"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death."

The first of September was spent in an aluminum capsule, fleeting towards the upper atmosphere. The components of the landscape blurred, as the runway vanished, and the rush, the resistance of air, compressed me into the shoulders of my seat, like a stringent shove. In the trembling turbulence, of ascent, my insides churned, sloshed, like pancake batter in a mixing bowl. Hands crossed, eyes closed, I eased myself into a conception of being nestled in a cocoon of egg whites and cream-colored fleece, softening my conscience into a slumberous shape, as we slipped into a film of clouds.

Sixty days since, and I am homeward bound, taking back memories of candlelight, conversation, cafes, cigarettes, and card games. Of aeroplanes, and trains, bunk beds and baked bread, of foreign accents and foreign scents, backpacks and borrowed blankets, the exchanges of culture, and the igniting of consciousness.

In Lisboa, amongst architecture erected in old world grandeur, and glory; embellished with Easter holiday hues, pinks, yellows, baby blues, powder purples, and painted tiles. In Morocco, lying, a slip on the bed sheet, in the ambiance of ancient Arabic prayers, dripped from devoted lips, echoing into the Egyptian blue medina that sits snug, in the lap of the enveloping mountains. In Barcelona, strolling down seemingly immortal sidewalks, shaking strands of hair from my peepers, to study another Antoni Gaudi structure - smile slipping crosswise - the man whose idiosyncratic spirit left the city with such a incessant whimsy. And everywhere, languages, the colors of Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and French, taking flight from the nest of my throat, in timid whispers, as I try to harmonize, and fit my tongue around the foreign sounds.

On an evening, lapsing into night, over drinks that cost entirely too much, a befriended traveler questioned what impulse had brought me there, thousands of miles, far removed, from all that I knew. Because I am ill-fitted at being responsible, was my reply, and he said, quite quickly, and convinced, that, no, we are the responsible ones. I hesitantly turned this hypothesis over in my head, swallowing the notion, its simmering taste scalding and tearing at all the preconceived impressions I had of responsibility. He was right. We were living, not plainly existing, but living, in a way that makes all the air whistle away from your lungs, and your heart inflate from the ecstasy of the risk, of the days finally fitting into your dreams, of being alive.

We are responsible for ourselves, for our hearts, our happiness; what we leave to others, where, and when we go from here. Who can live for you, instead of you? There isn't a soul, who can. The secret is that we are the keepers of our own reality, to do with it, to make of it, what we wish.

I am drunk on dreams, doubtless, with no sense to sober up. Maps lay wrinkled from the forging of future vagabond ventures. Graph papers lay scattered, bearing inked blueprints for my treehouse, which I'll dwell in. Journals lay stained by sprawling scribbles and notes, for the tentative book, I'm crafting. Then there's the illimitable list of life aspirations: live in a treehouse, a tipi, a nomadic camp in the desert, and perhaps a gypsy caravan; take a cross-country road trip; be well versed in the romance languages; learn how to whistle, wink, and blow bubbles with chewing gum; attend a Kings of Leon concert, maybe a few; go skydiving; adopt many cats, and name them after famous surf locations, like Waimea, Teahupoo, and Bonsai, just because. And on, and on...

Who knows if all will be fulfilled, but that scarcely matters. You see, it is not so much where the road, in life, will take us, but that we set out, down the road.

Do you feel that you're on the (figurative) road of life? Or are you are on the side of the road, waiting? Are you more afraid of life or death? Do you think ore of security or opportunity?

Photo Credits: Photographer David Shama @ www.davidshama.com

Title Quote: James F. Bymes

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

Back from the island, to which I paid a visit, in the shift of week, where the ghost of adolescence still lingers, in the blue breeze, and innocence was taken by the tide, the lure, of the sea. Butterfly strokes, surfboards, and strands of my hair marching in the whip of the brine air, like strings of a marionette doll; brown, paper parcel of Carolina peaches, with its craggy cut teeth, crumpled into the cusp of my palm; the celestial sphere seasoned with salt stars, and a whisper of clouds, swimming, pendulous, like a bambino's mobile; pale as breath when winter frost knifes at exposed flesh.



