What's the plan, mate?

Oi.

The plan, as I see it, is that I will travel until the beginning of October, and then head home. I would love to continue traveling...but I have 2 issues. Money, of course. And I'm fucking inspired. It's hard to go places like this and not be inspired. It's even harder, once you have that inspiration, to have nowhere to do your work. Now I could, of course, stick with the original plan and stay (or return) to Paris and try to work here...but the kind of things I want to do, I need people that I know...and people that speak English.

I was of course inspired by Musee D'Orsay...and Shakespeare & Co Bookstore (I went AGAIN to meet up with Laura Samorano)...and the artist community that I went to visit, and the tombs of great writers...but it's weird. What's inspiring me most, is reading The Stranger's Genius Awards and reading about amazing shit in Seattle that I must be a part of. Also this book of plays that was sent to me, full of work by Seattle playwrights that is fucking rad. That city is like heroin, man. Always has been and always will be. I just can't kick it.

But I can't write here. I don't even want to write here. Why write when you can be constantly experiencing? Why reflect when all you have to do is look? I feel depraved in Seattle, and it works for me. It takes me out of the "living in the now" long enough to do some actual work and make things happen. But I have to be denied. I have to be struggling. I'm not struggling here, at the hostel, not enough. My only struggle is that I miss Seattle and its people. But I feel like a jerk doing that...I'm in Paris, I'm in the middle of Europe, I'm among crazy and beautiful and funny and gorgeous people. That's what is back home, so what's so different here? Why shouldn't I just switch the one with the other?

I suppose Paris, or rather my time in Paris, has already done what I've wanted it to. I am excited about the other places I will visit, but I'm already feeling that I'm just going through the motions with it. That I must stick out at least a month in Europe before heading home. But really, it's a commitment to the idea instead of the act itself. It's how I behave a lot of the time in a lot of things I do, relationships, jobs, etc. I commit myself to the idea that this is a good thing, that I want this sort of thing, when the specifics are not really what I want, just the generals. The general specifics. It's an idea I'm really into right now. The relationship of general and specific.

So I suppose I will hit up Barcelona, Madrid, Florence, Berlin, Brussels maybe but probably not, and up again in Paris for a trip back home. And then I'm sure I'll be up in Anacortes for a few weeks while I try to organize a place to stay & a job in Seattle.

As I wrote on Kelsey's facebook wall though, don't take this as written in stone, or even plaster, or even dirt. Everything in my head here passes from one moment to the next.

Salut
natty

*I've only been listening to the same stuff the past few days, a collection of the thus far mentioned favorite songs...so, nothing new to report for today*