Prologue

Seat 36K, Flight EI125, My journey has begun.

Technically, my journey both started months ago and also hasn’t started yet, depending on how long you want to draw the timeline. I suppose like anything, it truly began years ago when the first seedlings of an IDEA implanted themselves in my brain, quickly setting and spreading roots that eventually grew so strange as to choke out all other IDEAS about how to spend these few years of my youth.  The destination even was a mere detail; the IDEA was just to GO, to DO, to SEE, to LIVE.  Once planned, certain elements such as frugality and fear attempted to choke off my young travel IDEA, however persistence prevailed and the roots grew longer, developed off-shoots, sprouted leaves and flourished in quite the same manner as summer strawberries in the strong early summer heat.  As the planning progressed I could nearly feel the tendrils curling around my neurons and chemical reactors, synaptic gaps and al the rest of the fancy machinery powering this unit I like to call "me."  In my minds eye I could see the curious fingers extending, reaching around every newly reachable chunk of grey matter, feeling it out, poking, prodding, and eventually entwining around so that another part of me was fully covered and convinced that this was more than and IDEA, this was a PLAN.          

Like a great many plans it took some time from conception to realization, even as my idea flourished and opened beautiful bright exciting flowers of anticipation, life progressed and demanded some attention as well.  I could not constantly tend, water and prune as I needed.   Even though as a whole it was healthy, dead branches and wilted leaves appeared on some vines of disregarded details and lost hopes.  Brown spots crept amongst the fresh green, and had Life continued on as such, may have eventually grown, overtaken, and conquered my beautiful flora.

As luck would have it, oddly enough, I ran into trouble with the law of sorts and instantaneously the heavens opened and a fierce anxious rainstorm thundered down upon the bedding, flowed shortly by brilliant optimistic sunshine.  The combination was exactly the push needed and the Flora burst forth with such exuberance that it produced its own seeds, which fell and sprouted the necessary detailed undergrowth.  I had decided.

Alternatively, I haven’t started yet.  The complex lead time leading to any action was quite exhausting, and I decided to ease myself into it rather than jump straight in.  I’m the same way when it comes to the sea, with the same outcome: I go slow to soften the blow, but in reality a blow is a blow and I’m only delaying the inevitable.  Eventually, I end up at head level and realize this is it, I’m about to go in.  In this specific case I took the last week off work in Ireland, and am currently headed to Wisconsin to spend 2 weeks with the family before heading off for real.  I suppose some might say 3 weeks is quite long, some would disagree, but I know in my reality it is actually much longer.  I mentally checked out of the office about 3 weeks before that, dumping all my duties onto others and riding out my time tending only to the most trivial matters I could muster. As for Wisconsin, I happen to come from one of the millions of small town Americas, and anyone worth their small town salt understands that time moves differently “back home.”  An hour can feel like a day, a day a week, a week a year, and yet at the same time 2 weeks can fly by in a minute.  The mind alternates between past lives and current self, dull boredom and bittersweet nostalgia, relief to see the place again and a panicky claustrophobia crying “fly away before it sucks you back in!”  I guess after wishing for 18 years to be elsewhere as you do when young, its not so easy to relax when you realize you’re sitting in square 1, and by choice no less. God forbid the day ever comes I find myself back by necessity instead, although at the same time it’s strangely comforting to know home is there TO retreat to in the dark hour.  Not everyone is so lucky.