The present is a continuation of the past and the beginning of the future all rolled up into one neat little Mobius Strip. In English, I’m already beginning the reflections on this trip and I still have a week to go in experiencing.
I was not feeling any passion earlier when it came to writing. I started thinking about an article I read about Karsh Kale. He composes music and does most of his composing at home in New York. I feel similar to that. Sure, I’ve been blogging and having small stints of inspiration while I’m here but it’s all over the map. Not that I’m complaining, the variety has been fun, the reviews, the sarcastic news, the music, and the occasional conversation with my stomach.
I learned something on the way; I’m no traditional travel writer. Bill Bryson and I can appreciate each other from a far but I don’t think we’ll be sharing a cup of tea at the annual travel writer’s association in Brissy.
How do I know? Well first, my stomach can’t handle it, just kidding, I freaking love traveling. So its not for a lack of interest in seeing new things, tasting new things, experiencing a culture, taking a thousand photographs, looking for fresh sounds of a continent, and the like.
Being on the road, plane, bus, camel, and car just became my job for the day. I plan my meals accordingly, or lack thereof, get the job done, enjoy the fruits of my labor through the experience at hand that would have been impossible without the job getting done, and fall asleep exhausted, a tired that dreams new scenery, familiar people with new words, and icons of distant relatives. I’ve been inspired to visit central or northern Africa, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi. All dreams I suppose but at least I haven’t been entirely turned off from the adventurous process.
I think perhaps I’m too egocentric to be a travel writer. I can’t get passed my own feelings while experiencing a new place. This leads to writing that isn’t about the history of where I’ve been, the description of the beauties, or the tales of the people. I just can’t report the facts as the facts. At least, I couldn’t do it here. Maybe if I was getting paid by Australia Geographic to write about a place and the adventures the AG team were having I could do it. But, my heart would not be in it, just my money clip. Not that its entirely a bad thing, I mean, getting paid to do something you love even if its not exactly what you want to be doing is still pretty good. Like a kid that ends up coaching a triple A baseball team instead of playing in the majors, its pretty freaking close.
Going to a place has no substitute, but we can’t go to all places, and that’s why we have professionals to travel around for us and give us photographs, spoken words, and written words. If you want to see the places I’ve been, find me, ask me to show you the slide show, buy me a bottle of wine, maybe two, and we’ll have a good time talking about the things I’ve seen, places you’ve been, tall tales we’ve heard, and lies white enough to get away with. Its that experience that I could share as a traveler of Australia.
This all brings me to the beginning or perhaps the end, and that has to do with the role I feel writing has in the world, at least as I continue to wield it and think about it. Writing helps me uncover more about individuality, inner self, inner world, personal perspective. I am remembering an early post about exploring the self, removed from everything that is normal and routine. I suppose that’s what I’m getting at. And, this conception of the written word certainly falls in line with my highest appreciation of authors who are in the category of ‘literary fiction.’ A story that is most interested in the exploration of the purest diamonds of humanity: spirituality, love, pain, emotionality, intellect, heroism, defeat, history, the future, struggle, and society. Sure, all of the words are in a vehicle, some sort of action, exotic places, unique characters, drama, sex, and violence.
They all are part of the writing for the sake of maybe one idea or one feeling. An itch that can only be scratched by involving an entire imaginative world to explore places of the psyche’ usually untouched by the travel writers of the physical world.
Anyways, that itch I was talking about scratching, exploring the inner world of humanity, that’s where the good stuff is for me. I don’t know why, guess I should figure it out. The challenge is intriguing. There is not one sense involved in the heart and mind caving I’m talking about. I can’t just look down one cave shaft, or smell the mustiness of a singular forest floor, or hear the gospel of fruit bat’s flapping wings in a mango grove, or touch the fuzziness of a Banksia Grandis pod, to get at the conception of what makes up the core of humanity. So what can get at that? What sees that which can’t be seen? Rationality, intuition, divinity? I don’t know the right cocktail of implements and senses to use in this sort of climbing expedition, I just know that it’s freaking hard, challenging. It takes everything and more that I don’t have to get there.
Example, I’ve written three beginnings to three separate novels. Two of which actually have some good ideas, concepts, and characters. It’s probably close to 100 typed single spaced pages. I can begin a novel on pure adrenaline, rope in hand, and I’m cave diving and exploring around. I get down there though and I don’t have a torch, I don’t have any food, and my water runs out in just a couple of days. All the tools I have to explore around aren’t there and I can’t just go to the store to pick them up because that store doesn’t exist.
“Come on down to Crazy Jared’s! We’ve got brain cell boosters on sale for $19.99, intuitive cookies on sale for $5.99, and you won’t believe this folks, get your own personal dream encyclopedia complete with people, places, and things completely tailored to your date of birth, weight, height, name, social security number, and current residence for only $12,000. That’s right folks, we’ll have every unconscious thought, passion, and desire from your dreams, decoded for you personally, just an easy $12,000.”
Travel is interpreted in a lot of different ways, I guess my personal view on it may not be interesting. Who wants to spend their lives thinking of themselves anyways? Egotistical for sure. I’ve tried to think of it in another light, one in which shows me that if I figure out what makes me act and think the way that I do, I might understand a little better what the hell you are trying to tell me because its pretty hard to figure out why everyone is out there acting the way that they are. Maybe this is an egregious assumption, thinking that humanity has some sort of essential form of impulse that can be understood and reapplied. I’d be the first to question any such claim myself, but it doesn’t hurt to look for it I reckon. What’s that famous saying, “Life’s a journey, not a desination.” So, I’ll keep journeying, caving, climbing, questioning, and I probably won’t get there, “ You can’t get there from here!” but maybe along the way I’ll finally pack the right tools, etch out that small map of the caves deep down below, and pass it along to the next one willing to explore a little further down the dark cavern of humanity’s soul.
