Chaos, contradictions, and confrontations are a rite of passage.
Charles Dickens said that we begin to forgive a place as soon as it is left behind. There is some truth to it.
True places never are in any maps, Herman Melville said.
When you’re moving, you are what you are right there and then.
No yesterdays on the road.
You embark, leave your utilitarian confines, set sail and make port.
Disconcerting yet compelling – slicing away the cocoon of certainties in which we wrap ourselves.
Unpause your life.
Learn to look differently at the world.
Listen closely to what Shakespeare called the “inaudible and noiseless foot of time.”
Refuse to be trapped in amber. Disappear into the quagmire. Expose the blank slate of yourself to the world and allow the world to leave its mark. You leave and never come all the way back. The antidote to small-mindedness and generalizations.
Becoming the protagonist in a story of our own making.
Alien environments, removed from prefabricated web of life, where you don’t know the customs and can’t communicate with the people tests your ability to navigate through the basic tasks of daily life.
Your humble narrator last week climbing the stairs at the Opera House to see Morrissey. (Photo: KAVV)
It is rare to walk away from a trip with nothing to report apart from what was to be expected. It gives meaning and significance to us. Travel incites reflection and creates perspective.
A narrative waiting to have its story told from your point of view – whatever that might entail.
There is no summit.
Negotiating the vast stretches of road in the Australian Outback. Definition of the middle of nowhere. Unmade. Washed away.
The way is the goal. Always has been. Chipping away, one step at a time. Never explain. Never complain.
Sensations of self-consciousness and fraudulence co-existing with blind panic of having to find expression in this world.
Rome was neither built nor burned in a day, even though Nero tried his best.
Let doubts and challenges be your inspiration.
Vague words of wisdom from fortune cookies? Quite possibly.
Trekking in the Everest region of Tibet engulfed by its mighty peaks at every turn is a great reminder of one’s insignificance.
Still, there is no summit. After climbing a great hill, more hills are to be climbed. Enjoy the vista.
Even if there is sometimes the temptation to browse the local real estate agent’s windows - dare not to linger for the long road is not yet ended.
Die en route.
-T
Tokyo, MMXV, era vulgaris.
