It used to be because of drinking, I would lose a whole day, hell sometimes longer. There were so many days and weeks that were wasted on the shores of alcoholism. My human vessel wrecked and no longer seafaring, riding the tides of my insanely drunk cyclones.
But today, today I lose Thursday as I time travel across the globe. Dipping below the equator for the first time in my life. How can I be this old and never have done this before? I swear sometimes I feel like I took a huge inbreathe and just forgot to let it out...for several decades. How can I be this old and never have spent more time going to distant, foreign lands, with wild beasts that are as benevolent as they are deadly? How could I have spent my childhood moving from here to there and back again and then led such a pedestrian life for all those years? Where did I go? Where was I all this time?
Today I will lose Thursday somewhere deep over the Pacific Ocean. Thursday will be the casualty of travel to the land down under. I would say I get it back on the other end but that is some sort of other bizarre travel miracle that I haven’t even been able to contemplate yet. It is hard to think of the ending when the beginning is barely underway...
I wonder what will happen back home on a day I will wholly miss. I wonder what benal things will occur in my every day life when I am not there to witness it. Will there be calamity? Upheaval? Panic? Loss? Joy? Will those I share my life with relish in my absence or shall they miss me terribly?
I guess those are things I am not supposed to know, mostly because I can do nothing about them and also because they belong to a day that I gave away in order to propel myself through time and space to arrive in some far away land with ridiculous beasts that bound through the outback like some sort of bouncing anorexic T-Rex with springy legs instead of massive quads. I lose Thursday in order to get time in a place I have only dreamed about.
I am struck at how little I know about where I am going. How little I was interested in facts and locations and history and the like. It isn’t like I didn’t consider it all, it was more that I didn’t want to inform myself in ways that would bias me to the experience as a whole. I didn’t want to know, because I wanted to find out. How can I possibly know what would interest me, when I have never even been there? I didn’t want a list of “must sees” and “can’t miss thats.” I can and I will. Australia in a week can only be experienced at top speed or in very limited exposure. I am opting for the later. I will see what I am supposed to, of this I am sure.
To me the most wild adventure comes with an open mind, and clear and free heart, and a body that is ready to adventure. The only prep I am really doing is to do my best to stave off jet lag so that I can enjoy the limited time I have.
I used to give up days to hangovers and wastedness. Today, I give up Thursday as an offering to the Gods of travel, of discovery, of solitude and grace so that I might experience a few things I haven’t ever seen or done before. Thursday was the casualty, the offering if you will, to transport me to a time and a place I do not know and have never been.
Life is so odd. So much ado about all the time travel. So much fuss about how far it is and the great expense, but I can tell you I never gave those kinds of things any real consideration, when I was sitting on my barstool insisting that one day I would...days passed into weeks, and into months and then years of a life on hold, the routine of self destruction so compelling, The life I had so meaningless in its repetition. And yet, I persisted as if it mattered for more than a decade...
I pray that in the lives of others, where Thursday will shine brightly, that it is a pleasant Thursday. Not hum drum or boring, but not filled with ire or loss or things that take up life. And for me, I will willingly give Thursday up as an offering to those who made this trip possible for me. For all the powers that be that got me to the airport on time, that got me in this seat so that the great sacrifice of Thursday would grant me safe passage to whatever comes next in the land of kangaroos and so many other things I cannot yet fathom.
May we all endeavor to live and love our best lives...that always shall occur just outside our comfort zone...for that is where the magic happens. And sometimes requires the acquiescence of a Thursday...for the first time ever.
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