The Bard wrote:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”

Mondays are still tedious.  Running around town, tying up loose secret agent ends at Russian tea houses.  Also, at the university, I relinquished keys to an office with a view of the Nak River Valley; I also ceded books with notes, recycled two and a half years of unclaimed student papers and exams, signed final papers for legal and monetary reasons.  It was much more of a grind, too, since it was too damned cold out yesterday to ride anywhere.  I took the Silla shuttle up the hill from the subway, giving me flashbacks to my first month or so at the university.  You’d think I’d sleep like a baby, but I had a workmare last night, one that doesn’t stop completely and seems to go on half the night because you just cannot wake up from the nagging dream that you’ve forgotten something or are being asked to do something that you really don’t want to do.

“To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!”

I still have to return a couple research books to the library today and may have to return other research books used for my new novel before the end of the month, but all official business is complete.   Nonetheless, I still had that damned workmare.  Will I shuck off this coat of professional responsibility in full, or will it stay strapped like a straightjacket?  A dusting of snow last night is still on the ground.  As I walked back from the gym, I still couldn’t comprehend that a month from now I will be in the midst of summer sitting on beach in Thailand, bleaching my mane and cheek-locks with sunshine.  Also, over breakfast, Nic read a little to me about a section of the Annapurna where you reach the highest pass, over 5400m.  You must take two or three nights to acclimatize to the elevation and then head out early on the day of six to eight hours of walking in which you ascend over 1000m and then descend another 1000m.  In a departure from our routine, we dusted off our trekking packs.  Things suddenly became a little more real.

“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard from no more:…”

I’ll slip back on to campus today to take care of library business.  My last few weeks at the university have been quiet.  Came down with a mysterious case of “I don’t give a fuck” Syndrome (IDNGAFS) for the last faculty meeting and didn’t attend.  Was still feeling a few symptoms of IDNGAFS for the Christmas party and didn’t attend that either.   I’ve strutted and fretted enough for paltry monetary gain and a pat on the back; I suppose this is a side-effect of many jobs.  At least in my experience.  I need to find something that pays and that I am passionate about.  The idealist never dies.

“it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

I’ve still got student loan debt.  I’ll return to the US in roughly the same economic shape I was in when I took off all those years ago to come here.  Having said that, I don’t think this has been a tale told by an idiot.  He’s just an idealist that still believes the lack of home roots and monetary sustenance, ironically, has allowed him to thrive, grow in ways that the direct path to “domestic bliss” could not have provided.  The struggles of my 20s and the expatriatism of my 30s signifies everything to a solid future for family, home, roots.