Especially my penis.

And I hope I don’t have anything else living inside of me that I don’t want there.

A car cuts me off.  I remember that my travel doctor told me the biggest danger when traveling is car accidents.  No, we wouldn’t want any of that either.  Do you have a shot for that?  No.  Oh well.  I hope I live anyway, in spite of the world’s chaos and my seemingly new found desire to dive into it.

I hope I don’t get caught doing something stupid from peer pressure and spend my life in some hellish prison.

I hope I don’t get kidnapped.  I hope no bombs go off in market squares while I’m wandering around.  I hope I don’t get horrible diseases I’ve never even heard of.

And I hope nothing happens to anyone I know while I’m gone.  I’m almost more afraid of that.   

But to be honest, right now, as the hour of departure approaches, I know they’re more likely to live safer lives than I am.

“We know a place where no cars go, 
we know a place where no ships go, 
only us kids know…”

I think of the first time I camped in the dark on the hill with my oldest friends, my cousins Mike and Dan, and when he heard the deer snorting and smacking his hoof on a stump in the distance, and how convinced we were by these thunderous snorts and seemingly approaching footsteps that a moose was on its way to destroy us, and how we made a run for it back to the house in the middle of the night because we were only 11, and how my dad explained to us the next morning that deer sometimes do that during mating season.

I think of the first time I sat by a campfire alone in the woods.

I think of the first time I canoed to a new island alone and camped out.

I think of the first time I walked through Bushwick alone at 3 in the morning.

I think of getting called a white nigger by a car full of teenagers in Queensbridge at 2 in the morning.

I think of getting punched in the head by a white maniac outside the only bar in my middle of nowhere Podunk country hometown, the safest place I know, just one month earlier, simply because he was looking for a fight and I calmly suggested he stop killing the bouncer.  I hadn't been punched in the head since seventh grade, and never that hard.  I think of how happy I am that I got to jump kick him in the chest when he came back at me a second time, and how he left me alone after he saw I was an opponent worth fearing.  You see, Super Mario does that in Smash Bros., and it's a great move because it leads with your foot and keeps your head maximally protected.  After getting hit once and literally seeing stars, there was no way I was going to let him hit me again.  If only someone had told him it was a good idea to have a gun with him all the time to protect himself, he could have simply shot me and gotten it over with.  You know, like Indiana Jones.  Or me.  I suppose I could have shot him too.  That would have ended it.  That would have been fun.  Then I would have been like James Bond, licensed to kill and have sex with anyone I want and be super cool.  Or Luke and Han, they would have shot him up good with a super futuristic laser.  Maybe we'll all have super cool futuristic lasers to kill each other with soon.  Batman has lots of cool futuristic stuff, but no guns.  And Superman doesn't need them, that's for sure.  And the Ninja Turtles... well, that's a whole other story, I guess.  Speaking of which..

I think of my first day of school, riding the bus home alone because I didn’t know anybody yet.  But I had a Ninja Turtles on a lunch box next to me.

I think of being eight years old, my first summer away from home, spent mostly in hospital waiting rooms in Baltimore, seeing children and people who had it worse than I did, some just for now and some forever, and how I had to play alone that whole summer, and how once I was outnumbered by three larger kids who called me racist names I’d never even heard of.  I think of the kids in the wheelchairs I played catch with, and how one of them died just a few days after our first catch together.

I think of my first day at my new school in the country, eleven years old, sitting on the bus alone because I didn’t know anyone yet.

I think of my first day of college, and how miserable I was, more because I had left my friends behind than anything else.

I think of my first day walking alone around New York City, the tall buildings and hordes of people from everywhere in the world making it painfully clear just how much bigger the world is than I could ever be, how it didn’t even need me, and that it was up to me to dream my destiny.

“In between the click of the light and the start of the dream…”

We are at the airport.

It’s time to go.

I take a big breath of American air from my home island before I enter the building.

