Actually, I changed my mind, I have something important to say

I was supposed to go home today.

Well, I was supposed to board a flight from Helsinki to Tokyo, and arrive home on the 14th of December. But I was supposed to leave Europe today.

Today was the day I had my flights booked from my original itinerary, because it would have been symbolic of 4 months in Amsterdam, and I figured that I was either going to be lying in a gutter, begging for food, talking in tongues to the junkies in the red light district, or I was going to be ... somewhere else. And if, per se, I was in the former situation, then, better to just go home, or at least live in the knowledge that I know that I have a ticket to go home if I wanted to go home.

Well, I am somewhere else, and ain't that grand, because I am sure that junkies here would much rather be spending their precious time flogging off bikes than trying to interpret my inane banter.

6 months ago, I left my hometown to jump over the edge of a cliff I called "anticipation", and into a dark dark abyss that I call "uncertainty".

I am pleased to say that I am still alive, and my god, am I ALIVE.

I can't get my head around the last 6 months, it feels like yesterday I had to make some of the most gutwrenching "goodbyes" I have ever made in my life, and I still tear up about those memories. And now, I type from my (messy) bedroom, contemplating my day at the office tomorrow, having just got home from a bike ride in the misty, foggy atmosphere, from Nieuwmarkt, along the canals, and the houseboats and the Christmas lights, in the city I live in. And inbetween the date of June 8th, 2009, and right this second, I am sure I have felt every emotion that a human being can feel when faced with an unmapped, and unplanned future.

I just can not believe that it is December. And I live in Amsterdam. And if the last 6 months have just flown, that means the next 9 months of my visa will absolutely fly.

Laura showed me a poem that she studied in highschool, and I loved every word of it after I read it. It has become my mantra for my time here, I carry a copy of it with me every where I go.

More to write tomorrow or the next day I am sure, and I promise December will have more posts and 2010, even more so.

Miss you all.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-William E. Henley