Road Show

"My witness is the empty sky."

-- Jack Kerouac

There's therapy in movement -- serenity in freefalling headlong into the unknown, particularly when what's known isn't so great. This is why, for a lot of people, the road is an anodyne. There's something indescribable about setting out with no particular destination in mind -- or with an eventual destination but no clear plan for how to get there -- and simply traveling. Going literally where the road takes you.

As it turns out, that's what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of weeks.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm hitting the road. I'll leave South Florida at sunrise and head north. My only clear goal is that by next weekend I want to be in New York City for the first birthday party that Jayne and I have put together for Inara. (Sadly, I'll miss my daughter's actual birthday, which is this coming Wednesday.) I've spent a lot of time lately turning over in my head where I was at this time last year and where I am now -- how drastically things have changed and how difficult that change has been. So for lack of a better cliché, I'm gonna clear my head a little by getting the hell out of town.

I've loaded up a roomy Dodge 1500 pick-up that I've been driving while in Florida -- after jokingly christening it "Nokota," named for Sitting Bull's famed breed of war-horses -- and I'm ready to road trip. I figure I'll start by heading up I-75, driving through Atlanta and so on, then, after I leave New York -- likely at the end of next weekend -- I'll come back down the East Coast, stopping in DC and who knows where else.

Somewhere north of me and interested in getting a drink or, you know, letting me sleep on your couch or something? Feel free to contact me through the comments, my e-mail or Facebook. I'm taking my laptop and mobile broadband hookup with me, as well as my digital camera, so I'll be updating regularly from the highway -- turning Deus Ex Malcontent, at least partially, into a bit of a road blog for awhile.

If nothing else, it should be interesting. I don't have any real plan or itinerary -- and that's sort of the idea.

To put a twist on another tired cliché: It's both the destination -- my little girl -- and the journey.

See you on the road.