(how strange it is to be anything at all)

We go to the check-in counter.  Etihad Airlines.  The best in the United Arab Emirates, one of the richest countries in the world.  I am going to Abu Dhabi, perhaps the richest city on Earth.  But only their airport, and for a few hours.  That is not the destination.  I am in search of riches, but not quite in that form.

I do not need to check any bags.  I have one brand new blue backpack, suitable for day-hikes and school.

Instead of waiting at a bus stop, I wait through security.

It is time to say good bye to the last familiar people I will see for seven months.

I do not know anyone where I am going.  I do not even know anyone who knows anyone I know. 

There is a hostel booked for two nights, and a taxi arranged from the airport.

There is a plane ticket to a new country two months later.

Besides that, anything goes…

I hug everyone good bye.

I wait in line to have strangers evaluate my possessions so I can’t kill everybody.  I’m not killing anyone, but they don’t know me or trust me yet.  I just want an adventure.  When I was a kid I had all of this energy and wanted to be a soldier or Indiana Jones. Then I grew up a little and wanted to be the best baseball, football and basketball player ever.  Then I grew up a little and actually played each sport competitively.  Then I realized that my best bet to make a life for myself in this world was with my mind and not my body, although something seemed wrong about not using them both equally.  But how can one write stories without living them?  I’ve loved running around telling stories since I was a kid.  It’s what I do.  So this journey thing is a nice substitute for joining the military.  If there wasn’t a world war, I’m sure Ted Sanford would have done the same thing as I am right now.  If he had the opportunity… well, he did his own thing anyway.  Most do.

That being said, I think anyone should be doing what I’m doing right now, if they have the opportunity…

It’s not vacation, or merely a whimsical journey. 

Call it privilege, call it providence, call it deranged... but it’s also destiny.

It’s human duty to find beauty.

(I fly to the strangest lands)

And if you can’t see it all around you, go find it.  Turn over every stone.  Share it with your fellow hearts.  Make the blood flow.  Move the world.  Help it grow.  Enhance the show.   That much I know.

Security has ruled that I am fit to sit on an airplane with other people.

Emily sings, “Ben is so great!” and does a subtle but funny dance while smiling to cheer me up.   

She’s not going to pull me out of the hole, but she knows I’m bigger than the spider, and I’ll meet the right people to help me out, and I’ll be braver and stronger because of it.  She knows, because she’s already done this.  She’s never been where I’m going.  No one in my family has ever been where I’m going.  That’s one more reason I’m doing it.  But still, she’s done it.  Everyone’s done it.  I’ve done it.  You’ve done it.  We do it.  We go through it.  By the way, what is it?

(life… I wonder, will it take me under?  I don’t know)

She’s the last smiling face I see.  I turn the corner. 

Now I’m alone.  It’s just me…

…a mysterious symphony of ordered infinity…

…moving madly amongst a wondrous world spread out before me…

Seven months on my own…

The ultimate unknown… at least for someone who grew up where I have grown…

Please imagine:
Life is a choose-your-own adventure book.

It’s true. 

I made my choice three months ago.  I exerted myself and I moved forward in all directions of development, some faster than others, and not without setbacks.  It is not a competition.  I can only be better than myself.  But I moved my body and my mind, and it led me to a once in a lifetime decision of how to best spend my time: do I pursue the ultimate journey of the soul, the body and the mind?   Yes.  I accept the quest of the imagination, seeking awe amongst mystery, to find treasure in the challenge.  To love life.

Will life love me?

So far it lets me be.  

It’s made me free to be who and what and where I want to be…

so long as it agrees.

These thoughts flow through my mind as the plane begins to move on the tarmac.  Soon we will be leaving my homeland, hopefully not forever.  There is so much love here for me.  But there is also love out there.  I know it.  I don’t know what it is, or where it will be, but I’ve done my time and studied the signs projected to my mind by the imminent divine, and I know the exact location of the starting line:

Hello, INDIA!












...




...



....


that's the sound of editing
stay tuned...