NaNoWriMo; it is November, after all, a time to move on, produce, generate. In one month I will make the journey home, expunge, cleanse, purge, and fly across half the world to a familiar place. Words slip across the screen in Helvetica, the pristine pixel-perfect pitching of an aging Tiger beckoning once more, now almost free of bullet points and slide and tables and all manners of nefarious formatting that every uses but knows nothing about. Photographs abound, the promise of a new perspective, words pouring out of my ears, my mouth, in the torrent a new beginning, a welcome conclusion, with nothing in my way, not orphaned LibraryThings, not bursting Amazon wishlists, not mountains of books waiting and fleeing from my grasp. In my mind – lives, of the English, repressed love, circles of believers sitting in a room, the sanctity of a blank page, the dull clink of machine spun wine glasses, the clouds of dust from a million things hurled into boxes, luggage, objects of transportation, the thrum of engines moving the world in unison, hearts beating in fearsome synchrony, in the dead of the night, students relishing their freedom, unaware of its transience, lives about to be smashed, ephermally fulfilled and punctuated with the tangy chill of an emptying spoon, faraway, contemptuous looks and careless shrugs of shoulders, words bitten back but cascading down in the darkness, all this coming and going and thick black lines found only in illustrations and superhero comics; the Watchmen, the surge of emotions, an upwelling of fear, sweet sickly, and love, blindingly perfect and all-consuming. So cheers; NaNoWriMo, an excuse, November, a month of liberation, words, my lifeblood, lives, canvas, stuff, ether, silly putty, for the taking and the giving.