I know I’m not posting much these days. It’s just that, there’s that thing. It’s sneaky. It comes in stealthily and creeps into daily momentum, coating all things great with a fuzzy interference blanket. It’s a kind of existential static, the white noise of life that sometimes obstructs clear line of sight to the essential stuff that Saint Exupéry confirmed invisible to the eyes any way.
Like a fog bank over complicated shores, existential static renders simple navigation tricky and makes my ship vulnerable to shoals. It blurs perspective and adds a grainy texture to the sequence of events that make life. That static is born from routine and the repetitive small tugs of trouble at my sleeves. I become annoyed and concentrate on the sleeve rather than on wearing the coat with grace and confidence. When perspective is lost, it is replaced by a series of uninterrupted obstacles challenging me like a horse on a difficult course.
The approach of Christmas, bureaucracy bearing down on sore shoulders, a sense of purposelessness, receiving a lot and not being able to give much back, miscellaneous computer issues, a cold and another and some laziness, urban distraction, much to see and do, still, well these all contribute to the static.
I do promise the blogging rhythm will eventually pick up, but first it will slow down even further – you see, growing nearer every day on a shimmering horizon is our next episode of travels. Quebec and South Africa are booked and hooked, and there’s yet another road trip brewing.
Then at our return to the US, critically important and exceptionally busy days await. So it will be a while. But posting will resume. In the meantime, I will do my very best to keep the blog from going into random mode. Have mercy.
Note: QRN sur Bretzelburg was an album of the Spirou et Fantasio comics
series by Franquin and Greg. It featured the fantastic Marsupilami and
was set in a fantasy European dictatorship-kingdom. The term QRN is
taken from the old radio-communications "Q" code and means there is
static in the transmission.