Day one, airport.

Good omen, the Yankees swept the ChiSox right out of town. God help me without baseball.

Taking off now and this journal is the only friend I have here with me. I take an oath to write here every day, I´ll try my best not to overthink or judge, just let loose and let flow.

In the air now. My wrist gets far too tired far too quickly, too spoiled by keyboard ease. I need to fight that and work my writing muscles back up to par, get this arm here back into shape. Funny, looking at words, how I take them for granted, how we all do, swimming in a sea of language all around us on signs and buildings. These markings are the legacy of an ancient ritual, creating meaning for the human realm where there was none before. Mm, airline dinner time. Beef and mashed potatoes. Not bad.

I remember a time when crossing an ocean via aeroplane immediately knocked the price of alcohol down to $0. No more. I guess in an international economy faced with consistently increasing fuel prices, the airlines have to make every extra bit of cash that they can. But O, how glorious it was to be sixteen, floating high above international waters and well beyond the grasp of U.S. drinking laws, sauced and soothed en route to Europa.

I´d kill for a drink right now. A gin and tonic would sit perfectly in my not-so-nervous-anymore tum. On this trip I´ll explore my relationship with alcohol, I´m sure. I can only imagine that while drunkedness may ease the flow of the creative juices, it will only massacre this chicken scratch that calls itself writing. I am an impatient thinker. It is high time that I succumb to the unavoidable truth that things only come from other things, that creation was only a truly spontaneous act once - In the Beginning.

Since then, it´s been placed in the hands of me and mine and you and yours. Some of us will choose to do something, others will be passive players in the grand game of life. There are choices laid out at my feet and nothing is going to happen for me unless I make those choices - even the wrong ones. Just like Grady Tripp, I have ceased making choices; and while the idea of some continous flow may be romantically attractive, it is certainly not productive. At least, not the way that I need to be productive if I am to truly be happy. Each choice unfolds into a million other fractalized possibilities and on and on forever and ever, amen. One can´t just close their eyes and watch the visuals forever.

And while everything, including all these choices, and the choices they birth in turn, exist within my mind folded over and over within one another ad infinitum, they must be unlocked, and the key has been, is, and always will be experience. I must read words so that I may filter them and the ideas they communicate through my own worldview, further developing that worldview...then they will be ready to be prismatically refracted back onto empty pages like these to be passed onto other confused souls like myself. Note to self: anyone who tells themselves they understand this whole human drama is a self-deceptive fool.

I look out the window, it makes me laugh, the fucking obvious truth that all things are one and connected, that all acts are circular and intertwining and that karma is not simply a belief or a notion but the way things are. And yet, that at the same time, any human attempt to make sense of and/or quantify and judge karma is absolutely futile.

I look up at the inflight movie and see mermaids smelling feet.

Tropic of Cancer, Pg. 6: Indigo sky, swept clean of fleecy clouds, gaunt trees infinitely extended, their black boughs gesticulating like a sleepwalker.

Well holy shit, Henry Miller, I´m pretty sure you just blew my mind.

...

pulling towards Spain now

the sun is unbelievably bright, over to the east. I´ve been so tempted to look at it that I´ve hurt my eyes and given myself a slight headache.

Good morning, Europe.

From above, the Spanish countryside looks like someone spilled a gigantic Irish carbomb on top of a color-by-numbers puzzle, everything shaded somewhere between black and tan.