Franzi's Existential Musings...

I've been in Portland, OR. for the last four years and that time is about to come to an end. Portland's fragrant cherry blossoms and lush greenness urge me to stay while the rain says we come and go. There are three avocadoes in the window of my girlfriend Kate's room, and the yellow overchair in the corner is piled with what amounts to my most valuable possessions for now. My immunization lists and itinerary and plane ticket for Bangkok. My paperwork for the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars where I'll be attending next year for an MFA in fiction. And to think two months ago I was staying up late in the nights with a dark beer, dark chocolate and dark thoughts about where I'd be when the rains ended.

Since I started the MFA application process more than six months ago, it's been an introspective and uncertain time. Soon it will be an extrospective and uncertain time. I purchased my ticket for 9 weeks solo travel in SE Asia, and it's been four years since I've been abroad. I've been working to allay the usual fears: tropical illness, misplaced luggage, feverish fugues in which I find myself in a longboat to Myanmar with no recollection of my name. At least I'm not taking Lariam, which kept me up nights in India as stone devas danced the tandali on my sleep-paralyzed form...

So I'm starting this blog. Ostensibly it'll be a way for friends and family to keep up with me as I travel. I've never been a big fan of those group emails anyway. We'll see how this bloggy thing works. Do I really want to spend hours in Luang Prabang holed up in an internet cafe? (The better question would be, is the internet cafe air-conditioned and a purveyor of ice-cold Beerlao?)

I'll be flying out of Portland May 1st, two weeks from now.

Note: below is my new profile picture, from March 2007, while a first year student in the MFA program at Johns Hopkins.