Welcome

Abstract

            Never underestimate the heartbreak of the big bang. Imagine a force capable of compelling an ecstasy of infinite singularity to scatter into a vast, cold, and dark universe.

Tangible

            I want to live in a world with the environmental allowance for lovers to fly across the world to be with one another. I want learners to be able to voyage to the edge of their known universe so that they may be confronted with the bewildering landscape of human possibilities: within and without. I wish everyone the freedom to move until they know they always belonged.

            Yet I know this is not the case. I am an anomaly in time and space. So I try to plant trees and compost my melon rinds and smile at strangers and look down at the world from little airplane windows to be moved    by smallness: without and within.

Introduction

            You say my journey lacks academic excuse. And this is probably true. Still, it is movement towards truth and a fuller expression of what my life can be, so I see no conflict in our goals. I would not miss your class if there was another way.

Conduction

            Touching earth roots me to what is real and I can feel the joy of what may be without leaving the ground, my head in clouds.             It would be too harsh a separation to send my soul across an ocean before my body could reach those shores. We are learning what miraculous closeness is possible in distance, yet the universe is not only expanding.    

It pulls us closer too.

Methods

            I will prepare nuts and dry fruit for fortitude. I once made the mistake of bringing salad through security and I had to convince the officer that it was not a liquid by eating it. I will spread peanut butter onto bread, because it only counts as liquid in a jar. Rubber snakes. Sporks. I have learned many lessons from loss. Where I am going is far. And cold. And dark. It is the universe, so I am bringing every sweater I own: exactly one.

           I will rest best I can, although I have dreams overflowing even in day. I will hurtle across lines in the sand, to lands where clocks disagree with me. I will bring paper and tea for collecting thoughts. I will drink water and seek vegetables and emerge through winged cocoons newly enamored                     with sunlight.

Discussion

            So why did the universe decide to burst forth? Why shatter perfection into uncountable shards? Why carve trees into boats to chase the horizon? Why challenge the gravity calling us to Earth? Why leave paradise to burn candles and bundle in coats?

                                            

                Because this is the only journey.