...in a far-off land

"May I never grow too old to treasure 'once upon a time...'"

— Author unknown

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All that you have been

"All that you are becoming requires all that you have been."

— Jan Whitener, author and medium.

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Gradually

"Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed."

— P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), author.

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Hard work

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Founding Father.

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Cast the bones

"People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it."

— Harlan Ellison (b. 1934), author.

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Displaced

Back for about three days now and jet lag comas are knocking me out. Yesterday I was drooping by 3:00 p.m. (midnight in Slovakia) and by 6 p.m. I was dead to the world. Didn't wake again until early this morning. Today for whatever reason I feel like I can probably make my usual bedtime, which you're supposed to do when you're back in your normal time zone. But then again, jet lag hits you kind of all at once.

I planned two days of rest before walking the Camino but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't get out there a week early or something. I don't know if I could hack being so close to the Camino and not walking it, though.

This European trip, on the other end, I was drooping for almost ten days until my internal clock equalized. It's an odd sensation. I'm home but I feel like I should be someplace else.

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Remind me again...?

"Writing for adults, you have to keep reminding them of what is going on. The poor things have given up using their brains when they read. Children you only need to tell things to once."

— Susan Wittig Albert (b. 1940), author.

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What he does

"What a writer wants to do is not what he does."

— Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), author.

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Pillows

"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow."

— Lin Yutang (1895-1976), writer and inventor.

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Wild blue yonder

I've always rather liked the phrase "wild blue yonder." Anyway, today is a travel day. It's early Saturday morning in Bratislava. I am waiting to be whisked to the airport in Vienna, Austria. Total travel time, door to door, should be about 23 hours.

“A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”

— George Edward Moore (1873-1958), philosopher.

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