Back in Seville, my old host brother got a dog and is dating someone now, but I'm not sure how much else has changed. I think about him often but don't catch up often enough. I think about all the family there really, nesting away in Triana, another year or two older. Out from their house I still remember that shuffle of people coming across the bridge and walking down San Jacinto and people drinking their small lunchtime beer or gossiping in the surrounding plazas from 10pm onwards, old men with canes and a newspaper and young girls in love with boys on scooters. All that Spain is to me can be defined by that feeling in the air on a nighttime stroll, that very street, the buzz, the smells, the humming of voices.
And meanwhile in Colombia the streets are packed on Friday and Saturday around Medellin's Parque Lleras, a similar language spoken with a different tint flowing through the air. I miss my salsa school and mountain views and go-to restaurants and the Velvet Cafe where I sat one day and met a person who just immediately without rationale felt different after meeting so much of the same. Gone, gone, gone is that country now, brought to life only in short lived moments when I shut my eyes and put Bomba Estereo or Romeo Santos on as background noise. How lucky we are to have such beautiful places and such beautiful people to miss. How empty would life be to have never had those things at all?
I remember the toxic smog of Nairobi traffic and the pureness of the air once you escape, which is still today on this very day no doubt toxic and no doubt pure. When you go far enough north towards Nakuru you come to a hill that peers out on the Great Rift Valley, the real cradle of humanity, a coming home of sorts, and there it looks like the world goes on forever and never ends. One trip took me beyond this point to Meru County, remote, untainted, in the heart of Kenya. The national park was full of wild animals and no one on the road and in all my months in that country, full of so many bitter memories far too vivid to this day, I extract a few happy ones from this tucked away part of my mind, looking out at elephants as they looked back at me.
And meanwhile in Nigeria, Lebanese millionaire playboys still take their armored cars out and run through the decade long motions - work, clubs, drugs, boat to the beaches with the female flavor of the month, and back again. It's a place that harvests vice, more dysfunctional than you think a place can be without entertaining a civil war. I'm glad I was there and saw what the world can be, and what the world will continue to be, because none of these themes will change, but it is not my place to decide on the reoccurring cycles of people, much less countries, that are also reoccurring today.
I imagine the cafe culture of Melbourne still carries on, as do the waves that pummel the Great Ocean Road and the runners along the Yarra. All those people I never met, and the tiny percentage of those I did. I was so young, and too inexperienced to have context for it all, but certain parts stick out through my 21 year old eyes: seeing the Southern Cross through the clouds each evening; the flying foxes scattering the sky at dusk; the cold tram ride to work each morning; a bottle of wine alone one night on a park bench. I really don't know if I'll ever go back, to these places that were once all there was, but I hope to, like everywhere, if it is in the cards. There are so many places like this now, and yet so many more to see.
Where's that Dutch girl I travelled with for four days around the Great Barrier Reef? I have no idea really. Or the Australian I smoked a deadly cigar with on a hill in Guatemala? Those Turkish girls from a night out next to Istanbul's glowing mosques. The students around Honduran ruins?
The divorced financial planner at the brewery on my epic ride through Monterrey. My only real one-night-stand, on my final few days in London. The Egyptian that joined me for an illegal midnight swim on Qatar's side of the Persian Gulf. The actor from Breaking Bad I saw roped with a blonde at a bar in Cape Town. The prostitute I spoke with for awhile one night in Abuja. The President of Tajikistan whose hand I shook one afternoon in Brussels. The potential ladyboy who delivered a foot massage in Bangkok. The Argentinians and the rental car that circumvented Tenerife. Ex girlfriends turned wives turned parents in far off places. All these people I've lost track of, nearly forgot, and to my knowledge are out there living on somewhere. Hello and goodbye, hello and goodbye, the list goes on and on.
I am fascinated by these connections, the ones we have lost and the ones we still have and the ones we didn't even realized happened. I am fascinated by how the realities continue, are happening now, in every corner of the world without us. I am fascinated that there are billions more I will never see. So at present, this is the scope and how far the world extends for me.
