Dear Reader

We all travel through time.  We all travel through space.  We are all lost Travelers yearning to be discovered.  The problem lies in the fact that we are all too close to our travels to see them.  Just like we operate with or without the knowledge of gravity, we move through the universe in tandem with all our thoughts, experiences and senses.  

Our travel through life just seems like life itself.  But they are not the same thing.  Not at all.  I spent 29 years not knowing this and then my life and space and time went in separate directions in a single afternoon.  I wish I remembered the exact date of this incident but I suppose that's the point I'm trying to make.  One day, either at the very end of the 20th century or perhaps the beginning of the 21st, I was ripped out of space and time, placed in the void and finally returned to a world that looked and sounded like that from which I came.  But it was not the same.  Not the same at all.  

I will get to the event in good time but I want to explain to you now the effects of such a separation.  First, the simplicity and elegance by which people flow in their own space-time gained a shadow.  Or a ripple, like an oar through calm water.  The people around me seemed not in their own world but hyper-imposed ever so slightly over the world around them, interacting not directly.  The physical effort that it takes to hold yourself and time and space all together seemed to have a scent, or flavor, but I don't believe anyone but me noticed it.  All this energy exerted to maintain an illusion of naturalness and nobody even realizes their exertion.  

The second effect was an altering of the present and future.  It is possible that the past was also altered but, by its own nature, the past doesn't leave any scar tissue when it changes so one can never really be sure.  Suffice to say that I was one place at one time, headed in a steady arc to another place and another time with predictability when I was ripped away.  When returned I was bound for so many different possibilities.  So many, but never again the same.   

I was telling the story of the event yesterday to a group of friends and customers at the bar when I realized the significance of the change.  It had never occurred to me that, without the event, I would not be here.  I would not be married to my best friend.  I would not be surrounded by my son, daughter, cat and dog.  I mean, maybe I would be surrounded by a family but I doubt greatly it would be this family.  I would not be bending your ear with so unlikely a tale as this for sure.  

What follows is a series of stories, some true, some very much made up and others somewhere in between.  The purpose of these stories will hopefully be determined by the reader.  As for myself, I do not know what, exactly, will fill the pages to come but, for the parts which are true, the purpose herein in is to celebrate this complicated, frustrating, elegant majestic riddle that is, as they say, the purpose if life.

That, and to eventually relay the story in as vivid detail as possible.  The true story.  The events that lead up to, and the days, months and years that followed the moment I was ripped from time and space and nothing was ever the same.

Never the same at all.