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Direction

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

-Douglas Adams

So strange. People are so strange. For some of you, I have been working at the airport for awhile. It is driving me mad I think. People are so strange. I'm really indifference at times when dealing with people who can't really understand why things happen. I suppose though, that all of us have at one point or another wondered why something happens to them -- but then for some reason I tend to find a meaning or a purpose in getting delayed on my trip, meeting a certain person on a bus or waiting in line, and finding that magazine article that seems to give you direction for the next week in your life. At least that has been my experience at the airport.

I never really thought I would work for an airline, and I hope to not be for much longer. My initial thoughts were that it would allow me to enjoy one of the things I like most in this world, a bit easier, which is traveling. Instead, it has taken one of the things that defines me as a person and has belittled it, morphed it and made it somehow less romantic that I tended to make it before. Traveling to me is what I am here for. To be anywhere but where I am at. My friend B always has this quote "Be where your at" but for me, that is one of the most difficult things to accept. I keep moving around -- changing the pace of my life and the surroundings I am in. To me, it is the only real way to live -- understand and learn about not only myself, but this place and that.

There are certain places where I have felt really at home though. Sydney was one of them, and Adelaide another. I also feel really comfortable in a few U.S. cities like Portland and San Diego, but for some reason they just never really feel new, real or unique. Places are a mystery and living in one too long just does me in -- especially one that is tiring in its attitude towards the world (a perfect example of this is my current city, Phoenix, a deathtrap for those of upward mobility and world mobility). I long for some time in Paris, Singapore, Cape Town and maybe even London. I drool over living on a boat, sailing constantly around the world and wondering the shores, all the while keeping a notebook of my favourite spots, haunts and inspirational places. I make fanciful plans to travel to Iceland, Norway and Dubai (only one has came through so far) and long for the days when I can lounge my way around the equator.

A change in direction is in the works, drifting through my head and my surroundings. Lately, horiscopes have mentioned things like "a change of pace is coming" or "look out for a new career move" and even "your life is going to take a new direction". I keep waiting on these to come round, and yet, I ponder what those changes will bring in my life in way of new friends, places and ideas. I feel this year will be one of total discovery and challenge, as well as deep humility and change.

this is it.

aujourd'hui j'ai éprouvé quelque chose qui dans l'espoir de quelques jours i de comprendre.

j'espère que je pourrai vous rendre visite dans un proche avenir et nous pouvons penser de nouveau au jour que nous avons dépensé la marche au sujet de la ville, écouter chaque autres français et anglais terribles et penser à la façon dont glorieux il devrait fixer et observer la lune et tenons le premier rôle le mouvement après pendant que l'air de nuit refroidissait nos corps chauds.

meine andere Hälfte.

I used to think that time was meant to be spent as one sees fit, my time, my energy. It takes a lot of thinking – of self knowing to understand what it is that motivates a person to excuse yourself and understand that the time that is allotted to each of us is not only ours to spend how we wish, but also for us to share. Maybe it is nice to see films, read books and listen to the way things might or should be, but only on a surface level are things ever as clear as they actually are. I like to think about my personal ideas and my plans during the weekends, when I have a chance to catch up; to think clearly and not have to worry about being at work. I understand that the ways in which I grew up have come around to affect the ways in which I live. The Midwest has some strange way of turning what you used to think was terribly boring and mundane into what is now, maybe, seen as being exactly what it is that you will look for in 10 or 15 years. I see myself having a problem with this. On the one side, I will long ever so hard for routine, seasons, and the passing of time using my knowledge to understand where I’m at in the world and what brought me here. And then the other side is where I want to be gone from any place I am at, for want of a better place, or possibly, just new scenery. Routine is boring and life should move at a pace of leisure, expanding yourself in various locations, pulling from all corners of the globe, and finally meeting somewhere in the middle. I think I must have been separated at birth from another person sitting out there, thinking and writing the same things as I write; thinking the same things as I think and longing for the same things I long for. Maybe that is what we find in a mate. I feel it goes deeper than that, as if in a past life I met myself in this life. I understand things to be easier than they should be. I am in a constant state of déjà vu. I do believe I met an earlier version of myself the other evening while waiting for the bus. I was about 63 years old and had traveled the world, seen the sights and understood where that put me. I understood where my experiences had brought me, and why that was important to not only remember, but to talk about. How strange that on one night, I would get stuck at just the exact location that my earlier self was sitting, waiting for nothing in particular, just living. I think I will be happy as I get older. I think I will understand why and how.

buona sera voi.

“So far”.

such a thing so as to feel yourself become something different. transcending your earthly plane into a world of feeling and warmth. feeling your body move as you brethe.
you don't hear yourself, heart beating and all. i don't move in a world of men but live in a world of human connections and love. where if you try, if you honestly attempt to join with reality, you can make it to the top, to the apex of human emotion and matter. it hurts in a way that makes you crave for more, for that feeling ever single day of your life. and evey time you can't reach it, it is just out of your reach, you understand that maybe you just need to see your breathe on the cold windown and realize that we are alive, living, breathing and longing for love and warmth.

