"and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast infinity"

At this time, some t-minus three weeks before lifting off for my Spanish adventure, I can't actually remember how or why I first decided that walking the five hundred plus miles across Northern Spain was for me. It is clear to me, however, that at the time that I made the decision to go, there were a few knots in my life that were in dire need of untangling. Knots, perhaps, of a Gordian nature. Knots necessitating either an untying, or, if untying is not a realistic option, a slicing in two.

The eternal plug in to my matrix--phone, mortgage, text, email, friends, family, work, bills, bank, alarm clock, utilities, insurance, child support, ex-wives, compound interest, fast food--had, still has to be true, worn me down. Erosion plain and simple. We're talking geologic time lapse erosion done in quicktime. Felt the serious need to go someplace where the above more or less can not reach out and touch me. Don't call us,child, we'll call you.

Clock is ticking. What did the man say, 'But at my back I always near time's winged chariot hurrying near"? And so it is, dear reader. Bucket list. Not interested in waiting any longer to get on with the living and put the near death experience of trudging through the zombie land of soccer moms, ass kissing career schleps, Fox News, commuter traffic, weekly routines. No more. THAT is what I was feeling. Still am.

There's the mid-life crisis, of course. Youngest child leaves the nest. Second marriage surviving solely because all power has been shifted to life support. Parents aging. No longer close to siblings. Now I have to decide what to do when I grow up. What Ii want to do is radiate across this globe. Like lines of latitude and longitude I want to radiate. I want to meet the people who live in those far flung locales. I want to really meet them and to know them, to learn the, and what they know and how they see their corner of the universe. I want to marvel in the sunlight and the waters and the voices and stories of this grand planet.

 If there is no peril, it's just a vacation. Adventure. Pure and simple. That's what I live for. Not for the fifteen minute break by the office water cooler. Not for the free samples of flavored paste at the store. No, I'm talking about getting myself into situations that have no certain end, no chaperone, no guarantee. I was reared up on Tarzan and Captain Kirk, on gritty, noirish tales of heroes and of vaults of gold guarded by sneering beasts. Shall I while away the last years safe and cared for in my paid for home with all of the finer trappings paid for by the pile of bank notes I've accumulated by being a model, meaning of course docile and mute, employee in some solid, meaning boring and staid, company? If so, dear reader, if you think that that is indeed the correct path, if it is what you tell your friends and children that they should do, then for the love of anything you revere, please either stop reading this blog or pick up a decent sized drug habit and let's see if you can't rid yourself of some of the clinging conventions that are keeping you from laughing all of your laughter or from crying all of your tears.

Restlessness. I've been feeling that itch to move,to wriggle my toes in the soil and water of a different part of the world. Stuck is the place where I have been. But for too long now. Years of being stuck. Two marriages of it. Two child rearings of it. A lifetime of it. And I don't regret it. I love my children. No changes asked for. Perfect as it is. And yet I'm done with the domestification. With the patience and with the enduring. My wake ups need to be charged, hit the beach running kinds of wake ups. Not the steady patter of alarm clocks and shuffling to the shower, running off to work, three day weekend to look forward to, to keep the peasants from storming the gates.

I bought my ticket back in April or May and decided that I will indeed attempt to make my life extraordinary, that I will not sit on the side, Walter Mittyesque, and be a spectator in my own life. No. No I will live this life and I will crack its bones and I will in no sucking tender way chew and rip the marrow from its bones. No longer shall I await the new day to find what it has I store for me; methinks it best to turn the corner of each new day with a fire inside and a determination to drive that golden chariot across the sky in whichever fashion I decide. And so, yes, I'm going to Spain and I'm going to walk the five hundred miles, and I'm going to be the master of all that I survey.