I L♥VErmont

I suppose its hard to go from living and traveling in China and all over Europe to a homecoming back to America, and then come lounge for a week in Vermont. I mean, when is lounging for a week at a lakeside cabin ever a problem? But the problem, if you can call it that, is one of just feeling restless. I was country-hopping, hell, continent-hopping, a month ago, and now, staying in one place with such an empty schedule feels ... wrong?

Enjoy it, you dumb bastard, because the real world is coming to scissor-kick you in the face: insurance, job hunting, The Future comin' right at ya. A week of lazy nothing may feel slow and quaint right now, but you'll be yearning for it soon enough.

So what the hell am I going to do now? Sort things out. Work on my Chinese. Get ready in the short term to teach, in some capacity, in Delaware and/or Philadelphia. Train for a 5K, then a 10K, and then ... something more. Write: short stories, fiction, scripts. Find not just a job, but a career: something I can believe in, something I can enjoy, but something that can maybe make the world even the tiniest bit better. Attempt to, as a friend and others wiser than myself have said before, become the change I want to see in the world.

We'll see. It won't come over night. It'll probably take a long time, actually; and I'm prepared for some compromises along the way. But I'm hopeful (or maybe just naive) enough to at least try.

Queen's Guard Mounting

My video of the Queen's Guard Mounting (known as the "Changing of the Guard") from St. James's Palace in London. I (we) followed the guards as they assembled, were inspected, and then finally marched to Buckingham Palace. The tradition! The colors! The Britishness! As good as a banger and mash in your tea and crumpets, cor blimey innit? Brilliant.

Please ignore the witch-cackle in the beginning of the video ... no idea where that came from.

Deirdre's Birthday in Paris

Deirdre's birthday at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Matt Karpinski Sexy Time Lap Fun

Matthew Karpinski is available for bachelorette parties and/or suppressing prison riots.

Europe!

It certainly has been a long time. This forced march through Europe has been spectacular, along with a very long list of other adjectives I can't be bothered to fish out, and here I sit, a month (!) later in a cafe on Crete, Greek coffee and conversation swirling through the air, in front of two computers you have to feed one-Euro coins in to like a Donkey Kong machine, realizing I forgot my USB cable for my camera (which means no new pictures ... good lord, I haven't even done Amsterdam, Munich, anything in Austria or Italy or Greece ...), tired and with a headcold and unable to stop swaying from the motion of the sea we've been sailing on, a slow rocking that even here on dry land still causes my body to gently roll to imaginary waves, a thrall to some invisible drunkneness ... what a trip.

I mailed some postcards from Turkey yesterday, when we stopped in Kusadasi... hope they get to their destinations soon, because it looks like postcards I mailed from Thailand last February are just now arriving to some people. Yesterday on Rhodes I went to meet the colossus, but sadly, he wasn't there ... was he ever? I stood where one of his legs would have been, a hundred-foot arch spanning the mouth to a tiny harbor, and colossi nonewithstanding (that's a fun plural), being on that island, dirtying my feet in the dust of what was once classical Greece, what was once the root of modern Western civilization ... that was awesomne. I walked back from the colossus-less pier and passed by a boat flying an American flag and a big "Delaware" stenciled on its back, the "Cerra CM" the ship was called, an no one on it spoke English save the Greek sailors who said the people on the boat were from Turkey and France. Maybe the world isn't that small afterall.

And now I gotta go get in line, get back on the ship, see some more of Greece and finish this trip.