At the airport again...and I thought my trip just began yesterday

For the next eighteen hours this is my life. For the next eighteen hours this is my life. I train my eye to loose focus as it stares out of the three meter airport window out onto the arriving flights. My shoulders slumped; my head cocked, or rather fallen to the side I realise nothing is in focus. I am most probably only a few walls away from you but I might as well be miles away. And when the chimes of the airport wake me from my emptiness i stand up and follow the zombie herd to the passage way. No, of course not, they are not all zombies, some are quit happy: maybe they are just launching their own voyage, or going off to vacation, or reuniting with loved ones, but to me, I only see empty.For the next eighteen hours those airport chimes will be watch and I will train my ears to speak the language.
Life is a river, yes, and chapters are opened and closed as the river bends, and all of this has been pleeded to me, but to process this I have naively failed. Cant a river finally find its fill and be satisfied enough to stand still?

Why is happiness something we find in the ripples of the river and not the sand which is the foundation and what carries the river throughout its journey?

Enriched, I have absorbed so much, changed in some ways and reinforced my character in others. What makes me different from someone who has only read about Europe in books and websites: about every monument and every square and can recite to me the importance of each? Experience, thats what. The people that I have been have been unforgetable, the smiles and the giggles I will hear for all my life; the nuisances and the nuances have taught me to be patient and open; the joy, the hardships, the drinks, the debates, the adventures, braving the unknown, standing up for things that are right and things you believe in, and helping someone see something in a different light as they do the same for me. Not to mention I got to steel a pen from the Flying Pigs, and you couldnt do that by reading a book now can you !! And now thats all behind me..and now poof! and im home. Poof and im home!

An Aside...

Just a bit of a warning, please dont expect my last entry to be a happy one haha, so prepare to be deep, depressed, or get out of my kitchen hahah.

Rio Duoro, Porto (Portugal)- Last stop

To watch a city get dark while sipping on sweet wine, to watch the swarms of seagulls grow and drape the simmering sky and the sky breaking cathederal tower in the distance. The pastel rooftops, bleached my the ages of the sun, break the silence of the sky as the river running beneath echoes the violin and accordian blowing the symphany of old dirt stained fingers. I dont know this city but I feel at home amoungst the twinkle of the water and the twighlight of the sky.
The glimmering lights of the night remind the day that it is time to set, as me and my friends watch the shift change, spectators of a tradition as old and as inevitable to the universe as breathing is to us. Inhale..exhale...day...night...And just as the day can only last for so long, so can this moment. Thats what makes this voyage so incredible and so painful. As amazing as it was to be here, you must maintain this philosophy in your mind. Hard not to get attached. Heavier and heavier is the sand in my sand watch, pooring faster and faster as the sun sets inch by inch. With every next beat of my heart and every desperate breath that I take, I know that this does not last.
This city will remember my face, as the faces of all the locals, the travelers, the seagulls, the builders, the wreckers, the layers, the finders, and that is all that will be left of me here... a footprint.