Travel Shorts
Morocco - Jan 15th, 2014
Camels roam sun-cracked desert, backdropped by snowcapped peaks. Endless waves spool off a perfect rock point. Bustling markets fill the air with chatter and life. VW vans with surfboards on roofs roll by. Motorcycles dart between busses. My third night in the country and I find myself sitting around a campfire, smoking hash and strumming songs with a gang of Moroccan surfers. Sala passes me another glass of wine, slaps my back and requests another song. His hands beat the skin of his drum, fingers rolling the beat forward in a primal fury, and my voice calls out to the full moon. A camel in the distance calls back through the dark of night. Moonlight glistens off rolling waves, beckoning me for a night surf. My heart aches for the woman I left behind, but the exotic locale numbs the loss. I remind myself that right here, right now, is the only time and place that exists, and my voice howls my pain and love and bliss to the moon - perfectly off-key.
Camels roam sun-cracked desert, backdropped by snowcapped peaks. Endless waves spool off a perfect rock point. Bustling markets fill the air with chatter and life. VW vans with surfboards on roofs roll by. Motorcycles dart between busses. My third night in the country and I find myself sitting around a campfire, smoking hash and strumming songs with a gang of Moroccan surfers. Sala passes me another glass of wine, slaps my back and requests another song. His hands beat the skin of his drum, fingers rolling the beat forward in a primal fury, and my voice calls out to the full moon. A camel in the distance calls back through the dark of night. Moonlight glistens off rolling waves, beckoning me for a night surf. My heart aches for the woman I left behind, but the exotic locale numbs the loss. I remind myself that right here, right now, is the only time and place that exists, and my voice howls my pain and love and bliss to the moon - perfectly off-key.
Peru - Christmas Day, 2014
Pelicans dip and dive and glide along the mirrorlike surface as the ocean undulates and rolls under us all. Auroral rays and salt in my hair and eyes always on the horizon, watching, waiting for the ocean to build and swell and pulse and take me and free me and send me flying as I drop into a moving mountain. It curls over me, churns around me, womblike, above and below as it is within. I am it as it is me, in my veins, and I dance along the sea, fish jumping, palms swaying, the distant music of South America, songs of love and loss and longing and adventure. And I glide like the pelicans, all the power of the ocean under my feet. My shoulders ache and a spot of fire erupts in my lungs, but my every cell screams with the passion and love and harmony and exhilaration of living this moment. As alive as the lightning that strikes, undeniably powerful, but gone before the light even reaches the eye. I too am suddenly gone from the cave of water in which in an instant I was reborn, in which in an instant all the worlds and all the lives came together within me and I knew. I knew everything as nothing and nothing as all. I turn half-circle and begin the long paddle out, deeper and deeper and deeper into the depths of the sea that sings to me of the sailors long ago who journeyed into the abyss, seeking, seeking themselves in the void, and finding another world. And I know that they rode the same wave as I because I rode it before when I was them and I'll ride it again when they are I and I know it, I know it because at the heart it is all the same wave.
Pelicans dip and dive and glide along the mirrorlike surface as the ocean undulates and rolls under us all. Auroral rays and salt in my hair and eyes always on the horizon, watching, waiting for the ocean to build and swell and pulse and take me and free me and send me flying as I drop into a moving mountain. It curls over me, churns around me, womblike, above and below as it is within. I am it as it is me, in my veins, and I dance along the sea, fish jumping, palms swaying, the distant music of South America, songs of love and loss and longing and adventure. And I glide like the pelicans, all the power of the ocean under my feet. My shoulders ache and a spot of fire erupts in my lungs, but my every cell screams with the passion and love and harmony and exhilaration of living this moment. As alive as the lightning that strikes, undeniably powerful, but gone before the light even reaches the eye. I too am suddenly gone from the cave of water in which in an instant I was reborn, in which in an instant all the worlds and all the lives came together within me and I knew. I knew everything as nothing and nothing as all. I turn half-circle and begin the long paddle out, deeper and deeper and deeper into the depths of the sea that sings to me of the sailors long ago who journeyed into the abyss, seeking, seeking themselves in the void, and finding another world. And I know that they rode the same wave as I because I rode it before when I was them and I'll ride it again when they are I and I know it, I know it because at the heart it is all the same wave.
