La memoria

Santiago, Chile

It is a bright, beautiful, sunny day.  The smog took the afternoon off and parque forestal is teeming with families and young couples enjoying one another's company. All in all, it looks like a great moment to be a santaguinero.

It was a little more than two weeks ago I first arrived. This morning, I passed the small cafe where I initially stopped after getting off my flight and initial metro ride to order a cappuccino and check the guide book to make sure I was headed in the right direction (I was).  Like most businesses on Sunday, that little cafe was closed today. I didn't need a map this morning or afternoon and not only because I am pleasantly killing a nine-hour layover; I also just know my way around.

It is pretty incredible how far one can travel in two weeks' time. Sure, I've notched some kilometers, but that's not what I mean. It is remarkable how the foreign becomes familiar in such a small period of time. There's no amount of reading or research that can simulate this familiarity as the experience of just jumping right in.

I've been thinking about a lot of things of late. One constant of this trip to a place I've never been is its familiarity and the memories it has stirred. Up north, meandering around San Pedro de Atacama, I felt like I was back in Peru from my trip ten years ago. The sights, sounds, smells, all of it conjured a wonderful trip, even if it was with someone with whom I no longer share everything. Or, really, much of anything. I hope and believe time has healed those wounds on both sides and hope she would receive as warmly the reminders this past week has given me.

And I also strongly feel the tug on the heartstrings first pulled by Buenos Aires. These countries are so parallel, literally parallel, it's not even worth diving that granular to find the details for comparison.  I could make some commentary, but it's been nine years so my observations may be more rooted in time than space anyway.

And I guess that's where this all leads anyway: time and space. In own appreciation, I believe I've used both well, these past two weeks and in my adult life as well. That is really all that matters: our own honest, heartfelt assessment of how we use our one opportunity at life.

Whatever problems I left at home will be there when I arrive tomorrow morning.  Same too for assets and/or the proverbial things going for me.  I will have time to take a taxi and a shower before hitting the office tomorrow morning for a full day. I have a full day of meetings on Wednesday and an important meeting to lead on Thursday morning. I've got tickets to a show Friday and some old friends in town next weekend. I will not have much time to process this trip and it'll likely be a quick merge back on to the highway of life.

But I showed myself a few things. I can make the transfer from train to bus in Chillán, even in the cold rain. I can find lodging and book excursions in San Pedro without much guidance. I can push back my plans because of fresh powder and I can do just fine in a Spanish speaking country without a dictionary or translator. I can give myself two weeks away from whatever identity I've built at home and indulge my fancy to wander because I've found that is what I like and do best.

I don't know what legacy this trip will leave; I'm still the same person. I guess that's the overarching takeaway: for however I've felt of late and whatever experiences I've been through the past several years, I'm still me. There are good and bad days ahead and more mundanity to traverse. But if I remember to keep my head and heart open and stay true to who I've been thus far, more adventures await. So I'll keep going. I would anyway, but maybe these next steps will have just a little more pep. 

Sleeping dogs & cemetery cats

Valparaíso, Chile

Dogs and cats, in addition to measuring precipitation, serve as semaphores for the worlds within our own. They hear the noises we cannot hear, perceive the threats we cannot see, demarcate the boundaries of which we are unaware. Even for those unafraid, there is a certain caution or wariness one must abide when present in their domain.  In Valparaíso, though there are many strays scattered throughout, I never felt anything other than welcome or safe passage by these friends. That in itself may be as apt an indicator of the intriguing city. 

Though founded before, Valparaíso entered its epoca de oro with the San Francisco gold rush of 1848. Europeans looking to cast out in search of treasure sailed around the cape and the port city was well-positioned as a decent halfway point. With enough offerings and opportunity of its own, a good many decided to stay. Until the completion of the Panama Canal, Valparaíso was a hub of great significance on the world stage. 

The vibe persists. Valparaíso feels like the gathering grounds of generations of diverse individuals who had a third gear to their slakeable ambitions. These are a people who set out with to conquer the moon and sun only to ultimately settle on a fine place where they coukd say, "this'll do just fine."  It's as if a caravel of pirate ships ran aground and instead of attending to repairs, each foreswore the life of the seas to indulge their secret passion to become art students. 

