Wyoming

This year we will drive to Wyoming. I had to write that somewhere.

Boy, I hate when you're gone

Boy, I hate when you're gone. I write this as if somehow you're going to stumble upon it and somehow feel me on this, but I feel terrible when you're far away from me. You're spending a few nights with your grandparents on both sides, and then on Monday you'll begin school. It's Pre-K, and it's kind of a big deal because you've never been away so long every day of the week. It's kind of killing me, and I feel like I have to hide it for some reason. Mom is really sad about it, and we're just trying to see the positive side of these changes. I just needed to write that somewhere because this is a lot harder for me than I typically care to admit. Something about you being in school for so long ties together the entirety of schooling in my mind, and all of a sudden I can see so many of the chapters laid out for our family. Until now it was such a mystery. 

Matoya's Cave

In Final Fantasy 1, there is this iconic moment when you first enter Matoya's Cave just to the north of Cornelia. You'd know this if you were a dork like me, but you'd also know that the music in that cave is absolutely enchanting for some reason.

That music captured me good last summer when my family and I were staying in Washington just outside of Seattle. I was toting around a couple of ocarinas that had been the objects of my new fascination at the time, and I managed to slowly figure out how to play the music from Matoya's Cave. 

The song just spoke to me. It still does. Songs are magic like that, and when you learn to recreate them you learn how to perform real magic. For me, I have always felt that music sends me back to other times, often many different timelines at once. I can feel the passing of history between the time I first hear a song and the present when I can recreate it the moment I pick up an instrument.

I'd like to make a song like that someday. 

Liminal (part 2)

According to my memories on social media, I get the exact same way every year. I even take on the same fascination with boldly heading out west. My posts on here from the past would probably show this all to be true as well. It's probably cabin fever, or a lull in creativity that comes naturally with the contemplative phase of winter. The days hit their shortest point not long ago, and the season will only get brighter.

I have some reflection to do.

I'm sure this is somewhat normal, but I often get caught up in the mathematics of how long it's been between chapters of my life. Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of my departure from Istanbul, and yet I haven't gotten around to changing it as my hometown in my profile for this blog. It's just that much a part of me, and it's pleasures are a delicate treat I can only share with a small handful of people who wrote the pages of that chapter together. 

The whispers are real. 

The cat-like visits I have from the spirts of inspiration are frequent these days, and I'm hesitant to immediately believe I only feel the way I do because of the lonely nature of this gloomy season. Of course some of that is true, and my presence in this part of the world is due only to family that I could not separate from their only grandchild. I say that proudly and with love in my heart, yet I would be lying if I said it didn't come with a bit of personal sacrifice. 

Liminal

Today is the first day of the year. 

I'm creatively a pile of dust and ash.

Deeply seeking inspiration in a world of grey that is not cold enough for snow to stick.

Stews and *Swims

It's 7:21 in the morning, but I've been awake for a long time now. Did I wait too long to start writing? Today I'm going on a quest, but I don't know where. I need to get a taste for quests again. It's the cold time of year when questing becomes more of a planned event. I also want to go out west on a real adventure. I want to start at the Black Hills then vanish onward in any direction westward. Like mist. 

Something is calling me. It's loud this time and hopefully loud enough to include my son. That's a whole different book, now isn't it? Much like a mystery novel, I've seen myself through many problems lately that were all resolved by an answer that's been in my face this whole time - I'm a traveler and it's what I do best. I never meant to throw in the sweaty towel of wanderlust, I've just been focused on other things. I waited for the call again, and now it calls loudly. 

So, where do I begin?

There are a lot of variables to consider when traveling with a young one. Besides the most important matters like health and safety, it's very important to me that this is also an adventure that favors his experience just as much as ours. I want him to be excited about where we are going, and I want there to be attractions along the way that we are looking forward to. Perhaps these are dinosaur museums and dig sites. I'm very cool with that. But, we have to act according to the seasons, and it's currently nearing min-December in Michigan.

What do we do now?

We head to the UP. My wife has a lot of history there, and through a bizarre twist of fate, I recently ran into a friend at the airport with his uncle who offered us a place to stay. It's far though, not as far as going out west, but Michigan is dauntingly long from top to bottom. You have to plan around snowstorms and all sorts of other northern situations. 

That part of the state has always been special to me as well, in consideration. We passed through the UP during the early days of our massive road trip my wife and I took about eight years ago. It's been on my mind ever since. I only wish we could proceed and continue onward this time as well. Maybe we should.. oh, right.. the snow.

I used to call this period of time 'stewing'. It's like I'm slowly adding ingredients and patiently watching a delicious broth come to a soft boil. I have always liked that analogy because it reminds me that sometimes I have no choice but to be patient because any other option would be an uncooked meal. The traveling version of stewing is what I typically refer to as 'swimming', and I guess that's just due to my fishy nature. Yet, travel is a different world to me now, and I don't know how those titles hold up for me anymore. 

Dry Erase, intact

A few years ago, my wife and I moved into my aunt's house. She had suffered a stroke a few months prior, and it became evident she would not be able to return to her house in the foreseeable future, so we rented it from her son while we searched for a home to buy one day. She left behind a lot of things that were important to her, and for the most part everything was eventually put into various storage locations throughout the house and garage, but there were a few simple things that I hesitated to disturb.

One of these such things was a tiny white board she kept on the far end of her kitchen near the coffee maker. It contained a dozen or so scribbles of appointments and phone numbers including the visit she had planned to the doctor's office the day she ultimately had a stroke. For some reason it felt like a cryptic reminder to me that the things which concern us are very temporary, and just as new owners of your house will one day decide to wipe the previous owner's white board clean, so too will our slates be cleared as well.

Then I come to look at my current white board, and it's a horrid mess. There are scribbles on top of hastefully written phone numbers, addresses, and to-do lists that never really got done anyway. It's almost illegible, but it's somehow a very accurate description of how things have been for me lately. The fact is that I haven't felt very intact, and that's somehow the most perfect word I could find. I even mumbled it a few days ago briefly after waking up and noted that it was the first word I uttered all day. 

It's getting better though. The semester is almost over and I have most of my Christmas shopping done. How cliché to write that. Christmas shopping is one of the last things on my mind, and I write it down on my list of grievances like it's somehow that heavy on me at the moment. 

Manifestation: I want to go out west. I'm going to go out west again, but this time with the family. We are going to drive with some direction but let our hearts be our guides. I need my son to experience that. 

Something is calling me again.