I cannot describe to you the paradoxical feeling of both great fullness and great emptiness that accompanies having been everywhere and hardly anywhere still, and wanting to be all those places at once. This feeling comes often and with great force, and it is the benefit and the drawback of a life that has expanded so big.
And meanwhile in Colombia the streets are packed on Friday and Saturday around Medellin's Parque Lleras, a similar language spoken with a different tint flowing through the air. I miss my salsa school and mountain views and go-to restaurants and the Velvet Cafe where I sat one day and met a person who just immediately without rationale felt different after meeting so much of the same. Gone, gone, gone is that country now, brought to life only in short lived moments when I shut my eyes and put Bomba Estereo or Romeo Santos on as background noise. How lucky we are to have such beautiful places and such beautiful people to miss. How empty would life be to have never had those things at all?
I remember the toxic smog of Nairobi traffic and the pureness of the air once you escape, which is still today on this very day no doubt toxic and no doubt pure. When you go far enough north towards Nakuru you come to a hill that peers out on the Great Rift Valley, the real cradle of humanity, a coming home of sorts, and there it looks like the world goes on forever and never ends. One trip took me beyond this point to Meru County, remote, untainted, in the heart of Kenya. The national park was full of wild animals and no one on the road and in all my months in that country, full of so many bitter memories far too vivid to this day, I extract a few happy ones from this tucked away part of my mind, looking out at elephants as they looked back at me.
And meanwhile in Nigeria, Lebanese millionaire playboys still take their armored cars out and run through the decade long motions - work, clubs, drugs, boat to the beaches with the female flavor of the month, and back again. It's a place that harvests vice, more dysfunctional than you think a place can be without entertaining a civil war. I'm glad I was there and saw what the world can be, and what the world will continue to be, because none of these themes will change, but it is not my place to decide on the reoccurring cycles of people, much less countries, that are also reoccurring today.
I imagine the cafe culture of Melbourne still carries on, as do the waves that pummel the Great Ocean Road and the runners along the Yarra. All those people I never met, and the tiny percentage of those I did. I was so young, and too inexperienced to have context for it all, but certain parts stick out through my 21 year old eyes: seeing the Southern Cross through the clouds each evening; the flying foxes scattering the sky at dusk; the cold tram ride to work each morning; a bottle of wine alone one night on a park bench. I really don't know if I'll ever go back, to these places that were once all there was, but I hope to, like everywhere, if it is in the cards. There are so many places like this now, and yet so many more to see.
Where's that Dutch girl I travelled with for four days around the Great Barrier Reef? I have no idea really. Or the Australian I smoked a deadly cigar with on a hill in Guatemala? Those Turkish girls from a night out next to Istanbul's glowing mosques. The students around Honduran ruins?
The divorced financial planner at the brewery on my epic ride through Monterrey. My only real one-night-stand, on my final few days in London. The Egyptian that joined me for an illegal midnight swim on Qatar's side of the Persian Gulf. The actor from Breaking Bad I saw roped with a blonde at a bar in Cape Town. The prostitute I spoke with for awhile one night in Abuja. The President of Tajikistan whose hand I shook one afternoon in Brussels. The potential ladyboy who delivered a foot massage in Bangkok. The Argentinians and the rental car that circumvented Tenerife. Ex girlfriends turned wives turned parents in far off places. All these people I've lost track of, nearly forgot, and to my knowledge are out there living on somewhere. Hello and goodbye, hello and goodbye, the list goes on and on.
I am fascinated by these connections, the ones we have lost and the ones we still have and the ones we didn't even realized happened. I am fascinated by how the realities continue, are happening now, in every corner of the world without us. I am fascinated that there are billions more I will never see. So at present, this is the scope and how far the world extends for me.
I cannot describe to you the paradoxical feeling of both great fullness and great emptiness that accompanies having been everywhere and hardly anywhere still, and wanting to be all those places at once. This feeling comes often and with great force, and it is the benefit and the drawback of a life that has expanded so big.