The natural harbor and flatness of el plan, the commercial stretch adjacent to the water, lent themselves to the development of a rich maritime trade. The forty-something hills rising just behind el plan do not seem hospitable to much of anything.   So all these generations of recien llegados had to do something if they were not sailors or stevedores or prostitutes, etc. (and this is where I'm offering conjecture with no historical knowledge whatsoever), so there had to be some sense of communal solidarity to arise, right? Steep, rising hills and congested living do not accommodate a Walden pond-type existence, so surely that is how this undetectable but omnipresent sense of community must have arisen. Again, I took a walking tour and not much more, but I'm pretty confident in this diagnosis despite a small sample size of observations. 

Community and history is great and all that, but what I really found endearing was the independence of the people, their confidence in themselves, and, for me, importantly, the lack of need to demonstrate said independence or confidence ad nauseum. There are plenty of tourists and plenty of souvenirs to be bought and sold, but very little in the way of Keep Valpo Weird. It seems some of our most charming cities have decided to continually cash in on their charm to the point their balances are depleting. Rapidly. The protectiveness of a place's charm leads to an inveterate defensiveness among its inhabitants to the point where a visitor can feel like there's no enchantment left to protect. Living in New Orleans (we can insert Austin, Boulder, Portland, and many other places here) I am only growing more tired of the banner people carry, as if the city's eccentricity needs to be continually reinforced for our own preservation. Are we weird? Then let's just be weird. We can be fierce and proud of our independence without always taking to Facebook or wearing the t-shirt. And that's what I feel Valparaíso does very well. 

In my brief impressions, I saw art students sketching landscapes, businessmen having Important Discussions over pisco sours, artisans peddling their beautiful and intricate wares, taxi drivers with their lanyards for the Santiago Wanderers, old men working at newspaper kiosks listening to milongas, young folks rolling and smoking joints in the darkened stairwells, and more than a few Willie Loman-types commuting home after a long day's work. There was diversity, there was character, there were sleeping dogs and cemetery cats and nothing about it had to be advertised or shouted through the bullhorn. It was, and that was more than appreciated. 

Fire on the Mountain

Valle las Trancas, Chile

It took long enough to pair my twin loves of travel and skiing, but this jaunt to the lower vertebrae of South America was well worth the wait. It is exactly what I would have expected had I been cruel enough to set expectations.

Heard your news report, you knew you're falling short
Pretty soon won't trust you for the weather
When that ship comes in, you won't know where it's been 
You got to try to see a little further

I made a one week reservation back in April, which may as well have been a dart at the calendar as far as conditions go. There's no guarantee of fresh snow and even, so I've learned, the mountain open and lifts running. As was my great fortune, after confinement to the slushy, lower pockets on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday's storm brought about a foot of fresh powder.  Wind speeds died down Thursday night, allowing the upper lifts to open and the patient and fortunate among us to access the great fields of snow just below the volcanoes at Nevados de Chillán.  My decision to extend my stay was very well rewarded.

My time coming any day, don't worry about me, no 
Gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so 
Seems so long I've felt this way and time's sure passing slow
Still I know I lead the way, they tell me where I go

So, yeah, sure, the snow fell.  That made a lot of us happy and my own contentment was probably the least tied to the climate among those I met.  At the hostel, in the lift lines, at the bar, the other voices belonged to some serious powderhounds.  It seemed like everyone was trying to find some new line yet untouched or get even further away from what was not a very considerable crowd. This could have been insufferable, and some sailed pretty close to those rocks, but nobody was a dick.  Instead, the general onda was one of some very simple people with one particularly high standard, but even if that was unsatisfied, life still marched on and was, in fact, pretty good.

Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye and bye
Talk about your plenty and talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills

And the accoutrements, did I mention them? The cute shops lining the faux-Bavarian village at the bottom of the mountain? The high speed chair lifts and gondolas outfitted with wifi access and television screens? Cause there was none of that.  There was a mountain outfitted with orange chairlifts that, though lacking in padding and having a few squeaky wheels, offered more assurance than a cheap import from a former war torn Soviet backwater. Skiers and riders were outfitted for performance, not as ostentatious reflections of purchasing power.

Got to settle one old score
And one small point of pride

As for me, well, I believe I fit right in there. I was a very tall man in a yellow jacket cutting some
tight turns on the groomers and traversing the thick stuff when the visibility got too low or couldn't
trust myself or the rental equipment. I was in my own space and time.

Gonna get there I don't know
Seems a common way to go, get out and row row row row row

And if I'm getting back to any overarching theme here, and I'm not sure I ever was but at this point
the omission doesn't particularly matter, it is that I discovered I really like to shred some
fresh pow pow while listening to the Grateful Dead Live at Barton Hall (5.8.1977). I'm a casual fan, not a purist, but there's just something soothing about the artistry, the improvisation, the rhythms, the synchronicity, and the graceful elision of these musical giants. It fits the terrain.

