when the music dies you'll be the first one the villagers kill

i've come up with this really amazing ability to channel my old friends into my current existence. i take people like dan and brad and all the great conversations i've had within my tribe back home and sometimes when i'm pushing through my own questions i see them in my head and i simply keep my ears open for their ideas.

sometimes old conversations come back to me in beautiful flashbacks to my life back when i was a younger me. i remember sitting on my kitchen floor with some friends asking what we were meant to do in this world. my friends were and are great people with great potentiality and i was always humbled by them. i have friends whose purpose is to preserve the world so we may not doom our species; its true. i have friends who can write in the way that we can only narrate in our heads. not surprisingly it was in these moments that i first fortified my plans to become a teacher; one who believes they may not be able to save the world alone yet they can teach others.

and i have asked, 'is it better to inspire or to be inspired?'

some of my conversations are no longer in english. this presents a unique problem/opportunity to begin anew in an almost child-like fashion. learning turkish began as a means of ordering food without being laughed at and has thus progressed into a functioning and usable force in my life. it allowed me to travel the norther and far south east as a resident instead of a foreigner. now it puts me at the same table as those who have much to say about this country. as many curves as my life has taken it has swerved me into a house that is lived in and frequented by many persian folk as well as many kurdish people too.

as i've said i'll have no opinion (or at least a speakable one) so long as i can't vote in this country and this puts me in the position of being a completely neutral set of ears and a mouth only to ask questions. i have to admit thought that i never saw things like this coming six years ago when i sat on the kitchen floor of the trumbul house. it makes me wonder how far away my head will be when i come back home again and if people will be at all interested.

when i first landed here i came in search of a home. i was nearing the end of a year i had spent touching a handful of different continents that would end at a new years eve party on the rooftops of cairo (but thats another story). i could get into details about what took me here but its no different than the other bits of interwound web that fashions our lives in every other instance. soon enough i found a home and i unpacked my bags at long last.

and now i look at alice, my faithful backpack friend, and i think about where she is taking me next. i'm about to set off on a multi-national, multi-continental voyage into the slightly known and complete unknown yet i'm not that concerned; its not like i haven't done this before.

i love this city though and i love this country. i love the people and i love the streets i walk on. in that same love i know i'll come back and begin a new chapter but for now i'm reading maps from a different corner of the forest.

learning another language is cool but being more than functional in three is a blessing and a sign of dedication. i'm excited. i'm moving to south america and i'm passing a few old loves on the way in the form of ancient temples and nicaraguan flor de cana. i'm keeping centered and staying in tune because if i do...



...well i'll finally get my dream of seeing an end to this world :)