Today.

[mangosteen]

Observation: In retrospect, getting out of Boston for a weekend was so mandatory, it's not even funny.

I'm currently on the plane back home. I had an absolutely amazing weekend. Great people, a wonderful wedding, and a few new friends. That, and I got out of Portland with only spending $25 at Powell's City Of Books. Most importantly, I needed to get out of Boston for a little while. I had the municipal version of cabin fever. Fortunately, having metric buttloads of frequent flyer miles usually helps with the cure.

Helpful Safety Tip: If you're a male, you essentially have two choices:
1. Make sure that the Poi cross at the top of the arc, or
2. Wear an athletic supporter.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again. One of the wonderful things about travelling alone is that a lot less people know who you are, and/or are likely to see you again. This allows any number of opportunities for re-invention of one's self. It has given me a good handle on the sources of my self-embarrassment and self-consciousness.

Just to head off the cynics chorus, "re-inventing one's self" isn't about creating a grand lie about who you are. That is not to say that it can't be, but that's a very limiting definition. I look at it as bringing parts of one's personality to the forefront that may have not had their "day in the sun" before, and making other parts less prominent. For example, over the past four days, I don't think I geeked about computers even once. There was just no reason to do so. I didn't have a net connection on the trip until about two hours before my flight home, and I didn't miss it.

It's not about, through others people's expectations, who I should be.
It's about, through my past experiences, who I am.

Today, I am a beginning flautist who has a rediscovered a long-lost fascination with playing musical instruments.

Today, I am an amateur photographer who is just beginning to sell prints of the pictures that he has taken.

Today, I am the genuinely unalloyed extrovert who can start up a non-content-free conversation with anyone.

Today, I am a Jew who is trying to figure out the nature of his faith.

Today, I am.

Comments

[awfief.livejournal.com]

interesting. I tend to travel within the Boston area. Having a non-homogenous group of friends means that sometimes I'm a volunteer, sometimes I'm a bead artist, sometimes I'm a singer.

Why is it that being in your home town suppresses some of those things? Why is it that you can't go 2 days without geeking, without 'net, when you're in Boston. Why do you have to get away to bring out those pieces of yourself?

[prog.livejournal.com]

As someone who reinvents himself every 18 months or so, I say unto you ROCK ON

It's more of a refinement than a redefininition. Contents of mind may shift or settle during travel.

On being another self

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I miss the feel of creating an entire society, perfect in its brevity, that came from bothering people on intercity mass transit. I took the train twice from New York City to Montreal (cuz it was $20 cheaper but two hours longer than the bus ride). I met all sorts of people -- a First Nation on her way home from a work gig in the South, a troupe of musicians with no idea their hotel was both the home of the John & Yoko Bed-In nor that it was upstairs from the train station, a con man more interested in hustling young girls but still willing to sneak my debit card out of my wallet.

I met a girl from Austria on a ride from Montreal to Amherst. She was amazed that I had heard of her home city, Linz. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was mostly because of Linzer Tarts. 'Twas still a good first guess on my part.

I met a bus driver without passengers one wintry ride from suburban Quebec City to Montreal. My French was better than his English, so we talked about only a few things before I zonked from a long day's schlep. When I'd fallen alseep, it was snowing hard; when I awoke an hour and change later, it was raining.

All of these adventures, brief and not given to plotlines, I thought I would lose when I got my own car. Instead, I found the tales of the roadstops.

I met a woman on a pay phone in Philadelphia. I was more fascinated by the tiny vaulted arches in this bar's entryway than I suspect she was interested in her phone call, since she handed the phone to me. "You talk to him. "He turned out to be her boyfriend in Los Angeles.

I found in that same bar two bartenders and zero customers. I railed that these young men had no desire to get customers into the place on a Saturday night. What a gorgeous lounge, too -- on the University of Pennsylvania campus, with plenty of pedestrian traffic in front.

I was in a parking lot on the Thruway when I met a youth from Toronto. He was an ultra-orthodox Jew on his way to his own wedding in Brooklyn. He had the most beautiful hat I've ever seen.

I find that I am more willing to observe when I am away. I have been proven wrong so many times in my adventures that I am keen to listen to others. I become a wanderer in my own life.

I learend this summer that I have a fellow adventurer when I drive with Maggie. She is good to get into trouble with. I am honored that my travels now include her.

Who am I when I venture? I don't always know. I know who I must be once I arrive, so I am pleased to be anybody else en route. I can find incarnations that I rarely entertain -- my inner monk, my innocence, my curiosity.

I suppose I strayed from my assigned topic. Then again, why walk straight?

I met a traveler from an antique land, Dante

huzzah

[tcb.livejournal.com]

sounds like a good day to be you!

self-discovery is a hard, and usually long, process..

keep at it, it will be worth it..

[rmd.livejournal.com]

cooooool.

next time you're in portland, check out the japanese garden and the 24 hour church of elvis.