The note below was written by a fellow who no longer exists, a character who represented the building blocks for the present edition, but who has been pulled apart and rebuilt many times over the intervening five years. Back then, that bright-eyed bushy-tailed me was still fresh-faced upon this newly adopted landscape only five weeks after he had arrived in Nome, and he jotted down this depiction of the window through which he then viewed the world around him.
What of those five years that have arisen and passed away in swift succession? Only some of the most challenging and rewarding work I've undertaken to date, in both the professional and the personal senses. There was the requisite toiling and learning, loving and laughing, losing and crying. The full complement of human emotion has been my gift, over and over and over, like the ebbing and flowing tide, washing over me in sync with the moon's seasons. I but a simple chiton (pronounced: kitten - meow!) glommed into this intertidal zone, learning to accept what comes and goes, again, ever again. Unlike that chiton, I soon take leave of this small space, I grow wings to land in some far off place, I grow wheels to roam, to race.
This will likely be the final post at this locale - both physically and digitally - as I am leaving Nome, this work, and this blog. Leaving all behind, treasuring each present, reaching furthur now. Thus, future blog posts may be found here: Further Now. In the meantime, while that space is completed and until a post appears within its glowing confines, please make do with the recountings left below, by that boy of five years past.