Update: I am now going to Portland. My sister wanted to go on a trip to Colorado originally because her and Andre would like to move out to Colorado Springs eventually. However, she eventually deemed it too stressful driving with her kids. So I've decided I'm driving up to Portland to see my old college crew. So that'll be cool because I haven't seen those people for a couple years. But pray for me as I drive up there because even though I'm an immpecible driver (uhem! no comments from my critics) that has driven this route a million times it's still a long drive.

I'm posting a poem I wrote as I left Tokyo airport. I looked back at the sunset, at that disappearing piece of Asia and I knew a time in my life was over. The sunset and the clouds were so amazing as I watched Asia get smaller and smaller. I wanted to hold on but I knew as the sun set so this time in Asia set for the last time.

Even as I typed up this poem today I could feel the pressure of the love and the loss of that time bearing down on my chest. I don't often interpret my poems but I will say that this one in its own abstract way is a good-bye poem, a loving hug to a dear friend that I won't see again-at least not in the same form.

Good-bye Korea
swimming in my metal swim suit
above an ocean of clouds
the sun sets behind me and I fly on

if I jumped out I know I would float
on that soft, cottony terrain

my own surreal planet of gliding gray-white cotton
I'd adventure out to that fading orange horizon
on the borders of my white planet

I'd stay there where gray and orange meet at a perfect perpendicular angel
and I'd sit on the edge of that cloud with my feet dangling over the edge

I'd stay there eating the orange lolly-pops of the sunset
transfixed by my memories stuck in the Asian sunset