Open Sesame

I am not myself much lately.  Or, perhaps, I am too much.  In everything, I fall behind.  There is too much to do and too little energy to do it.  I have not been sleeping well again.  It must be that "things" are on my mind.  The worrying kind.  I feel held in place by anchors and hooks.  I want to do a Houdini.

There was a fellow.  I just read he flew the first airplane in Australia.  Born in Budapest, he was an immigrant Jew.  His father was a rabbi.  He changed his name and travelled the world.  He wasn't one for staying home.  That was his greatest escape.  Imagine what it would have been like traveling in a heterogeneous world where every border brought you something new.  To travel then was to explore.  You were an inadvertent adventurer.  The travels of Sir Richard Burton were less than a generation old.

Houdini was the most famous man in the world until Charlie Chaplin usurped his position.  Many similarities there.

But I am going nowhere now.  For now I will hunker down and suffer through the summer storms and the deadly tropical heat and humidity.  I will spend my nights sitting on Persian carpets and rubbing oil lamps w,hispering secret phrases.  Abracadabra, Alakazam.