This next part is from Thoreau. Sometimes, it helps me to think about it. Sometimes, it just confuses me.

“…shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments…children who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure…”

Maybe this will help with what I was trying to explain to you the other night.

I have always had a bit of a problem connecting with reality. I am never too sure of how to explain it in terms that are rational, but I have several writings from when I’ve felt that disconnectedness the most that, well, don’t exactly make the most sense—but in a way make all the sense in the world. I don’t really know what triggers this intense feeling of needing to get away, to connect somehow with what is happening—what I’m experiencing or what others are experiencing. I think that escaping is always my answer to my issues and for a while I thought that was not a good way to deal, but as I’ve seen, it is one of the only ways I can re-connect myself with something that is real, something that is tangible. I might just need to take a walk or a hike or ride my bike or drive across town—sometimes I might need to go further from home, someplace new, maybe I need to take a journey to prove to myself that I can do it—that I’m in control of me—of my actions and my thoughts—proving something to yourself is sometimes the most difficult thing in the world. Especially when you have to prove something like reality or something like self-determination.


A little poem called “Embrace”.

it is just at the beginning
that we realize that it might
be the end.

at least we can come to the
realization that what we are
is not what we understand
ourselves to be
but always something greater
always something beyond
what it is that we see.



Another poem, called “Moment”.

understand that we have so much ahead of us,
so incredibly much and so little behind us,
so very, very little.



Entitled “I’ve lost my mind”.

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of Man, that Thou visitest him?
For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. [Psalm 8]


it seems that it is hard to deny that man is a most unusual species of being. many others are better adapted to their environment, faster, stronger, etc. what is it then that separates us from all others? some suggest that our most extraordinary characteristic is our capacity to conceptualize the world and to communicate those conceptions symbolically.

i think that it is the idea that we have no understanding of what we are. at the best level, we can attempt to explain things, but when you get down to it, we have no clue what is happening. we are so complex. we are so unique.

i don't know what to think anymore. it's amazing.


Just something.


love, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the
moment that is about to come.

Paris à la lune

I just finished Paris to the Moon, I took my time, trying to savour all of it -- keep it in my head. I think he lived the life that I would want to live in Paris, if marriage and a family come my way. The life of a writer, or an academic can not be beat in this world, I am convinced of that. And with that in mind, I keep my head above the water, looking for a better opportunity to continue my education, or expand my worldview by moving abroad, once again. I think my time here at the airport and in Phoenix has been important, if nothing else, to help bring me back down to some sort of reality about the world. But, after a couple of months here, I realize that it is this reality that I am constantly trying to escape, always looking over my shoulder at the other part of this world that I am so inclined to inhabit.

"There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see and sees it, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more. He is constantly comparing what he sees to what he wants, so he see with his mind, and maybe even with his heart, or tries to. If his peripheral vision gets diminished -- so that he quite literally sometimes can't see what's coming at him from the suburbs of the place he looks at -- his struggle to adjust the country he looks at to the country he has inside him at least keeps him looking. It sometimes blurs, and sometimes sharpens, his eye. my head was filled with pictures of Paris, mostly black and white, and I wanted to be in them." Adam Gopnick in Paris to the Moon

I struggle to find a place in this strange place called Phoenix, and this book has not helped my need to live again overseas. Paris is calling me in some way, tugging at my mind every time I see something that reminds me of anything French. I can literally think myself to tears sometimes thinking about being somewhere else, with a lovely lady on my arm. I have such an over romanticised idea about life, but it is my life, and I can direct and form and shape it into one that isn't mundane and lifeless, but filled with places and things I love -- people in places I love. I look forward to the day I live in Paris. It might be a month, or it might be a year, but I know it is in my path.

Afr-ica

"Poor Africa, the happy hunting ground of the mythomaniac, the rock star buffing up his or her image, the missionary with a faith to sell, the child buyer, the retailer of dirty drugs or toxic cigarettes, the editor in search of a scoop, the empire builder, the aid worker, the tycoon wishing to rid himself of his millions, the school builder with a bucket of patronage, the experimenting economist, the diamond merchant, the oil executive, the explorer, the slave trader, the eco-tourist, the adventure traveler, the bird watcher, the travel writer, the escapee, the colonial and his crapulosities, the banker, the busybody, the Mandela-sniffer, the political fantasist, the buccaneer and your cousin the Peace Corps Volunteer. Oh, and the atoner, of whom Thoreau observed in a skeptical essay: “Now, if anything ail a man so that he does not perform his functions ... if he has committed some heinous sin and partially repents, what does he do? He sets about reforming the world.” Thoreau, who had Africa specifically in mind, added, “Do you hear it, ye Wolofs?”