My Return

You see alot has changed and in a mystical way nothing has changed at all. There's no way to get around that simple fact. And there's no way to get around the simple fact that I have completely gone against the very note that I wrote some 2 months ago, when I sat in a wintery New Zealand. I recall it precisely, wrapped up in a blanket in an Australian's room where. I guess you could say I snuck in his room in order to write that note about staying in New Zealand. Yes, the one about toughing it up and sticking it out after the car crash and the subsequent striving for livelihood. Well, I lasted only a month longer.

I mean, now I sit in my room in rural Alabama in a pair of boxers and a ruffled shirt. Alot has happened. And all that you have heard of late was about my wanderings in Fiji. Well, I'm back. And what more can I say. A little wilder and unhindered, a bit more confident, and a pinch crazier in some regards,...and the indifference on all these points. "Why?" You might ask. Well, let me tell you it was all good reason. In fact made perfect sense.

There are pragmatic factors that include food, money, income, car payments, dastardly employment in New Zealand...though these were only half the story. If there was one gapping hole in my make up that made the temptation of coming home a worthwhile decision it had to be my continous plight of outright laziness. My sloth. I know of no other way to put it. My past job allowed tons and tons of time and a seductive amount of flexibility and leisure. Not only that...but hours were completely up to me. So sleeping in became something of a ritual. And the ability to just change my plans in the middle of the week or even the day spoilt me rotten. In New Zealand, days would go by and I would forget that I was ever in a foreign country, picturing that my free-roving days in the states were more exciting.

Then there was the dawning of what appeared to be my life's ambition. Which I'm sure some of you thought that it was a prolonged eclipse. Take this to mean, I was really questioning why on earth I was living in a foreign country seeking adventure and interesting jobs, when all that I really wanted to do was write.

It became something of an ephiphany of sorts. I remember being on Waiheke Island, this ritsy community island in New Zealand. And visiting this painter, who worked most nights, all night long on his paintings. He told me how he got to where he was now. And I remember him saying that there was really no better way that he could think of to spend his days, but by painting. When he said that I recall thinking the same thing about writing.

And I was working on a story at the time. What seemed to be turning into a very elaborate, complex novel. I'd get up in the mornings and sit on this chair on the deck of this shack-boat where I stayed, and write pages and pages. It had nothing to do with New Zealand, nor Fiji, nor anything close at hand. It was entirely bombastic idea and I was loving not being bound my anything.

So I got back to the states well over a month ago. I even suprised my mother, driving all the way down to Dothan and popping in her office at work. It was well worth it seeing the surprised look on her face. For all she knew I was still in New Zealand, she didn't even know that I had stopped in Fiji on the way back.

Well, I got my old job back so I am again a wanderer of the great American highway. I have already been in 8 different states. Survived a tropical storm in Miami, gotten a speeding ticket in Tennessee, visited wineries in Illinois, even broke a few more Harding University rules in Arkansas, and danced like a madman at a disco dance here in Alabama. So things are pretty much back to normal, as though I never went anywhere to begin with.

But the saddest thing of all, is I've hardly written anything at all. Except for my previous notes on Fiji and half a short story about cats.