A Beamish Welcome

I am waiting for my flight in a snowy Toronto.  Though there are dozens of hot airplanes roaming around the runways and plane docks, the snow is stubbornly sticking to every surface, refusing to melt even with these giants' engines radiating heat all across the cement lot. There is something decidedly determined about the winter here--as though nightfall at four p.m. has been strictly mandated, and the wily wind that is sending the snow whirling around the airport relishes in its ability to cast a white moss of snow across the landscape within minutes, a facade for gentleness.  In a few minutes, I will be taking flight for Denmark, the first stop in my post-university recess to Europe.
I have named this blog "The Jubjub Bird Weekly" because I see this journey to be a quest of sorts.  For as long as I have had memory, I have had the identity of being a "student", an identification that I wish to gracefully shed in order to discover what I can be as a human being outside of academia.  My friends and family may be laughing at this point, recalling how I attempted (and somehow failed) to dye my hair purple the day after I graduated, went on something of a shoe-buying binge, and gave away 90% of all my belongings in a single afternoon. But despite of all that, I feel as though I am on the right track to discovering Gillian the homo-sapien, Gillian the warrior, Gillian the aspiring-anthropologist-without-affiliation-with-an-establishment/writer. And part of this quest requires me to travel alone, which is what I am setting off to do for the next four months.

So, now, I will take that vorpal sword in hand--that heavy blade known as "life"--and do with it what I will.