all things converge. (as S. used to say, everything that rises must converge - and everything is definitely rising, since there was nowhere to go but up)
the world is so small in the end.

my friends asked me if, for once, i will write about my travels. i thought about the appropriateness of this blog title that i've carried around for years.

as i prepare -- at the absolute limit of my multitasking capacity -- to leave for three weeks to travel across Patagonia-- i make phone calls, send messages, receive letters, cram clothing into tiny packing bags, try out public transportation in my dear yet unwalkable Houston, deal with past accidents, consider matters of the heart, try to be a good employee, and other frantic activities.

i get both wildly excited and appropriately anxious as i start writing messages and participating in dialogue entirely in Spanish (stretching the limits of my "fluency"), and i know that i'm possibly in way over my head as i plan to have a stranger who is a friend of a friend pick me up from the airport at past-midnight when i arrive, and then somehow return me safely to the airport on time for my next flight at the end of an 8 hour layover. there are, of course, only certain acceptable and available activities between midnight and 8AM that i can think of. and at the end of my journey i'll somehow make it to the meeting point where i'll join my friends for a camper van journey towards the End of the World and beyond. oh, and there will be penguins.

i keep up, however slowly, with the very-colloquially-Peruvian conversations. i even successfully make some jokes. hope against hope, i decide to test out this theory of mine, about the goodness of people. also, what the f? i keep saying i won't choose places that are cold, and yet here i am going to Penguin territory.

there are some friends with theories that more crazy things happen to me (both good and bad) because i take gambles and risks that most people gape at. and, honestly,  i can't imagine any other way to live this one life we've been given.



2013 has thrown a lot of shit my way. i'm throwing it right back.

alright, world. gimme what you got.

--
ps- from previous post:

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that’s not the same thing.”

- Joseph Conrad