Come to daddy on the inside straight
I've got no chance of losin' this time

I did not exactly have the best of years recently, though extraordinary in several respects, and have really just been looking for ways to free my thoughts and pivot my perspective from rear view to windshield for the next. I've been so careful not to put too much pressure on this trip; no epiphanies, no need to return with some new frame of mind or perspective or grandiose self-improvement projects. I really just needed to work on my Spanish, smell some trees, seize the occasional laugh, and point my skis down a goddamn mountain so I can free myself to move a bit more forward a bit more quickly once I get back.  There are no elevators or quick fixes toward a restorative space of self,  but there are the simple realizations, their sudden seizure, and a handful of healthy moments to get you back on track.

Long distance runner what you standin there for?

It's a Large World

New Orleans, La.

I've written this before, but I guess some truths bear repeating: it is, in fact, a very large world.  Deep, abundant oceans, towering mountains, vistas defying horizons, cities that rise up like pimples from the arbitrary oils of history, and countless topographical idiosyncrasies stippled across this great planet we call Home.

We forget it.  I forget it.  I give myself credit for being able to bird eye my life and see some larger perspective or great divination moving my piece across the chessboard, but how much do I really see?  How much in my day-to-day am I actually aware?  I think about it. I feel I 'get it'.  But I don't.  I lose it.

I sit here in my square miles of proximity to where I report for my paycheck, where I buy my foodstuffs, where Someone Else circulates.  And in my case, I've had a pretty okay five years of establishing my square miles and deeply understanding the movements therein.

They haven't always been kind.  In fact, during the past year, I'd say it's been taxing.  I love my work, I have a solid circle of friends, but my viewpoint has condensed to the point where I've lost perspective of the worlds I've known before, the worlds I've explored, the worlds where I feel I've accomplished something, even if it's only absent movement.  I feel like I've lost sight of how big the world actually is and how insignificant my troubles truly are.

It's time to remind myself of the great expanses out there, both globally and within my own perspective.

It's time to travel.

It's been a long time.  I now hold a steady job, a fucking career, if you will.  This career could not be more rewarding or in tune with my values and yet I still find myself hostage to loss, defeat, melancholy.

It's time to travel.

This will only be two weeks.  Standard, rote, American vacation allowance.  But goddamn do I need it.  I once thought that anything less than a month was chicken scrap and now that I'm in the modern workforce I feel like it's nothing less than Knighthood.  I will travel.  I will ski.  I will hike. I will speak a foreign tongue and keep my phone in an inaccessible pocket and respond only to sunsets and open spirits.

It's time to travel.

It's never too late to remind yourself of the infinite of the cosmos and the fallibility of your own life.  It's never too late to remind yourself life is much bigger than where you are, where you stand, where you've been.  It's generally understood it's impossible to catch up with every setting sun or shooting star but that should never mean you shouldn't damn well try.  And so I go.

Griff

Before he could remember my name, Griff was wary of my height.  Not to attribute it to some source or complex or whatever, but I had a good foot-and-a-half on him and he’d tell me to sit down when I’d stand before his desk in that cramped office or we’d have some meeting in the Student Life Center (née cafeteria).  My height would come up in reference from time-to-time like when some student (in this instance, S.A.) would misbehave and he’d wonder how someone could ever act a fool or wile’ out in front of such an if-only-in-the-literal-sense “large” authority figure.  As in when he asked S.A., “how can you do this in front of such a -” he struggled with the word here - “huge man?!”

Because I wasn’t as big as you, Griff.  Never will be.  

It’s hard to believe he’s not still charging into the cafeteria in a suit three-sizes-too-large with his head rolling figure eights on his thin neck, eyes wide and popping, a large styrofoam cup of awful chain coffee in his hand and moving one hundred-plus Bronx teenagers down to the proverbial pin-drop decibel from a symphony of shouts.  Not by saying anything, mind you.  Just by being there.  Ever met someone with presence?  Preeeeeeeeee-zzzzzzzzence?  That was Griff. 

He would do the syncopated clapping thing to get their attention, walk over to a student speaking out of turn, put a hand on their shoulder, all the typical teacher tricks executed with an inimitable touch of grace.  I loved watching him dart a look back over his shoulder from the marker board as if some small conversation in the far corner could sink the Lusitania.  He’d shut down anyone who dare challenge his complete command and control of that cramped and stuffy cafeteria with even a furtive whisper.  The best part of it all was that in most if not all of these particular moments those students were imperceptibly disrupting a lesson where Griff was totally wingin’ it.

