~such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there~

Our system for measuring time has always seemed so petty and trivial to me. We measure our lives by the revolutions our planet makes around its orbital star! How could that tell us anything about ourselves? Anything about anything for that matter. At the micro level its even more ridiculous. Some magical, perfectly arbitrary distance between two spikes in a gear that an overly meticulous Swiss nutjob locked away in his basement decided one day - "though shall be called one second!" 3540 more of those and "though shall be called one minute!" etc.

Well, about 7.8 million of those little 'tics' have tocked off my life since the last time I was in the Taipei airport. But like I said, that's a perfectly silly way to think about it.

It was one meditation retreat ago, 50+ facebook friends ago, dozens of sunsets ago, three or four dreary sunrises ago, maybe a hundred beers ago, 18 blog posts ago, nearly 2000 pictures a ago, hundreds of motorbike kilometers ago, thousands of bus or plane kilometers ago, 23 dives ago, probably millions of grains of rice ago (none better than the laos sticky rice, of course), hundreds of kilos of delicious food ago, half a dozen boat rides ago, a dozen germans ago, 6 swiss ago, 15 french ago, americans, aussies, israelis, russians, indians and brits ago. It was jews ago and muslims ago, over 40 hindu/buddhist temples ago, two new wars ago, maybe two or three desperate bouts of loneliness ago, thousands of shared laughs ago. It was over a hundred monkeys ago in three different species ago, not to mention three different primates ago. What was I like four or five pop songs that I actually enjoyed ago? Seven countries ago, 18 passport stamps ago, a dozen revelations ago, maybe 25 completed poems and many more scraps of poems ago, ($3-5000 dollars ago :-/ I didn't bother tallying), a clear, well-defined purpose ago... and a complete Leo ago.

                        

(Or at least facial hair ago)   

God I learned a lot! More than I could ever hope. The most important thing I learned was how perfectly little I know about any damn thing at all. Also, I learned how to be a better human. Show me one college course syllabus whose "after this course you will know" section lists "how to be a better human". I learned to stop rushing through life. I learned to meditate every day. I learned how to dive SWEET JESUS! I learned how privileged, how oh so privileged I am. And everyone around me. Everyone I know who nags incessantly about this flu season or that break up, about this teacher that grades unfairly or that stressful work week. It's all nonsense. Ridiculous consumptive bouts of self-absorption. Selfish denial of anything that really matters in this world. I'll gripe that I have to pay an extra 150 cause I missed a flight but I'll make it up a thousand times over in my life and, hell, I'm on a friggen FLIGHT! The little Filipino girls that stop me on the street and beg for my water bottle so that they can turn in for pennies that their parents will either spend or bread or cigarettes (I'll never know) have no chance short of prostitution of ever being on a flight... I learned that I love my family oh so so much and I have so much to be grateful for in my cozy bourgeois lifestyle. I learned that I'm not going to change anyone's mind that's made up so I might as well focus on building mine up.

With this blog post, I'll complete my first experiment with travel blogging. I'm happy with the way it turned out. I hope to get the opportunity to improve my skills in the future. Thanks for tagging along and I hope I could make at least one person realize how awesome traveling is!