Send Your Eggs

I am in a strange mood. What's new right? Part of me is swimming in gratitude and merry holiday cheer, while the other side is drowning in the same weirdness I always feel when I come "home." I use the term home loosely, as I no longer really feel at home in America. After ten years overseas, the States have become just another destination for me, just another port I enter and explore, a place I people watch, a place I try to find my way, a place where I usually end up more disillusioned then when I started. What's more, I am not even in California, where I grew up, but at my wife's home town- Milwaukee, which feels even more foreign.

Driving around today and interacting with people, I couldn't help but feel deflated. People seemed tired and worn down everywhere I went. There is always something depressing about being home for me. I can never put my finger on it, but there is an element of imbalance that tweaks my equilibrium for the length of my stay. I wish my emotions were more profound, better articulated, but I am only left with a malaise that meanders and goes nowhere- into blog posts like this one.

I am sure, as per usual, I am allowing little uncomfortable ideas and thoughts grow into bigger ideas and thoughts. Perhaps, I should just stop thinking so much, or at least re-train my thoughts: I am with my family; my girls are so excited to be with their grand parents; I am relaxed and calm, letting work drift away for a few weeks, and life is good.

I won't allow America to work it's obsessions and depression on me. I know I don; have to live here. I can leave in a few days. In the meantime, I can't help but think of ole Allen G:

America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument...

Winter Is Coming

There is gaping whole in my life that I am not sure how to fill...

It started last summer. My wife said there was a new show on HBO that she had heard of, and she felt we should watch it. Some fantasy medieval show ala Lord of The Rings. I am picky about the number of shows I watch, you wouldn't know it by the sheer amount of television I do watch, but TV is pretty good these days. Regardless, I wasn't about to add some lame Xena Princess show to my rotation. (My wife is convinced that I always say no, before yes just to piss her off.)

"But it is on HBO. You know I am right. Just watch it." There we were in Phuket, the kids asleep and here comes the opening scene...

I was sold! Within 30 seconds, I knew that I would become obsessed. We watched all ten episodes in less than a week, and I bought the first book as soon as we returned to Jakarta. I had my in-laws bring the other four books and I have been reading nothing since September.

 

Nearly 5000 pages later, it is done. I closed A Dance with Dragons last night and my time in the Seven Kingdoms, at least till about 2016, is over. I am authentically crushed by this empty feeling. I have been thinking about it all day. I am at a loss about what to write for this post, but feel I should say something, mark the occasion in some way.  I wanted to write this epic blog post about my thoughts on the series, the characters, the profound power of fantasy and literature, but really all I want to do is open up a book and get lost in a world so complex and exquisite that nothing else in life seems to matter.

Maybe I will need a few days/weeks to decompress and write the post I was meant to write. In the meantime I have some advice for you: 

If you have not watched the HBO series...do so immediately. If you have watch the series, but have not read the books by Martin,  clear your calender for the next few months and get started. You will not be disappointed. Yes it is true, that I was a Dungeons and Dragons geek in middle school and naturally gravitate toward the genre, but this series is much more than that.

If you have any links or ways to get my Game of Thrones fix before 2016 please share. Maybe I will watch the series again...or maybe...start back from book one? It is that good.