Newly 19, a pale, flaming child, of late summer, fevered with ardor, amour, I formulate a promise of heart, to abandon all that dissatisfies, depresses, and subsume a truer sense of being. The tangles of social order, schedules, and salaries, have crept up, snaking round my soul, strangling spiritualism, and intuition. 'No more, no more!" my spirit howls.



Thus, I purchased one-way passage, inked for September 1st, to be swept into aerial atmosphere, and fly beneath the vault of heaven, the North Atlantic Ocean at my feet, dashing thousands of miles, far remote, a departure from all that I've ever known.



Endowed with but a fistful of funds, bank account shaved bare, all that I have is who I am, heart, and soul.



I've flung off the chains of corporations, freed from their spirit-devouring demands for human submission. I will not be owned, thought of like a gratuitous puppet, raped of self and individuality. I protest to being shaped by societal standards, by wagging fingers of spite. Thereupon, I dismount the carousel of customs that is to the naked eye, satisfying, but that only spins in circles, taking the same tattered track, never giving birth to new trails, never obliterating boundaries.



Society will brand me, as a slacker, papa will preach, and still, I'll remain, a free spirit, living like a gypsy, roaming like a vagabond, filling my cup of wanderlust.



I have paused, pinned, at the lip, of a precipitous cliff, calculating, and cautiously curious about the degree of such a descent, away from assurance. For in capering into the chasm of the unknown, my spirit may be clipped, what I have conceived chiseled.



What existence is mine, though, if I purely peer at the possibilities, and forsake my fervor, my fighting chance for crowned dreams?



We are sculptors of our circumstances. Grip the wheel, and blaze straight into the nucleus of your most madcap dreams. Adopt a reckless abandon, to all that smothers the crux of your passion, for if you do not, you submit your soul as a scapegoat to regret. Nothing is foolish that fulfills you.



Therefore, I'm drafting dreams, wishing on stars, and whispering to the heavenly hosts, vowing not to misspend this offering of life, vowing to saturate myself in shafts of sunlight, and all that nurtures the soul. I’ll travel, I’ll surf, I’ll write, I’ll give, I’ll laugh until I’m seized with breathlessness, and when I die, I’ll say, 'my, how content I am with life'.



Please, tell me what you believe to be your most madcap dream. What do you wish for, but never tried for? Then tell yourself, 'it is possible'. Because it is...



P.S. I have a webcam now, and am contemplating doing a video Q&A...share your two cents? Yay or nay?

P.P.S. I'm quite tired of being plagiarized, please do not recreate or re-post any of my entries, in their entirety. I am sincerely considering making this blog private, and only allowing those invited to read it. I'd hate to have to do this, but if those who are plagiarizing, continue to do so, I very well may.

Title Quote: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliscarpulla & http://edouardplongeon.unblog.fr & http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencephilomene & http://ericashires.com.

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

This is the 100th entry of this uninhibited, sprawling chronicle that was commenced a year ago, today. And I feel in the deepest abyss of my soul, that this is the conclusion, the final page in this chapter, of this small memoir, my life, heretofore. The next chapter lies still, in blank ambiguity, unfolded and biding the coming time that is to color its lustrous pages. Perhaps, not to be narrated or noted here, as it has been for the precedent three-hundred and sixty-five days, but elsewhere, wherever it may be that I gallivant on to, in the awaited, unborn days, weeks, months, years.



For all my life, thus far, I've lived in fervent bursts, like open-ended dashes between blunted bullets of Morse code. The days gone by have been seasoned with moments of grits and gallant guts; with pluck, lipped and laced with spunk. Nevertheless, those instants have been nothing more than a lightening storm in August, painted strokes of ambition that have not, thus far, discovered how to illuminate the span of the sky for more than one glorious, glimmering second.



Timidness is but a thorn in my flesh, and I know that I cannot linger much longer in this brier patch of suburbia, with all its opulent offers of superficial satisfaction, and all its neatly stacked homes, hinged on the Eastern seaboard; whose inhabitants dress in suave suits made of virgin wool, crisp currency folded in the ironed pockets; who travel in luxury automobiles with interiors of sable black and leather, wearing simulated smiles, their artificial elation exhibited in picture windows, flaunted with extravagant embellishments and wares; their gestures and sentiments, sterile as plastic.