Griff had the presence to keep more than one hundred Bronx teenagers who departed traditional school attending CUNY Prep.  He could keep them coming, keep them in line, keep them going. He inspired those who passed the GED to go on to college.  He kept those who did not pass to come back for another cycle, try it again. These are young people, many from the Bronx’s toughest neighborhoods, who had no respect for authority.  And with good reason.  Many never had an authority figure worth respecting.  These teenagers had been told and shown through all their young, tough lives they weren’t good enough and far too many of them believed it.  Griff was the first and often only one to tell them not that they could- but that they damn better go on to college.  As a teacher at CUNY Prep for two years I drank the Kool-Aid.  I left CUNY Prep resembling more one of Griff’s countless disciples than his peer.

I remember K, having a terrible day (the good ones typically weren’t that good, either) and screaming at the top of her lungs in my classroom while Griff was leading an assembly across the hall.  He stopped speaking and made a beeline for my classroom where he gave her the biggest hug I’ve ever seen.  She went from scream to full-body sobbing as he held and swayed her.  He just knew that’s what she needed immediately.  Never mind I’d been trying to calm that situation for several minutes, he could do it on the fly.

It didn’t matter if you were a Blood, Crip, Latin King, a teen mother or gay in a culture with little sympathy for those on the outside.  You had a place at CUNY Prep.  I remember watching D.J., whose previous enrollment was at Rikers, playing chess against B.N., a chubby cheeked innocent who had hitherto been home-schooled.  That interaction only happened at CUNY Prep, which only happened because of Griff.  One moment Griff could shake hands with the wealthy white folk looking to pour some Foundation Money into a Good Cause, the next counsel a teen’s broken heart, the next talk some staff member off the ledge.  He could see into people, through them, find what they sought and provide it.  And it was always the good things he found.

We can be forgiven our sentimentality in the grieving process, perhaps also our tendency to cope selfishly.  At least I hope so.  We tell ourselves the world wasn’t ready for a star so bright or only the good die young or some other trope to soothe ourselves.  Me?  I’m just trying to appreciate how no one else who could meet their demise in a national-news-making train wreck and we’d all come away like, “well isn’t that just soooooooooooo Griff?”

Because it’s kind of appropriate for someone with such a flair for the dramatic.  I never figured him for an old man making a dying wish on a comfortable bed, close family huddled around. He deserved it, certainly, as did all around him, but that just wasn’t him. Had I thought about it, I’d have pictured him speaking up to the wrong misbehaving teenager on the 5 train on the wrong night.  Griff was the type to fight the fire; fuck calling 9-1-1.

If any man represented something far larger than himself, that was Griff.  Maybe he was always too accessible, always too present, always too giving, always too there.  And because he wanted anyone who touched his grace to go so much farther, be the best they could, climb higher, he had to remove his own incandescence and set it back further into the distance.  Every miracle accomplished by the myriad he touched was simply too easy, not enough.  Keep going, he’s saying.  Keep going, we must.

Aurora

Brooklyn, NY

Chris Rock once provided a pertinent sound bite, saying that there are two types of malls: malls that white people go to, and malls that white people used to go to.  A funny line in its own right, it was also shared by some friends in high school during our daily commute past the Aurora Mall.  Fast forward fifteen years and it would be no surprise to our former selves where a midnight multiplex massacre would take place.  I can't say I'm so surprised as my present self.

There are few things more American than firearms.  Giving weapons a close run for the money in the modern era is victimhood.  We see some tragedy, perceive some slight, real of imagined, and latch ourselves onto it like it's our turn on the mechanical bull in the crowded bar.  We know we'll get bucked off quickly, and we know we'll make it look more arduous than it really is, but look how many people pay attention to us while we're on it.

So I feared I was feeling such this morning as I read about my hometown.  That's five miles from where I grew up!  That's two miles from my church!  My favorite German restaurant is in that same complex!  Now, everyone, write on my Facebook wall and share some sympathy.

Indeed.  Of the global population, I probably rank somewhere in the top half-million when it comes to associations with the Aurora Mall (the press is calling it the Town Center, but trust me, you can't rebrand the Aurora Mall, no matter how much you spend on changing the facade.)  I left long ago.  I went away to school in the midwest, spent a year volunteering in Africa, wandered a bit more and somehow find myself receiving my mail in Brooklyn these days.  As my late grandmother remarked, I undid centuries' worth of my family's migrations with a single plane ticket.  Aurora was always great to come home to for the holidays, but I'm just one of those kids with their eyes perpetually on the horizon.

