As we voyage onto the unknown in this lifetime,
we become familiar with the known.
This familiarity render a strength in fate.
As one does travel,
one become autonomous from the illusions of recollections.
Thus, modernity become distance from
these delusions in transition......
-Anonymous
Reflection in travel....
Reflexive thought #4 - Reflection in travel
I was looking at some of the photos of a friend of mine I met a couple years back while I attended SF State. He is from Tokyo, Japan. His name is Naoki. We hung out a couple times, you know 'Bro-dates' in San Francisco. We went to see a live band performing various DJ Shadow's songs while he took photos of us in our mischievous moments at the event (we even met DJ Shadow in front of the club, real chill homey); also, he, Keiko, two other people, and myself all drove out to the Mountainview Shoreline Amphitheater to watch Bjork perform one of her legendary set,s and we both went to see Mono perform at the same venue of the DJ Shadow live band, I was videotaping the show while he sat upstairs in the Mezzanine sleeping with his arms folded over his chest in a chair, I wish I had a picture of it. This venue was the legendary Great American Music Hall.
As it turns out, Naoki returned to Tokyo after that last semester of studying at SF State. He went back to his life over there in Japan while I was able to follow and communicate via Facebook. After a year has passed, he posted on Facebook that he moved to Singapore to work for a newspaper. I was very excited and in awe of this event.
Recently he has begun to post photos of his travels there in southeast Asia, a place I wish to call home real soon). I was on Facebook and saw he posted some new photos. In my heralded excitement, I saw these series of photos where from Nepal.
Traveling is probably one of the most addictive activities in the world. I love traveling for the extreme limitlessness adventure. The purity of the gem is the priceless moments of breathing air in another hemisphere of the world, listening to the constant chatter of locals in their native dialects, which are foreign to our ears, sleeping in a bed, a floor, a couch, or a spot different from the comforts of your native abode, it all become this relative out-of-body experience. Your senses are infested with myriad of emotions like a ball of flurries dispersing in the winds in the fields of dandelions planted in a soils rich as the liquor you drink from the bar that is across the street from the cafe of the building where your hotel is located.
Aaaaahhhhh! The true beauty of civility is the severity of reality! The reality is he's there. Everything is pure. Everything is illuminate. Everything is real. Every photo he encapsulates with his camera, is as if, he took pen to paper writing every moment, feature, and detail of his travel progressing in the movement of every minute ticking by the seconds increasing on the hours of the days in the week he is inhabiting the culture of Nepal.
I am sure Buddha is touching his soul right now. I would love to touch that same soil, that same sky with my heart, my hands, my body, my skin, my hair, my soul while soaring the different patches of land as an eagle gliding over the Himalayan heavens to greeting the great masters of compassion and enlightenment. For know I have such a long road is an ultimate test in spiritual practice and soulful assessment of my existence. I see this travel as a investment in the soul's kitchen cooking up the porridge of mantras from the lips and breathes of the blessed lama deep in the temples of the Himalayas.
Damn, Naoki, you kicking it with Papi Buddha. He's the butter of the delicious milk tea from the Gobi Desert sands of time and the grassland fields of Ulaanbaatar that I have been hearing about. There is no other way to put it. You are on the level 5th,. 6th, and 7th level of the pathos that can touch the soul. Your feet are like kindred spirits with each step has a golden touch. How surreal? How appealing? How dazzling? You are living the life that many can only read, imagine, and memorize in the hoo-hum in moderation. That's the sensation. You have become the teacher to amateur apprentice of living the dream: traveling on the road.
I just want to conclude my man, that "YOU ARE THE MAN!" You need to keep doing "pimping Nihonjin!" Your sukiyaki BANG is the ZANG that keep the TANG tasting like RAIN! Yeah! My man, one day we will be chilling holding glasses or mug in each of our hands and toasting to the beauty of life and the cultures we have yet to experience their profound glory, history, and purity of existence.
I wrote this reflection as a reminder to myself, and to whoever is reading this. If you have a dream. It does not stop unless you stop walking, stop talking, stop thinking, and stop breathing the morsel of air seeping in to your pours to your veins into the dendrites, axon, and cells to electrify your brain. You must understand people, we all have a reason to live as we have a reason to die. If you can't envision yourself doing the things you love then you can't truly understand what love is. This is life and how you live it is how you believe in life itself.
Peace from the hearts, the souls, and the minds of those like Naoki and myself, who will make things happen in our lives. Regardless of our own culture references to validity; we have learned that our knowledge, and our power in education has opened roads to vast and wide avenue far and wide!!!
Haiku
I asked a monk if
"If is rain does it pour?"
Monk said, "Why should it rain to pour?"
