Our adventure to Japan has so many layers, for both of us.

For Chuck, it's this mysterious history he has inherited. I am really a kind of blind participant in that, excluded from the internal conversation, just a student. Yes, even me. Our relationship is like that, we have some weird walls that would piss other people off, that we just accept.

For me, it's truly unknown ground.

I don't buy that Japan is the be-all/end-all of budo training.

I do understand that it is the source. I also understand that modern Japanese culture is not so interested in all this archaic stuff... and we bonkers gaijin are.

I understand that it could be one of those truly world-shifting trips.. but I really don't know how that's going to happen.

On a deeply personal note, I will get to see my old friend David there. I saw him back in March, in Austin.. I engineered my trip to coincide with his, and we just picked up where I left off.

Listening to Susan Tedeschi's "Tired of my Tears" is pretty applicable here.

There are rooms and rooms of Old History in Austin, Texas.

Some of them belong to me.

I choose to remember where they are, and mostly live without them.

They do better without me, and I do better, without them.

I go back to Austin, and fall into the routes and ruts I lived in, all too easily.

It's hard to admit, and communicate, that I have let go of my roots.

It's also not really true. My map and compass of the world, will always show Austin, Texas, as home.

However, I can neither afford nor survive it.

Even where I am, is simply a holding place.

I am a person in transit, until I find my place.