Truth be told, I'd be farther away from the tragedy had I never left.  My parents shelled out for a Catholic school down Parker Road, so I know what crowd I I'd be with if I stayed.  My peers knew their fathers, had cars on their sixteenth, filled out applications for this thing called "college."  They've got their own set of problems now, but none of us ever feared for our personal safety while wearing a Starter jacket during school hours.

I've come to appreciate growing up between the two worlds.  I can talk literature while playing drinking games with the car dealers and mortgage brokers; I know where to keep my eyes and how to comport myself in those......um......diverse parts of town.  Just as I would never trade my quality Jesuit education, so too am I grateful for those moments of terror when John Norman was about to beat the living shit out of little skinny me.

So imagine my sorrow, but, moreover, my resigned understanding when I learned about today's shooting.  Of course that happened where it happened.  Of course I don't have to make frantic phone calls home because people I know don't go to movies at midnight, and certainly not there.  So I could be sad without grieving, feel without hurting, shocked and sympathetic with the full lucidity to shake my head and say, "That's Aurora."  Put their names with Zach Obert, Ed Morales, all those people working at Chuck E Cheese that one night, those at Skate City another, plus at least a couple dozen each year.  My City Of Lights always has police tape and body bags at the ready.

So imagine my disappointment (yes, I am saying disappointment) when they flashed a picture of the "suspect."  Had he been some young, angry, discontent and misguided dropout from Gateway or Overland or Aurora Central, it would have fit the narrative.  There would have been the grief and anger, the pleas for solidarity, a couple wordless candlelight marches and a tearful ceremony of forgiveness between the families and then we could have had The Conversation.  I was all set to lead the excoriation against the NRA and those who fight so tirelessly to arm our streets.  I was salivating to be the one to point out (because, Look At Me, I'm from there!) the billions pouring out of Washington to the campuses of Lockheed and the Air Force Academy for industrialized murder.  Then (Then!) to juxtapose that against the budget shortfalls of Aurora Public Schools and the dearth of opportunity facing young men and women born on the wrong side of I-225.  Add a dash of resentment against the present tax structure that burdens the poor (which would most certainly have affected the formative years of The Shooter), a pinch of militant incredulity at the for-profit health care system (which would have completely ignored the psychological red flags of The Shooter), a dash of lament at the urban sprawl and the sights of blight it leaves behind, then top it all off with a dollop of seething, entitled rage against the Do-Nothing Congress that scares us with abortion and birth certificates so they can keep taking bulging envelopes of cash from the people that keep guns on our streets. 

It was going to be a good one.

Instead it just turns out to be some batshit-crazy grad school ne'er-do-well with faulty neurons and a case of homesickness.  The media will fixate on the video games he played, the music he listened to, who he followed on Twitter, but I knew 90% of what I needed to know when I saw his picture and heard he was from San Diego.  Peers will describe him as "weird", neighbors as "quiet, but polite", and we'll spend a couple news cycles interpreting his creepy green eyes with our thumbs up our asses until Anderson Cooper and Oprah tell us it's about time to move on.  All the while, Romney will try to telegraph fraternity to the gun nuts in his speech of condolence, Obama will go out of his way to mention that the problem is anything other than guns for fear of losing Ohio's electoral votes, and the media will keep its helicopters and klieg lights on standby until the Next One.

An unspeakable tragedy.  A terrible morning.  Let's hug our daughters a little bit closer tonight and remember not to change a fucking thing.

Alas, The Conversation will not happen tonight.  We're destined to keep spinning our wheels into post-industrial dystopian decline and these unfortunate patrons of the silver screen will get a moment of silence at the Rockies game, maybe a couple ribbon decals to grace the cars along Peoria Street.  The rest of us will just be grateful it wasn't us and keep blazing our bold trails of meekness.