I would rather succumb to the weary waters of death, than be slave to a schedule, to clocks, and to the condescending yardstick that society insists on measuring one another with. For to have such a mechanical, and empty existence would surely crush my soul like porcelain against stone.



I cannot live like that, all paperwork, and paper smiles. I cannot, and I will not. My heart won't allow it.



I wish to be but a warm slip in the body of the Aegean sea, its fluid tapestry, azure, and freckled with ripples of Persian blue, lipped with ivory and cream capes of sea foam; to sit atop the comma of a camel's back, in an ambling parade of spindly legs, crossing the shifting sands of the Arabian desert; to behold the incandescent pin-pricks of stars, in the sapphire mantle of African sky. And I dream still, of bare shoulders rippling with infectious laughter, of intimate exchanges, and to love and be loved, until my very heart balloons with the bliss, and blessedness of it all.



I'll take poverty, it humbles my heart, heals the crippling scars of materialism. I'll take opposition, it is but oil poured upon the fire, the flames of this blazing passion of mine. I'll take struggles, strife, and tears, they make me stronger; they are the set of keys cut for unclasping the door of triumph.



No longer will I waste away in apprehension of all the teeth, and terrors, this world may bear forth. I am not falsely unafraid, but I have penned a promise upon the flesh of my soul, a promise to press forward into the blaze of ambition, to set upon fulfilling my dreams, bestowing the summation of my life into the magnum opus of love, the crux of justice, and the heart of human equality, of harmony.



Please know, that you have all been delicate wings, lifting my spirits, stirring up advantageous debates in the wake of my thoughts, and setting a thousand-some smiles into the frame of my face. Each entry of this blog has been fragile, unpretending pieces of me, broken off, in hopes of leaving a tiny trail along the floor beams of your soul. And in tenderhearted, fervent hope that you will see the potential of your heart, and of your dreams, and find peace, love, and fulfillment in your time.

Title Quote: Abraham Lincoln
Photos: By Edouard Plongeon via http://edouardplongeon.unblog.fr

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."

Our home, this universe is blackened beneath the shroud of hatred and loathing, disgraced, distorted with slander, sharpness, and scorn. This world, needs no more hate, needs no more brashness, biting bitterness that leaves teeth marks on the soul, and traces of tears on flesh.



Gentleness is a master of tempers, a treatment for broken hearts, and broken people. A remedy for war, for witless assault, aggression of the human spirit.



Gentleness is my grandmother's fragile footsteps, arriving on the brick porch, lighter than air, the delicate lilt of her voice; soft murmuring and melodies on the radio, crawling through the pint-sized speakers, like sunbeams; the pale moon suspended over an iridescent lake, in the hollow of a forest asleep; sea foam, candle light, a whisper in the night, a mother's lullaby, summer breezes, bliss, a goodnight kiss.



If civilization were to classify gentleness as a gender, it would be female, as it is chiefly regarded by the male as frailty, a fault, a consequential mark in character.



It is past due, though, that the masquerade ends, for a grand finale with gentleness, a theater production, where the ruby red curtains in all their velvet strung glory are parted to unveil that the falsely masked gentleness is in truth a character of refined strength.



Gentleness indeed is not a riddance of strength, but an exercise of strength.



Harsh tones are wind in the wildfire of oppression and brutality. Thereupon, let us embrace a gentle nature, thoughtful with our tones, selective in what we let slip from our tongues. Extend a hand to hold, a smile to bless, an embrace to savor, even for a stranger.



Gentleness is but a wing in the flight of love, and love, faithful love, can redeem this blackened world.



Do you have a gentle spirit, or do you find yourself often being harsh and quick to snap? If so, do you wish you were more gentle, at times? Do you view gentleness as a sign of weakness or a sign of strength? Other thoughts?

P.S. In a follow up to my previous entry, sweet thanks to all my new followers at Tumblr, only a week in, and already 100 plus followers, you all are the best. Cheers!

Title Quote: Saint Francis de Sales
Photo Credits: Wendy Bevan for Mary Claire Italy magazine, scanned by Diciassette (17) at www.thefashionspot.com.