Adventure Is Just Bad Planning

Lyrics

**Central Image:** The sextant — the instrument of celestial navigation; also the eyes and mind learning to read the blank white world

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[Verse 1]
You stood where the map ran out,
sextant held to the sun's thin mouth,
your cortex remapping the white—
no landmarks, no mercy, no sound but wind.
The horizon erased itself every dawn,
and your eyes learned a new language.

[Chorus]
You read the stars like synapses firing,
each observation a synapse strengthened,
each bearing plotted deep in the hippocampus—
the body remembers the route home
when the world is nothing but ice and hunger.

[Verse 2]
Theta waves humming in the dark of your skull
as you navigated by what you could *not* see,
predictive coding running ahead of your sled,
your mirror neurons matching the dogs' lean stride.
Myelinated nerves firing faster, faster—
the axons branching into new paths
through territories your brain had never mapped before.
You taught your own neurons to dream in degrees.

[Chorus]
You read the stars like synapses firing,
each observation a synapse strengthened,
each bearing plotted deep in the hippocampus—
the body remembers the route home
when the world is nothing but ice and hunger.

[Bridge]
Long-term potentiation blooming in your cells—
your hands trembling, not with fear,
but with the *weight* of having arrived.
Proprioception screaming: *here, here, here.*
The sextant dropping to your chest,
and your whole being a compass that finally held still.

[Chorus]
You read the stars like synapses firing,
each observation a synapse strengthened,
each bearing plotted deep in the hippocampus—
the body remembers the route home
when the world is nothing but ice and hunger.

[Outro]
The sextant gleaming in your bare palm—
no more questions, only the light,
only the precise angle of arrival,
only the fact of *you, standing.*