And me?  Well, I'll go back to church and that German restaurant next time I'm home.  I'll lament the loss of innocence and try to squeeze some tears out of my eyes.  And then maybe afterward, I'll feel good about my sympathy, remind myself what a terrific victim I can be while driving to a bar downtown.

why i travel

singapore

less than a week ago, i'm walking through little india in penang. from one of the video store's speakers comes gayatri mantra, a hindi chant that i recognized from my time in india a few years ago. i'm not sure exactly where i heard it, maybe the rooftop in jodhpur or one of the ganga aarti ceremonies in rishikesh or just after sunset in delhi. i am certain that it was a poignant moment. that song. it was one of those moments when the world seems to pause for you alone. it's like everything is conspiring to tell you that there's something intangibly real all around you, and it's all good. i heard it then and wanted to know its name. the other day, i walked into the video store and found out.

what i remember most vividly about that moment in india is that it was one that i wanted to put into my pocket. i wanted to saran wrap that baby and stow it away for a rainy day. it was one of those break-glass-in-case-of-emergency-need-for-inspiration memories that get us out of the emotional tunnels of the daily grind.

and then i got home and that momentum seemed to vanish a la sonny bono on a ski slope. to be honest, i started writing a novel, so much of that was self-inflicted and worthwhile in the long run. but hearing that mantra the other day was a poignant reminder. i could call it something like serendipity or destiny, but i like to keep it a bit more plausible. after all, the odds are not exactly astronomical that indian music would be playing in a part of town called little india. i think it best contextualized as a reminder of how good i feel and how great i've been to myself; how i don't have to let it slip away.

this is not a three month trip. departure to arrival, sure. but it really goes back to about one year ago, when i decided that i would travel. it goes back to every time i bit my tongue at a shitty job that allowed me to save; every time i denied myself a short-term diversion so i could be gone for a longer spell. it reaches back to every time i heard the mosquito buzz in my life that told me that something had to be swatted, something had to be itched, something had to be done.

mostly, though, it goes forward. it will be there in the spring in my step and lightness of being. it will be there in my ability to separate what matters from what is just noise. i've made some decisions about my path going forward and at least one of them involves major change. i would not have the strength to do so without these past few months.

if you want the cold, hard facts to support my reasoning for travel, i'm afraid that's as you're gonna get outta me. that may prove unsatisfactory for many out there, those that believe in tangibles and weighing them out like justice. but, dear, there ain't evidence and this is no courtroom. it's a far more important venue that i refer to as life.

if you still need the evidence, still need the play-by-play, then consider this an adumbrated attempt at appeasement. i present my reasons for why i travel:

to be bicycling in angkor wat and have to debate whether to overtake the elephant in front of me

to have to ask what day it is

to learn that it's also called the american war

to be stumbling and sweating after climbing liang biang and receive an introduction to lat barbecue and muoi ot chanh

for the only item on the daily agenda to be sunset

to see conical hats in the rice paddies

because i hear what you have to say about careers, but i remain thoroughly unconvinced

to be here, now

to be now, here

how can i be entirely sure it exists if i don't see it for myself?

to make new friends, on facebook and otherwise

for fan mail

to grab a little khe sanh soil to sprinkle in d.c.

to read matterhorn in vietnam

to feel proud to be out of my 20s

to stare at palm trees for a half-hour and think about life; to continue staring at them for another ten minutes thinking about palm trees

to spot the irrawaddy dolphin

to make solid friendships stronger

to learn the translation for 'no problem' in four languages

because i know why the caged bird sings

to watch an australian open final between a serb and a spaniard while smoking filipino hash with a german in vietnam

to go from exploring my options to optioning to explore

so that when someone asks if i'm canadian, i can reply, "hell no"

to make peace

for the slow boat

to leave it cleaner than i found it

to respect the ladyboy

for thai smiles

because for this bus ride/trek/sunset/walk/coffee/meal/beer/railway ticket queue/swim/dive/song/spectacle, we can be friends

to give myself a little credit for once

because my generation will not be able to retire

for cheap massages

to take life seriously

for strawberry shakes

for ringside seats to muay thai fights

to swim with the barracudas

to pursue that thing called happiness

for street food

to take 1400 pictures and then put the camera away for a little bit

for those 1400 pictures

for endearingly terrible lao karaoke

to follow through on that promise with the eight ball and the corner pocket

to put a face to the name

for reggae bars

to empty my life's spam folder

to arrive in tokyo and kuala lumpur at night

to be the guy riding my motobike through the hoi an pedestrian market

to say chul muouy with the fellas

to be the generation that forgives

but, again, if you have to ask, you'll never understand.


if you followed along on my journey: thank you. i appreciated the company. i'm already looking forward to having more to share in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

and to the great people of these great lands: i simply don't have the words. in their stead, i'll simply say arigato gozaimasu, khawp khun khrap, aw kohn, cam on, khawp jai lai lai, terima kasih, and thank you with perfect pronunciation and my head bowed, palms fused in front of my chest until i'm blue in the face and these tears dry up. i will very soon be gone, and you will never be forgotten.